Since the WSJ, and the other 'press releases' the story has gained some momentum and appeared on other sites, meaning any hoaxster has gone to and is continuing to go to considerable effort to spam.
The WSJ running is what perplexes me, but I can only assume Sunday night limiting means to make phone calls and confirm, but that still would at least mean some googling like have just done. Still it wouldn't be the first time a journalist performs little research and takes Internet gossip as fact. What's even weirder is 'financial news' has clearly been slipped a web domain, so they must have had first hand contact with the hoaxster.
First of all, in order to get a story in a traditional newspaper on Monday morning, it needs to be submitted on Sunday night. So it's not at all unusual to see a story go up online the night before it shows up in the paper. They may have been working on it over the weekend, or perhaps longer. It's not at all unusual to see a newspaper article go online in the middle of the night, that's when they're finalized.
Fake site, and definitely a fake twitter, someone had a lot of time on their hands, the swipes at KnC meant it was specifically targeted at spreading FUD between them and Avalon. Yifu is probably enjoying the confusion it's causing right now, as last time he was 'woken up in the middle of the night' with FUD being spread he jumped on this forum immediately to put the record straight. Any truth in this would be the worst news possible for centralising Bitcoin. I appreciate the ASIC route has been fraught with scams and greed, but we're finally just on the cusp of having competing choice of real products available and hopefully fair pricing/returns with various options of DIY and/or purpose made units. One entity controlling all the supply would kill mining...
I don't really get how you can say this is a "fake twitter" simply because of some "unprofessional" sounding tweets. People post unprofessional things on their twitter feeds all the time. Just because someone is a rich wallstreet banker doesn't mean they are going act and sound professional all the time. Quite the opposite, in fact. Have you ever read Micheal Lewis'
Liars Poker? Wallstreet culture is not very P.C. at all.
Anyway, if the story isn't true, that means someone straight up conned the WSJ, feeding the reporters a bunch of fake information. There is no way this is a simply a misunderstanding based on a couple years old article.
Right now I'm thinking this was an advanced market manipulator whom managed to trick mainstream press into telling the story he wanted with an eye towards manipulating the price of bitcoin, trying to cause a crash or rise or something.
Eyeing the price last days, they largely failed