The Arte discussion above Bitcoin has caused a sensation – for several reasons. In a round that consisted of a professor, an economist, the Youtuber Roman Reher (block trainer) and a Bitcoin spectral, it should actually be a factual examination of the topic of Bitcoin. But especially the appearance of co-pierre Georg, professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, caused scandals.
Georg introduced himself as an “independent blockchain expert”, who does not hold cryptocurrencies and could therefore speak objectively about the topic. But a closer look at his vita quickly showed that this independence is questionable. Because Georg was financed with millions of crypto projects such as Ripple and Algorand as well as banks-including $ 400,000 from Ripple and $ 1.1 million from the Algorand Foundation. While he criticized other participants in the discussion for their “bias”, he overlooked the fact that he was supported by the same financial institutions that he criticized in his argument.
But that’s not all. In the discussion, Georg gave several basic mistakes about Bitcoin and the Blockchain technology from yourself. So he claimed that Bitcoin was not decentralized because two mining pools are more than 51 percent the Hashate controlled. But this is a misunderstanding, because mining pools are mergers of independent Minersthat can change their pools at any time. The control of the network remains with the miners themselves, not with the pools.
In addition, he made the steep statement that Bitcoin was more centralized than the German banking system. This claim is completely unsustainable because Bitcoin is a decentralized network that is not subject to central authority. In contrast, central banks and commercial banks in the traditional banking system control the money flows. Bitcoin is therefore in direct opposition to this system.
As if that weren’t enough, Georg added another misinterpretation: he claimed that Bitcoin was not covered by anything – in contrast to gold. An argument that has appeared again and again in criticism, but has long since been refuted. The value of gold is not based on its industrial use, but on the trust of people in it as a value memory. Exactly the same applies to Bitcoin – it is a scarce commodity, the value of which arises from the trust of the users.
The Arte discussion, which was actually planned as a factual examination of Bitcoin, quickly turned into a public embarrassment for Georg. With his uninformed statements and its double morality, he disqualified himself and questioned his suitability as head of a blockchain center. For the Bitcoin community, this round was a real topic of conversation, especially on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn. It quickly became clear that Georg’s appearance raised much more questions than he was able to answer.