the gangly 27 year old ethereum founder has a vision for humanity's future that goes far
beyond making a quick buck on cryptocurrency so what's actually on vitalik buterin's to-do list
bringing down the nation-state halting climate change and even curing death itself can he pull
it off join us today as we man the barricades and ask how vitalik buterin might lead a revolution
the flame of revolution was first ignited in vitalik buterin's heart during the russian
canadian software developers early teens i happily played world of warcraft from 2007 to 2010. the
young billionaire recently wrote on his blog then one day blizzard removed the damage component from
my beloved warlock's siphon life spell i cried myself to sleep remembers vitalik on that day i
realized what horror's centralized services bring the following year vitalik's software
developer father introduced his crestfallen son to a potential solution to the scourge of central
authority bitcoin vitalik was already great at maths able to add large numbers in his head preeta
naturally fast as a child one of his favorite toys was microsoft excel so the blockchain sat very
well with him despite enrolling in a full program of advanced courses at canada's university of
waterloo during 2012 vitalik simultaneously spent 30 hours of his week on assaulted crypto projects
something had to give so vitalik dropped out of college and dedicated his life to ethereum most
people only know of ethereum as an alternative to bitcoin certainly it is an alternative to bitcoin
and so much more besides when satoshi nakamoto first devised the bitcoin blockchain he or she
deliberately employed a limited programming vocabulary largely for reasons of security
conversely when vitalik set about creating ethereum his intent was to make his new blockchain
programming language touring complete that is to say versatile and capable of running elaborate
secondary applications less a simple transaction ledger more a fully fledged online platform
vitalik buterin's revolutionary new framework followed the utopian ideal of peer-to-peer
interaction proposed by satoshi nakamoto and took it beyond straightforward commerce ethereum users
would have a free arraign to recreate all sorts of applications or haul corporations on the ethereum
chain if you were so minded you could build an entire facebook style social network or a private
stock market to date diverse ethereum projects abound from so rare which recreates the excitement
of fantasy football leagues to serious endeavors like seville which leverages cryptography to
protect journalism against censorship and the erosion of professional standards why is all this
important to vitalik because the blockchain takes trust as a service away from big powerful legacy
institutions like banks and hands it back to the community that's quite revolutionary in itself
still salty about his little warcraft man vitalik told wired magazine i saw everything to do with
either government regulation or corporate control as just being plain evil and i assume that people
in those institutions were kind of like mr burns sitting behind their desks saying excellent how
can i screw a thousand people over this time revolution is inevitable you see because helping
the little guy in vitalik's view necessarily means extracting authority from those who
currently exercise it power is a zero-sum game he told cnbc if you talk about empowering the little
guy as much as you want to couch it in flowery terminology you are necessarily disempowering the
big guy personally i say screw the big guy they have enough money already as well as his uncanny
intellect akali describes vitalik as a genius alien our favorite revolutionary is not afraid to
start beef he's very publicly called out bitcoin evangelist craig wright as a fraud and a scammer
for claiming to be the real satoshi nakamoto and traditional real-world institutions are already
starting to recognize his important work with visa jp morgan chase ubs and mastercard investing
significant sums in ethereum projects during 2021. vitalik has not only engineered a platform
for new kinds of interactions nfts of course and newfangled dows or decentralized autonomous
organizations he is also uniquely blessed with the ability to communicate this stuff indeed one of
his first gigs in the crypto space was co-founder and lead writer on the influential bitcoin
magazine vitalik's ability to express difficult concepts in layman's terms has done much in itself
to advance the crypto cause and to this day he maintains an active blog covering his pet projects
and interests with remarkable wit and clarity for a software dweeb at least to say nothing of
the fact vitalik speaks fluent russian having spent the first years of his life in chechnya
and english and mandarin he learned mandarin apparently in just a few months vitalik is also
quite the philanthropist he told lex friedman he thinks wealth for wealth's sake is a spiritual
dead end and on a whim donated a billion dollars in crypto assets to indian kovid 19 relief efforts
last year among his most revolutionary wheezes is the idea that nation-states are long past their
prime countries he writes are inefficient and slow-moving it's easier to find a single city
where there is public interest in adopting any particular radical idea he claims in a recent
blog than it is to convince an entire country to accept it so charter cities think places
historically along the lines of hong kong or dubai are the future of innovation says vitalik and the
next generation of hong kongs and dubai's will be underpinned by the flexibility and nimbleness of
the ethereum blockchain reno nevada has already explored blockchain technology making nfts of
public art funding dows by renting out empty state-owned properties and even running casino
games on blockchain-based random number generators beyond such shallow gimmicks blockchains can
improve governance in important ways blockchains are by their very nature transparent so government
fraud and collusion would be harder to pull off because all the business of state would
be carried out in the open if you think that sounds far-fetched you're in good company
although he describes himself as an intellectual hipster metacontrarian vitalik buterian is the
ultimate pragmatist quite happy to admit when he's wrong and intrigued by the countless human
muddles and compromises he's been forced to make on his unexpected journey to becoming a leading
tech seer as we speak vitalik is working around the clock to move the ethereum blockchain to
a proof of stake mechanism rather than the environmentally catastrophic proof-of-work
technology he now admits was a huge mistake amazingly for such an important figure in the
world of crypto he's skeptical about the recent nft craze i personally cannot relate he recently
told lex friedman to this concept of spending a lot of money on a thing when there's no clear
understanding why it would maintain its value i cannot understand the psychology however vitalik
is keen on the woo-woo notion of eternal life and has invested serious time and capital promoting
organizations like the sens research foundation he thinks everybody should read philosopher
nick bostrom's fable of the dragon tyrant which basically mocks our society's daft assumption
that death is inevitable i hope the concept of seeing your parents and grandparents die will
disappear he recently said in the same way the concept of getting lost in a city disappeared
after the invention of the smartphone well even if this brainy articulate ultra wealthy firebrand
doesn't live forever there's a good chance his revolutionary ideas will what do you think will
vitalik rage quitting warcraft be the butterfly flap that sets off the revolutionary typhoon
let us know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe for more rabble rousing tech content