Angry Crypto Firm Posts Weird Cease & Desist Letter To Its Own Blog; DMs It To Critics

You know things are going just great in crypto-land when a cryptocurrency company has to post a vague cease-and-desist letter to its own blog. Everything about this is bizarre, but it culminated in this very strange cease-and-desist blog post by Nexo.

There is a separate blog post that sort of, but not quite, tries to explain what’s going on, noting that a Twitter user has started to spread a false story about the company. And, indeed, Nexo makes a compelling case that the Twitter user “otteroooo” posted a blatantly false (and most likely defamatory — something I don’t say lightly) claim about Nexo’s co-founder, possibly confusing him (whether on purpose or not) with a very different individual who has a somewhat similar (but really not that close) name.

So, yes, sure, I can totally understand Nexo being mad. And I can totally understand and appreciate Nexo posting its compelling argument for why otterroooo’s claims are full of shit.

But… that still doesn’t explain posting a cease-and-desist to your blog. For that, you have to look elsewhere, and see that Nexo is apparently sending Direct Messages to people on social media when they retweet the otteroooo tweets, and (1) sharing with them the explanation blog post and (2) the cease-and-desist.

Except, even then, this doesn’t make much sense. The cease-and-desist is not specific (because, how can it be when it’s just out there for everyone) and completely overstates what is “unlawful.”

If they want to send a cease-and-desist letter to people spreading false information, there are ways to do that, but posting it to your blog seems like a way to call negative attention to yourself, and get you ridiculed, much more than it is likely to get anyone to cease or desist even if you have a decent argument for why people should cease and desist.