Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin Says Don’t Choose Politicians Just Because They Are “Pro-Crypto”

Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, called for crypto advocates to think beyond the pro-crypto campaign slogans peddled by politicians.

In a blog post titled “Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is ‘pro-crypto,” Buterin laid out the case for users to think about crypto as more than just blockchains and money.

Buterin’s words come as candidates in the U.S. flip their stance on crypto in the run up to the country’s November election. The likely next president of the U.S., Donald Trump, continues to tout pro-crypto rhetoric on his campaign trail. Trump isn’t alone, however. Across the aisle, Biden has also reversed stance on cryptocurrencies, and his administration has been warming up to the industry.

Authorities in other countries are also having to come to terms with crypto as a technology, industry, and underlying value set, is here to stay.

According to Buterin, all politicians have to do to ensure your support is to allow you to trade their tokens.

“I can think of at least a few other technological freedoms that are just as “foundational” as the freedom to do things with crypto tokens,” he wrote, and included freedom and privacy of communication, freedom and privacy-friendly digital identity, freedom and privacy of thought, and high-quality access to information.

Track Record

An important point by Buterin was for voters to look at a politician’s track record when it came to their stance on crypto. He explained that being pro-crypto today might not be pro-crypto in five years, and nudged readers to observe the changes of positions with regards to supporting freedoms versus supporting corporations.

“This can be a good guide on what kinds of changes to their views might happen five years in the future,” he wrote.

These words are especially predictive, considering that both Biden and Trump have taken a stiff 180 turn in the past few months, the first transforming from staunch opponent to overall acceptance, while Trump has explicitly become pro-crypto.

Authoritarians and Crypto

But the developer went a step further, and highlighted the underlying principles that underwrite most of our industry.

Of Russian descent, Buterin is no stranger to authoritarianism.

As such, he put a spotlight on how authoritarians might approach crypto. He used Russia as “the best example:” when the government uses crypto that helps them avoid other country’s restrictions, crypto is good. But when users use crypto that makes it harder for the government to restrict or surveil, crypto is bad.

Buterin ended on a quintessential question: if a politician is pro crypto, people should ask themselves: are they in it for the right reasons?