Biography
theymos, reported to be Michael Marquart, is a longtime administrator of the Bitcointalk.org forum and the head moderator of the r/Bitcoin subreddit, two of the largest Bitcoin discussion venues, and is credited with building an early Bitcoin block explorer. He became a central and controversial figure during the 2015-2016 Bitcoin block-size scaling debate, when he and the moderation team began removing posts that promoted alternative Bitcoin clients such as Bitcoin XT, characterising them as 'altcoins' that fell outside the subreddit's rules. The policy drew widespread accusations of censorship, led to the removal of dissenting moderators, and prompted figures including the chief executive of a major cryptocurrency exchange to raise the matter with Reddit's leadership. theymos publicly defended the strict curation as being in the community's long-term interest and noted that r/Bitcoin's moderators were unpaid volunteers. The episode is frequently cited as a case study in how a single moderator's control of a default information hub can shape an entire online movement.