The mysterious Bitcoin maximalist Mircea Popescu is said to be found dead – Bitcoin News

Mpex founder and Bitcoin evangelist Mircea Popescu reportedly drowned off the coast of Costa Rica, adding to the mystery surrounding the man, his alleged Bitcoin fortune and his importance to the future of the network.

The father of “Bitcoin toxicity” was faced with controversy

Just as the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamato sparked an exciting hunt for the true identity of the person or individuals behind Bitcoin, the network has reportedly lost one of its most enigmatic and polarizing figures in the last decade.

Mircea Popescu, a Romanian citizen and well-known bitcoin maximalist who promised to dispose of over a million bitcoins if the block sizes were adjusted, is believed to have drowned off the coast of Costa Rica on June 23. Confirmation of his death has been sparse as it was originally reported that a Polish national had drowned.

As a relatively mysterious figure within the community, little is known about Popescu other than his blogging on Trilema, his support for security-oriented open source projects, and his commitment to keeping the Bitcoin network unchanged despite the demand for larger block sizes.

After blogging about cryptocurrency in his early years, he founded the Bitcoin exchange Mpex in 2012, which later became the target of an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Satoshi DICE, a popular gambling website that only accepted Bitcoin, was listed on the Romanian Mpex by Eric Voorhees.

Eventually, the listing became part of the SEC’s investigation after the regulator did not approve the offer. Voorhees was later fined and forced to buy back the listed shares. During the situation, Popescu was known for trolling the SEC and even went so far as to post his correspondence with the enforcement team on his Trilema blog. His eccentricity was fully evident as he set about breaking up the SEC’s inquiries and exposing the loopholes in their arguments for information about Mpex and customer activity.

Although little is known about his personal and professional endeavors, Popescu’s commitment to open source systems is well known. After the open source operating system Open BSD, which had existed since the 1990s, ran into financial problems, Popescu donated US $ 20,000 in 2014 to keep the non-profit foundation behind the software running. Given the security-centric approach of the operating system and Popescu’s leanings, Mpex used the technology in its platform as well.

Immersed in controversy for years, Popescu left a lot of quotes and sayings, some of which painted a rather negative picture of the man himself. However, none of his antics was taken as seriously as his promise to bring a million bitcoins to market if changes were made to the bitcoin block size (this supposedly happened in 2016), which gives him the nickname of “Father of Bitcoin ToxicityEventually Segwit2x, an initiative to double the block size to 2MB, was abandoned and the network cemented the use of the 1MB block size.

Although it has never been confirmed, it was concluded that Popescu actually had control of this huge chunk of a million bitcoins, which, if voted, likely made him the only bitcoin millionaire (owner of more than a million coins). However, this number has never been confirmed. However, given his alleged death, there were concerns that a million bitcoins could hit the market and cause prices to drop.

For now, the situation remains shrouded in mystery as there is no formal confirmation of his death.

What do you think will happen to Mircea Popescu’s Bitcoin fortune? Let us know in the comment section below.

Photo credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Wired

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