The Takeaway:
- Preceding Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd filed a defamation suit in April demanding the deletion of a tweet that accused him of animal misconduct. In response, three people submitted statements to the court this week accusing Todd of such misconduct.
- One presumed victim, “Jane Doe,” stated she stopped contributing to bitcoin projects in order to avoid Todd.
- The incident is shaping up to be a first-of-its-kind in the bitcoin community, a Dick incident that could force conference providers and projects to be more active in responding to allegations of misconduct.
- Discrete conferences have received complaints about Todd, citing such allegations of sexual misconduct.
Publicly filed court documents father now revealed specific allegations of sexual misconduct involving former Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd.
Todd solicited transgender cryptographer Isis Agora Lovecruft for defamation in a California court in April, demanding they delete a tweet speciality Todd a “rapist.” This week, Lovecruft moved to dismiss the complaint, and both Lovecruft and zcash co-founder Zooko Wilcox filed ukases in court describing Todd’s alleged behavior.
In their declaration, Lovecruft accused Todd of sexual harassment, embodying unwelcome and violent sexual statements during consulting work on a bitcoin project. According to Lovecruft’s filed announcement, Todd told Lovecruft in a San Francisco cafe, “I’m going to shove my cock in you so hard and beat you until you beg for more.”
Lovecruft also specified in their court filing that Todd grabbed their arm when his advances were rejected. Lovecruft’s manifesto also included private Twitter messages with a third party describing Todd’s unwanted sexual advances, as in good shape as private Signal messages from a woman who claimed Todd raped her, identified as Jane Doe.
Wilcox’s court manifesto (a copy of which he also published in a Medium blog post on Tuesday) detailed his experiences with Todd. (It should be illustrious that Todd has been particularly outspoken in his criticism of the zcash project, which Wilcox spearheads.) Dating retaliation to 2012, Todd is one of the top 25 contributors to the Bitcoin Core code repository and remains an influential figure in the space.
In the court utterance, Wilcox said one female friend asked him for help avoiding Todd’s unwelcome advances, and another female pen-pal described being “pressured into sex” by Todd. According to their declaration, Lovecruft was referring to the second victim (called “Jane Doe” in the court filings) in the Feb. 20 tweet at take exception in this case.
Wilcox said in his court statement that Jane Doe told him “Mr. Todd had pressured her into sex while she was in a mentally compromised confirm due to a medical condition.”
In an interview with CoinDesk, Jane Doe said the incident drove her to stop participating in bitcoin estimates.
“There are other areas of computer science, I just don’t want to see him ever again,” she said. “I just want him to flit me alone. And there’s no way to know that for sure. I’m past worrying about the broader crypto community. I just yen to live my life. … The only thing I could think about in the days afterward is worrying that he’d connection me or retaliate.”
CoinDesk has reached out to Todd’s legal representation and will update the article if we hear back. Todd’s beef denies that he has raped or sexually assaulted Lovecruft “or anybody else.”
Repercussions
CoinDesk has spoken with the two presumed victims mentioned by both Wilcox and Lovecruft in their court filings. During an interview with CoinDesk, Jane Doe outlined Todd’s alleged coercive sexual activity in explicit detail which was consistent with the court filings.
Doe stipulate there were no third-party witnesses to the alleged assault.
The incidents described by both women took place within the bitcoin community, at adept events or in private meetings arranged to discuss topics related to computer science. Both women described their events as traumatic.
Doe expressed concerns about Todd’s “power” to influence the broader crypto community. Todd has long been one of the most functioning contributors to the Bitcoin Core project and was also involved in the launch of zcash in 2016.
In interviews with CoinDesk, the alleged gulls said the incidents impacted their ability to engage in public forums, both online and in-person, related to cryptocurrency advance.
The alleged victim referred to in Wilcox’s declaration as “my friend” told CoinDesk she was told by a prospective business partner that people were chary to work with her because they were now “unsure about her character.” (She eventually got a job working with this role partner.)
Not alone
Lovecruft’s declaration describes a theme that is common in allegations of workplace-related harassment or assault: Conveying up can lead to retaliation against the accuser.
A report from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cited a 2003 chew over finding that 75 percent of workers who spoke out against mistreatment “faced some form of retaliation.”
CoinDesk appraised several other individuals who alleged they were subjected to sexual assault or harassment, not involving Todd, in many contexts related to their work in the blockchain industry. They all told CoinDesk they did not speak out publicly because they feared ostracism from the community.
Some who went to speak up within the group ended up having to leave the projects they were contributing to. Several of the sources, subsuming one of the alleged victims mentioned in the Todd court documents, told CoinDesk their private testimonies of misconduct were either dismissed or led to retaliation.
Disposed the open-source ethos of the bitcoin community, alleged victims said, requests for help led nowhere because no one was systematically managerial for such misconduct.
Todd has also faced backlash, but perhaps in a milder form. An anonymous complaint was submitted to the MIT Bitcoin Expo in Slog for allowing Todd to speak, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. (Todd went on to speak at the MIT event.)
The provenience also said Todd did not speak at the Monero Konferenco in June because of allegations of sexual misconduct.
Peter Todd epitome via CoinDesk archives