Monero [XMR]s lead developer states TokenPay are “snake oil salesmen”

Recently, Twitter witnessed a feud involving the lead developer of Monero, Riccardo Spagni, who goes by the name Fluffy Pony on Twitter, and TokenPay, a cryptocurrency payment platform.

According to the posts, Riccardo was invited for an open debate by TokenPay to address the allegations made by him which stated that TokenPay was a centralized platform and their proposed Distributed Proof of Stake [DPoS] model was significantly worse than the distributed database.

After a series of discussions, the CEO of TokenPay, Derek Capo accused Riccardo of creating a platform which could be used by criminals to access the darknet marketplace whereas TokenPay operated only in legitimate markets. He said:

“while there are legitimate needs for privacy, drug dealing, child porn, and trafficking do not count”

Riccardo declined to debate with TokenPay as he did not want to give them free publicity, adding that they were “snake oil salesman”. Spagni was later accused of giving TokenPay publicity by publicly debating on Twitter. Furthermore, he was held responsible for declining the debate due to the fear that TokenPay would be a competitive concern for Monero in the future.

Riccardo stated:

“Totally different. I’m not retweeting any of these replies, so they don’t appear in my timeline. Most of my followers won’t even be aware that the debate is happening. An audio/video/live debate would be markedly different”

TokenPay stated that they were not in a competition with Monero as the platform’s marketing was clearly driven towards dark market adoption whereas TokenPay was solely focused on legitimate commerce activity.

Riccardo countered TokenPay by stating that criminals on dark markets needed the strongest privacy. The Monero platform was not marketed to such criminals but they just started using the Monero without taking permission. He added:

“But they’re also smart, and will only start using technology if it’s truly privacy enhancing. Think about that for a second”

According to TokenPay, Monero was building products which catered to the criminal underworld. They further stated that Monero’s illegitimacy would soon be realized by authorities. They added:

“We will keep doing what we are doing in the legitimate commerce markets. Stop worrying, we aren’t competitors”

In the post, Riccardo stated that Monero’s intention to enable privacy was for the downtrodden and underserved. He further blamed TokenPay for their horrific insinuation. He added:

“If criminals choose to also use it we can no less stop them than a kitchen knife manufacturer can prevent their knife from being used to murder”