To doxx (oneself) or not to doxx? That is a question faced by many operating in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, including developers, influencers, and investors. Does one use one’s own name when venturing into the often chaotic and largely unregulated crypto world — or don an alias?
Consider Embrik Børresen, developer of RobinHood Inu — a reflection token that was launched in February. Like many crypto and blockchain founders, he considered using a nom de guerre when starting out. But Børresen, 22, raised in a small town, had also served in the Norwegian military where he says he learned some lessons about the value of trust.
So, when it came time to launch his new coin project, he opted to use his real name. “For me, it is the moral thing — to present yourself as who you are,” he tells Magazine. Many of his peers disagree, however. “Pseudo-anonymity has been a fixture of the internet since it began, and I believe it will remain this way,” Ghostbro, a Generation Z developer for the DogeBonk project, tells Magazine. For Ghostbro (a pseudonym), revealing their true identity — or “doxxing” themselves — makes little sense.
“It would essentially put a target on my back to people who might have lost money trading DogeBonk, or wish to steal from me either online or by actually coming to my house and threatening me or my loved ones.”
They have already received threatening messages, they tell Magazine, and have been subject to some “extremely obsessive behavior from people who genuinely ‘hate’ our cryptocurrency.” They’re in no rush to make themselves “a flesh and blood figurehead these people can mess with.”
It is a debate that has been going on in at least some form since crypto’s beginning: To what extent does one really need to reveal one’s personal identity in a decentralized world? After all, one’s transactions are already on display in the form of a public key for any and all to see. Does one really need to put a bullseye on one’s chest, too? Moreover,…
..