Chris Curl,
Editor
March 29, 2022
Few, if any, magazines carry more weight than Time.
Since 1923 some of the greatest minds have graced its cover. The world’s most famous (and infamous) leaders have been featured there. And the cover of the March 2022 issue featured Vitalik Buterin.
Since nobody knows who the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin – Satoshi Nakamoto – is or was, we are left with few faces to put on the crypto industry. Its decentralized nature makes that a difficult thing to do.
But if we had to choose, we’d be forced to pick the 28-year old Canadian-Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin. As one of the co-founders of Ethereum, he is probably the most influential figure in crypto today. TIME Magazine certainly thinks so.
In their March issue, they interviewed Buterin about his concerns with Ethereum and the crypto industry he helped create. As someone who is ideologically dedicated to the good that blockchain technology can do, Buterin is very troubled by many trends that have emerged in recent years.
Now that Ethereum has become such a behemoth, it has inevitably enriched a few men to an insane degree, polluted the earth, and become a vehicle for all types of scams and money laundering. In fact, the Ethereum network is a trillion-dollar ecosystem rivaling Visa in the amount of money that it moves around.
These were not Buterin’s goals when launching Ethereum back in 2014. He simply sought a way to utilize blockchain technology for uses beyond that of a currency. And he succeeded.
Now, Ethereum is the foundation of Web3, the Metaverse, NFTs, DeFi, and a myriad of tokens that have been built on top of it. Ether, its native token, is the second-largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin and may one day overtake it in market cap.
It has become something of a Frankenstein’s monster for this young programmer who sought to use this technology to make the world a better place. He fought tooth and nail with fellow Ethereum co-founders to make the network less profit-motivated. In fact, some left to start their own projects with a more traditional emphasis on profit (Cardano for example).
He is increasingly worried about the “dystopian potential” that crypto has if it is implemented incorrectly. He is offended by the crass displays of wealth — the yachts, the Lambos, the Bored Apes, and the meme token scams.
Ethereum is supposed to be the launchpad for sociopolitical experimentation.
He wants it to be used for urban planning, fairer voting systems, universal basic income (UBI), and public-works projects.
Most importantly, he wants Ethereum to be a bulwark against authoritarian governments and the massive Silicon Valley tech monopolies that seek to control our lives.
He is so concerned about his creation losing its ideological focus that he is coming out of the shadows to voice his concerns.
It’s a noble effort but may fall short simply due to the nature of the technology he’s helped create.
Buterin is influential. But unlike a traditional company, Ethereum is decentralized, which means that no single person can steer the ship in a particular direction — the community decides.
And people are — by and large — greedy.
That’s not to say Ethereum can’t achieve many of Buterin’s lofty goals. Most likely, it will have to be profit that motivates people to create those projects.
I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Profit is what motivates my decision-making process over at Crypto Cycle. And that $50,000 real-money portfolio is looking good with crypto prices back on the rise.
Make sure you don’t miss the next real-money recommendation.
Chris Curl
Editor, Daily Profit Cycle