Vitalik Buterin: The Crypto Industry Must Look Beyond Transforming Finance

Vittalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian Co-Founder of Ethereum, took to his Twitter handle on June 2, 2020, to state categorically that fixing the global economy is no longer the most pressing issue facing the world in 2020, as compared to 2008 when Bitcoin was created and as such the crypto community must start looking beyond just fixing finance. 

Reforming Money Not Sufficient 

It’s no longer news that Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin during the global financial crisis of 2008, to give the masses a form of control over their financial lives and help them circumvent hyperinflation and other ugly financial conditions.

However, the narrative has since expanded massively, as many now see Bitcoin as a tool for freedom, liberty, decentralization, and much more. This explains the reason why Bitcoin placards have been spotted oftentimes at various protests, including the ongoing protests against the unlawful killing of George Perry Floyd by the U.S. police.

In a bid to show his support for the use of the flagship crypto as a tool for non-violent protests against injustice, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance crypto exchange tweeted:

https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1267353443800248320

While the same sentiment is shared by numerous crypto faithful, Vitalik Buterin has come out to state clearly that the times have changed since the launch of Bitcoin and it’s high time the industry started looking beyond Bitcoin and explore other critical use cases of other blockchains such as Ethereum. 

“2020 is first and foremost *not* a financial crisis. It’s a virus crisis, it’s a crisis of epistemology (how we learn what’s true and what’s false in the face of competing groups misleading us), it’s a crisis of overbearing policing in many places, and much more, he declared”

More Crypto Use Cases

Buterin says finance is relatively less important now than it was in the last decade despite the fact that the United States alone has printed trillions of dollars in the past few months to cushion the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Buterin says the crypto space must look beyond just revolutionizing finance and exploring technologies such as Ethereum for the elimination of other anomalies in the society, including media censorship and more.

He tweeted:

Conclusion: finance is relatively less important this decade than it was in the last decade, and the crypto space needs to adjust to this reality. Even *within* finance, some change of emphasis is in order.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 2, 2020

While Buterin’s argument remains valid to a large extent, king Bitcoin has continued to attract more and more hodlers of late and it remains to be seen whether the trend will continue for a long time to come.

At press time, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) sits at $9,574, with a market capitalization of $176 billion, as seen on CoinMarketCap.