Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin Rattles Industry After Warning of Pro-Crypto Candidates

A The post elicited a wide range of reactions from crypto industry figureheads, and didn’t sit well with some of the industry’s more conservative voices—particularly Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, an increasingly vocal backer of former President Donald Trump.“Vitalik is an idealist, not a realist. He is one of the more politically naive people I have read and/or interacted with in crypto,” Selkis told Selkis co-founded the crypto market intelligence firm Messari in 2017. Over the past few years, he’s emerged as a political heavyweight within the crypto industry, Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is “pro-crypto”https://t.co/rEbRjZYtFB— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 17, 2024In his blog post, titled “Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is ‘pro-crypto,’” Buterin emphasized that supporting crypto isn’t limited to the regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies or blockchain tech. He argued that a politician’s stance on issues like privacy, internationalism, and even immigration are part of the larger ““It doesn’t matter if they also support banning encrypted messaging, if they are a power-seeking narcissist, or if they push for bills that make it even harder for your Chinese or Indian friend to attend the next crypto conference,” Buterin wrote of a presiding political dialogue in the U.S. “All that politicians have to do is make sure it’s easy for you to trade coins.”Jake Chervinsky, the chief legal officer at venture capital firm Variant Fund, “Too many people will read the headline as ‘Vote Biden!’ and miss the rest,” Chervinsky wrote.Another headline for this could have been “Don’t sacrifice your cypherpunk ethos for a particular ‘pro-crypto’ politician or policy proposal.” I entirely agree with that principle. Politicians will come and go. Privacy, speech, and the rule of law must be preserved. https://t.co/QrrBwoDNGu— Peter Van Valkenburgh (@valkenburgh) July 17, 2024Peter Van Valkenburgh, the director of research at Coin Center, a non-profit focused on crypto policy issues, recommended an alternative headline for Buterin’s post.”Don’t sacrifice your cypherpunk ethos for a particular ‘pro-crypto’ politician or policy proposal,” Van Valkenburgh Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter Buterin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from On Twitter, Selkis has described November’s coming choice between President Joe Biden and Trump as an existential moment for crypto. On Wednesday, he “I also like Trump’s evolution on crypto,” the CEO added.It’s also worth noting that Vitalik’s political commentary is meaningless to me, and should be to you as well if your primary focus is American politics.He is a Canadian and Russian.I humbly suggest that he fix those governments first, and stay out of American politics.— Ryan Selkis (d/acc) (@twobitidiot) July 17, 2024Indeed the former president has changed his tune on crypto since saying Bitcoin “Following the failed assassination attempt against Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks during a Pennsylvania rally Saturday, Selkis’ comments drew Without explicitly naming any politician, Buterin wrote that a politician’s thoughts on crypto years ago are a relevant gauge for future expectations. How a politician acts when supporting freedom and supporting corporations are at odds with each other is telling too, he wrote.Emphasizing the importance of decentralization among crypto pioneers like “We can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom,” Satoshi wrote of peer-to-peer networks. “Governments are good at cutting off the heads of centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure [peer-to-peer] networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.”“Thank you for writing this,” Linda Xie, the co-founder of Bountycaster, a bounty service for the decentralized social media network Farcaster, Following Buterin’s blog post, Selkis Edited by Andrew Hayward