Ethereum father hates the traditional economic system and fights for digital freedom. He thinks Ether goes the wrong way because of wealthy investors. So what is Blockchain future according to Vitalik Buterin?
He likes joking on Twitter. He is not afraid of Elon Musk’s power. And he is building the true crypto community that is not supposed to become an instrument for getting rich quickly.
Launched seven years ago, Ethereum is now the second crypto coin after Bitcoin by market cap. Its implementation varies from financial systems to the online-gaming. And Ethereum-based NFT technology turned the global crypto market upside down in 2021.
Having access to hundreds of million dollars in digital assets, Buterin doesn’t like the way ETH and other cryptos are developing. He scorns those who treat crypto as a get-rich instrument and thinks wealthy investors make his project dystopian.
That was only the part of his harsh replies in his recent Time’s interview. But fortunately, Buterin has been talking about it for a long time. And we know what he means.
Repeating the last Time
Mostly dedicated to Buterin’s bio, the new Time interview is not telling anything the average crypto fan didn’t know. But it gives us more details about blockchain future according to Vitalik Buterin
“Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potentials if implemented wrong,” Vitalik repeated once again.
But the Ukrainian war with Russian invaders can remind people of the main purpose of cryptocurrencies, Buterin thinks.
“One silver lining of the situation in the last three weeks is that it has reminded a lot of people in the crypto space that ultimately the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the real world,” Buterin wrote in an email to TIME on March 14.
In this interview he said a lot about meaningless monkeys, pointing to all the NFT games which attract youth to join and get rich quickly.
By meaningful effects of crypto in the real world, Buterin means fairer voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, public-works projects, etc.
And he clearly can’t be the windbag, because earlier Ethereum’s founder donated tons of money on different charity and social projects throughout the globe. And also supported the blockchain programming studies for the youth.
By the way, Russian-born Buterin tweeted that the invasion was a crime against Ukrainian and Russian people, adding “Glory to Ukraine.”
So why does Vitalik Buterin hate NFT?
He didn’t say that so directly. But a hundred times Buterin underlined that the technology itself goes into the wrong hands, becoming destructive, not constructive for the society.
A few months ago Buterin said that NFTs should serve for “charity, funding public goods and other socially significant purposes”. Not tokenization of game items, paintings, or anything else.
“If NFTs are seen as a casino that brings profit to already rich celebrities, the result will be less impressive,” Buterin said.
He also proposed to create the DAO for transferring part of the proceeds from NFTs sales to charitable purposes.
In this case, Buterin criticized Elon Musk, who can sell his NFT tweet and got an extra million dollars richer.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey could be considered more conscious after donating $2.55 million proceeds from the NFTs sale on charity.
At the beginning of 2022, Buterin promised to donate $100 million to charity. He got the money from the Shiba Inu token sale.
“CryptoRelief sending $100m of the $SHIBA funds back to me. I plan to personally deploy these funds with the help of science advisors to complement CryptoRelief’s existing excellent work with some higher-risk higher-reward covid science and relief projects worldwide,” he tweeted.
And why is it dystopian?
The biggest problem Buterin sees is losing the ability to prevent Ethereum from veering off course. It’s a decentralized platform, and now rich ETH investors can drop the vision of the founder. And even break up the community.
“I’ve been yelling a lot, and sometimes that yelling does feel like howling into the wind,” Buterin said in Time’s interview.
The worst-case scenario for him is the crypto and blockchain concentrated in the hands of dictatorial governments.
Because of this Vitalik Buterin was one of the first who criticized Bitcoin legalization in El Salvador. He thinks that the forced integration of digital assets is contrary to the ideals of freedom.
“Making it mandatory for businesses to accept a specific cryptocurrency is contrary to the ideals of freedom that are supposed to be so important to the crypto space”, Buterin wrote on Reddit
According to Buterin, this tactic of pushing BTC to millions of people in El Salvador at the same time with almost no attempt at prior education is reckless. And it risks a large number of innocent people getting hacked or scammed.
So here he is. Still young, still enthusiastic, and still hating the traditional economic system, which widens the hole between poor and rich. Seems like his Ethereum is joining this system. But the future of this depends only on crypto community members. Should they reject the get rich quick scenario for the long-term development? Or should they continue to play money-monkeys NFTs?
What is blockchain future according to Vitalik Buterin?
Speaking of the future Buterin oultines some of the way blockchain can change the world. None of them is directly involved with cryptocurrencies of NFTs.
- Fairer voting systems. Some projects already exist where blockchain can help people to vote without queues and problems with vote counting or falsification. In this case, voters can register online, then receive a computer-readable code for verifying their identity, and finally vote anonymously via blockchain. Seems like the perfect political instrument. At least , in theory.
- Urban planning. Blockchain technology can widen the possibilities of city management and distribute it among all the involved members. Blockchain potentially would help to solve socio-demographic and municipal issues in some cities by creating various registries, managing important infrastructure data and even city traffic.
- Universal basic income. Crypto trading, NFT and even play-to-earn games on the blockchain right now allow many users to earn money simply sitting in front of their computers. As for business, blockchain can simplify different processes through smart contract technology. Parties won’t need to spend resources on technical work with data anymore.
- Public-works projects. In most cases, public works projects need a stack of paperwork, legal certifications, financial, ethical, and other standards. What could be more appropriate for this than blockchain? By storing and analyzing huge amounts of data, the blockchain leaves no room for mistakes or discounts. Moreover, any illicit activities will be excluded because of blockchain’s information accuracy, trust and transparency.
