Who is Theymos and what did he do?

[cybrbeast]

In the beginning I thought he was cool for hosting the bitcointalkforum. But when I found out he also ran the /r/bitcoin subreddit I was already less amused that most of the online social interactivity could be controlled by one person. Then there were the bitcoin donations that were never spent on improving the forum, quite the opposite, the forum has actually become more broken and lost functionality.

Still, that wasn't too bad, however when he started censoring near majority opinion concerning and discussion concerning blocksize on /r/bitcoin he crossed a terrible line. He also simply refused to give in, even though most people from both sides of the debate wanted to have it uncensored.

This is all I know, I have no idea about the person, his motivations, or other crap he's pulled. Is there a good bio/writeup somewhere?

 

[blockchain-db]

Glad you asked.

Please share this around!

Local mirror:

Michael Marquardt
Michael Marquardt, more commonly known as theymos, is a Bitcointalk administrator and Reddit /r/bitcoin moderator. He has recently came into scrutiny for potential mishandling of $1 million of entrusted forum donations, censorship of Bitcoin Xt, an alternate client, and the blanket banning of the posting of his own personal information on bitcointalk, while allowing the personal information of others to be freely posted on bitcointalk. Even moderators of his communities have came out against his unilateral censorship.

This site aims to collect and archive such censored information. Bitcoin's numerous communities have become overly centralized with one individual holding total control over discussions, and hurting the free expression of ideas and technical solutions for scaling bitcoin (as those that theymos finds personally objectionable are censored). Theymos has recently said "I've moderated forums since long before Bitcoin (some quite large), and I know how moderation affects people."

If you have any additional information relevant to this subject, please contact the maintainers at contact @ this domain.

Censored personal information ("dox") of theymos
Theymos has set up his forum to automatically censor and ban users who post this information. His forum allows the posting of personal information of others. Many people find this double standard objectible. In the interests of full disclosure, this publicly sourced information has been reproduced below:

Name: Michael Marquardt
Emails: theymos@mm.st / theymos@gmail.com / theymos@hotmail.com /
theymos@aol.com / theymos@yahoo.com
Personal: [redacted]
Phone: [redacted]
Address: [redacted]
City: [redacted]
State: [redacted]
Zip: [redacted]
DOB: [redacted]
SSN: [redacted]
Last 4 CC: [redacted]
EXP: [redacted]
Domain: theymos.com
Skype: [redacted]
Relatives: [redacted]
Alternate bitcoin communities
There are a variety of alternate bitcoin communities that are more decentralized. Please note that the maintainers of blockchain-db.com do not endorse any alternate community.

• bitco.in, "censorship-free Bitcoin forum"
• /r/bitcoinxt, uncensored general bitcoin subreddit with emphasis on Bitcoin Xt

Contact the maintainers
Please email contact @ this domain to contact the maintainers.

 

[Bloomie]

I'm editing his personal information out of the post above. Doxxing people is very questionable behavior and could also violate privacy laws.

 

[Georg Engelmann]

I recently cleaned up the article about Bitcoin XT on the old Bitcoin Wiki and guess what happened next?

Luke Dashjr reverted my changes and Midnightmagic warns me to "stop vandalizing pages".

Now of course it's not my Wiki and they can make their own rules, but the current Bitcoin XT article is a joke. It doesn't have a section named "Criticism", but instead the whole article is portraying Bitcoin XT as a bad thing.

After I noticed this I also cleaned up the same article on my own Wiki.

 

[ladoga]

I was reading your wiki page and have few points.

1. "Bitcoin XT is a fork of Bitcoin Core that aims to make..." doesn't really explain what Bitxoin XT is.

Maybe it would better to state "Bitcoin XT is an implementation of the Bitcoin protocol that aims to make...", ofcourse it's also good to state that it was originally forked from Bitcoin Core codebase.

2. Wiki states that Gavin is one of Bitcoin XT's original authors.

AFAIK Bitcoin XT was announced by Mike Hearn in December 28 2014. Gavin joined later (somewhere during the spring 2015?), when it had become obivious to him that the blocksize debate inside Core had come into a gridlock.

 

[priestc]

Theymos wrote the first block explorer. This is somewhat significant since those things have become a pretty integral part of the bitcoin ecosystem. Unfortunately he'll be remembered in crypto-folklore as that guy who censored all the forums.

 

[Jim Stoke]

So most of the popular bitcoin forum are controlled by 1 guy? That does not sound like decentralization to be honest. Kinda opposite of the whole bitcoin purpose

 

[cryptothreads]

I've never understood how this one person can control so much.

 

[AdrianX]

theymos also controls bitcoin.org and has propagated changes to the apolitical site that reflect his political opinion. Most notably baring discussion about Bitcoin nodes running the Bitcoin protocol using the BitcoinXT implementation and labeled BitcoinXT an altcoin.

 

[xinayder]

theymos removed the Coinbase listing on bitcoin.org because Coinbase was allegedly stealing Core users and migrating them to XT. However, coblee said that they were just testing the XT fork.

 

[Gulnara Ginosyan]

Hello! My account on the forum is banned. I ask to understand this problem. I never violated the rules of the forum, I was not rude, I did not write spam, I did not get a red trust. My life is completely dependent on social networks. I can not work physically. Everywhere my details, the number of the bank card, the address of my residence, my driver's license. I hope for a fair decision on my issue. Yours faithfully Gulnara Ginosyan.
bitcointalk username:
Guli
bitcointalk profile link :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1104156

 

[Bartab]

In the beginning I thought he was cool for hosting the bitcointalkforum. But when I found out he also ran the /r/bitcoin subreddit I was already less amused that most of the online social interactivity could be controlled by one person. Then there were the bitcoin donations that were never spent on improving the forum, quite the opposite, the forum has actually become more broken and lost functionality.

Still, that wasn't too bad, however when he started censoring near majority opinion concerning and discussion concerning blocksize on /r/bitcoin he crossed a terrible line. He also simply refused to give in, even though most people from both sides of the debate wanted to have it uncensored.

This is all I know, I have no idea about the person, his motivations, or other crap he's pulled. Is there a good bio/writeup somewhere?

Dude scammed the forum and never made the programming improvements!