Ethereum Inventor Starts 2022 Revisiting Ideas, Where Was He Wrong?

Reynaldo Marquez

3 years ago

3 mins read

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The inventor of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has come out of a self-imposed Twitter hibernation period, as he called via his personal account. On his first post of 2022, Buterin reviewed some of the ideas, proposals, and thoughts from this past decade to find if he maintains the same position as when he first talked about them.

The inventor of Ethereum listed over 10 ideas, many of which have been a source for controversy amongst the crypto community. Buterin begun his “mini-tweetstorm” with Bitcoin, a project in which he was very active during its early stage.

In 2013, Buterin published an article talking about Bitcoin’s capacity to help people suffering from inflation and central bank money policy in places like Iran and Argentina. At the time, the inventor of Ethereum said that the cryptocurrency was capable of offering respite, but due to its “internationality” and not its limited supply.

In that sense, he predicted the rise of stablecoins and assets with less volatility than Bitcoin in such places. Now, he said:

I actually went to Argentina! My verdict: generally correct. Cryptocurrency adoption is high but stablecoin adoption is really high too; lots of businesses operate in USDT. Though of course, if USD itself starts showing more problems this could change.

Moreover, Buterin revisited his position on regulation. Around the same time as when he published his article on Bitcoin’s supply, he wrote about this cryptocurrency’s potential to “resist governments” and circumvent regulations.

Now, Buterin believes the crypto industry must use a combination of technological robustness, public legitimacy, and decentralization in other to “thrive”. The alternative, a fully hostile environment, could stagnate Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency.

Conversely, the inventor of Ethereum admitted that in 2015 his estimation from when this cryptocurrency was going to be able to migrate to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) were wronged. At that time, Buterin expected Ethereum to transition in 6 month or 1 year.

The migration ended up taking much longer with the deployment of the Beacon Chain, the PoS blockchain that will support Eth 2.0, taking place in 2020. Buterin said:

My projections from 2015 of when we will get PoS and sharding. Honestly, these were very wrong and worth laughing at (…)

How Ethereum And Its Developers Have Evolved In A Decade

In that sense, Buterin admitted that he underestimated the “complexity of software development” as he classified his 2014 ideas as “too complex”. He added:

Today the Ethereum research team values simplicity much more – both simplicity of the final design *and* simplicity of the path to getting there. More appreciation of pragmatic compromises.

In the same tone as the rest of his Twitter thread, where Buterin showed transparency and the capacity to admit mistakes, he addressed the congestion and high transaction fees that have affected the Ethereum blockchain. In 2017, Buterin famously said that “the internet of money” needs to be able to process cheap transactions.

Buterin claims this remains one of the goals for this blockchain. Therefore, why “we’re spending so much time working on scalability”.

Buterin also admitted he was wrong on Bitcoin Cash and called the cryptocurrency a failure. He also admitted feeling “proud” about its proposals to build Uniswap, or more specifically a decentralize exchanges on this network, and many other use cases for Ethereum which “basically predicted DeFi”.

In that sense, he summarized his experience across a decade by calling out his early “naiveness” and lack of appreciation for the challenges that come out of running large organization with complex politics and cultures.

* On tech, I was more often right on abstract ideas than on production software dev issues. Had to learn to understand the latter over time
* I have a deeper appreciation now of the need for even more simplicity than I thought we needed

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2022

Related Reading | Bullish Signal? Ethereum Market Dominance Sitting Above 20%

As of press time, ETH trades at $3,775 with sideways movement in the past day.

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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