Wintermute CEO Gaevoy Challenges ETH Leadership

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Evgeny Gaevoy has taken shots at Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum leadership, saying that if the network fails, it will be because they are “still stuck in a massive contradiction.”
The online debate was first sparked by Buterin’s criticism of celeb coins after rapper Iggy Azalea launched MOTHER and it became an instant hit, with some like Uniswap’s Hayden Adams supporting Buterin.

Iggy Azalea has been making headlines in the crypto industry since she launched Mother Iggy, a meme coin on Solana whose MOTHER token is now worth $180 million. Then came Vitalik Buterin’s criticism of celebrity meme coins, and the debate has now heated up to include a Solana vs Ethereum battle.

MOTHER has been a massive success, with Azalea’s continued efforts to seek publicity for it fanning its flames. In the past month, it has gained over 830% and trades at $0.183.

A rapper by trade, Azalea knows that her antics are key to driving value to her token, telling Fortune recently, “I don’t think peace is very profitable when it comes to the landscape of memecoins.”

“It’s what drives virality, it drives my community, and it drives our market cap, and that’s what I’m here to do. So respectfully, get out of the way,” she added, taking a direct shot at Buterin, who had criticised the celeb coin culture earlier on.

Azalea then posted a photo taking yet another shot at Buterin, sparking heated online debates that spiralled into whether Ethereum’s leadership is failing the community.

He was just hangry pic.twitter.com/AlTwEtfIKd

— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 5, 2024

Is the Ethereum Leadership Failing the Network?

It started with Hayden Adams, the Uniswap CEO, who criticised MOTHER meme coin for lacking any motivation for financial change. Adams, who is fighting the SEC’s clampdown on his DeFi platform on one front, added:

Iggy could have responded positively, and used profits to donate to a social cause or something Instead she condescends the best builder in the entire space, proving his point.

Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder of the leading crypto trading firm Wintermute, quickly jumped to Azalea’s aid. He criticised Buterin and the entire Ethereum leadership, which he says has failed the community.

He stated:

If ETH fails in the future it wont be because “Solana is faster”, it will be because the eth “elite” is still stuck in a massive contradiction.

Gaevoy, whose company made hundreds of millions arbitrating on Terra’s UST stablecoin collapse, says that criticising Azalea and other meme coins in the current market is disingenuous, especially since nobody batted an eye as ICOs brought in billions four years ago and NFTs did the same two years later.

However, other industry leaders defended Buterin’s views, including Ari Paul, whose Blocktower Capital is funded by giants such as a16z and Union Square, and Fiskantes, whose Zee Prime Capital was an early investor in Solana, Deribit and Magic Eden.