Harry Potter and The Order of Bitcoin?
How J.K. Rowling triggered a massive Twitter shitstorm that included Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin with one simple question
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything bitcoin or blockchain because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
Chapter One — The Girl Who Tweeted
It all started, when Coindesk author Leigh Cuen (@La__Cuen) mentioned in a conversation with HBO Consultant Marvin Ammori (@ammori), that she’d “die from happiness” if J.K. Rowling ever pings her. What started as a conversation between two people was bound to escalate:
Chapter Two — The Appearing Reply
J.K. Rowling, used the chance to ask her about bitcoin, not knowing what would happen next.
The reactions to this tweet don’t paint the crypto scene in the best light, although there were some qualified replies.
Chapter Three — The Letters from Everyone
What ensured next, was nothing short of mayhem: Hundreds of replies, from people ranging from Bitcoin fetishists to Blockchain critics, flooded J.K Rowling's timeline. Some answers deified Bitcoin, some demonized it, very few attempted to actually explain bitcoin and even fewer were qualified explanations.
Before you read any of the other Tweets, keep in mind, Rowling directed her question at writer and reporter Leigh Cuen, who gave a competent answer and offered further help:
Some other “explanations”
Most of the other replies were either very political or criticizing the existing explanations
@Bitcoin mentioned how cryptocurrencies eliminate the trust factor, which isn’t wrong but probably not too helpful either.
Other replies included (a lot of) people plugging their books and blogs, but I’ll spare you these.
Vitalik Buterin (Co-founder of Etherium and bitcoin magazine) gave a great simplified and qualified explanation.
Eventually, J.K. Rowling admitted being confused by the concept, which triggered hundreds of more replies, including this one by Elon Musk.
Bitcoin took a small dump during this whole debate, which some people attributed to be J.K. Rowling's witchery.
Epilogue
Unlike Harry Potter, this story has no Happy Ending (Sorry for the spoiler but the books are like 22 years old) J.K. Rowling finally had enough as we can see here
If you’ve read any of my articles before you’ll know that I try to keep them educational, so here’s some wisdom by J.K. Rowling herself:
