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