Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin Rattles Industry After Warning of Pro-Crypto Candidates

A blog post published by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin Wednesday urged prospective voters not to support political candidates simply because they call themselves pro-crypto.

The post elicited a wide range of reactions from crypto industry figureheads, and didn’t sit well with some of the industry’s more conservative voices—particularly Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, an increasingly vocal backer of former President Donald Trump.

“Vitalik is an idealist, not a realist. He is one of the more politically naive people I have read and/or interacted with in crypto,” Selkis told Decrypt. “Moreover he’s Canadian, and he’s given thinly veiled permission to vote for the most provably authoritarian and anti-tech president in American history because he’s intellectually overconfident but politically weak.”

Selkis co-founded the crypto market intelligence firm Messari in 2017. Over the past few years, he’s emerged as a political heavyweight within the crypto industry, coordinating efforts to fund a crypto-friendly political action committee, while railing against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Twitter (aka X) for what advocates say is a regulatory war on crypto.

In his blog post, titled “Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is ‘pro-crypto,’” Buterin emphasized that supporting crypto isn’t limited to the regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies or blockchain tech. 

He argued that a politician’s stance on issues like privacy, internationalism, and even immigration are part of the larger “cypherpunk” picture—and that a candidate simply claiming they’re “pro-crypto” to get more votes isn’t a very meaningful embrace of those values.

“It doesn't matter if they also support banning encrypted messaging, if they are a power-seeking narcissist, or if they push for bills that make it even harder for your Chinese or Indian friend to attend the next crypto conference,” Buterin wrote of a presiding political dialogue in the U.S. “All that politicians have to do is make sure it's easy for you to trade coins.”

Jake Chervinsky, the chief legal officer at venture capital firm Variant Fund, replied on Twitter that Buterin’s post had “solid points,” but that some readers were likely to draw a conclusion that Buterin himself did not explicitly state.

“Too many people will read the headline as ‘Vote Biden!’ and miss the rest,” Chervinsky wrote.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, the director of research at Coin Center, a non-profit focused on crypto policy issues, recommended an alternative headline for Buterin’s post.

"Don't sacrifice your cypherpunk ethos for a particular 'pro-crypto' politician or policy proposal,” Van Valkenburgh suggested on Twitter. “Politicians will come and go. Privacy, speech, and the rule of law must be preserved.”

Incentives aligned?

Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter wrote that crypto already aligns with his “libertarian/conservative values,” and that it only makes sense that Republicans would embrace it. He also argued that Trump has surrounded himself with politicians that are “authentically pro-crypto,” such as his vice presidential pick Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and the one-time presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

Buterin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.

On Twitter, Selkis has described November’s coming choice between President Joe Biden and Trump as an existential moment for crypto. On Wednesday, he wrote his “political allegiances [are] based on who is mentally competent to be commander-in-chief.”

“I also like Trump's evolution on crypto,” the CEO added.

Indeed the former president has changed his tune on crypto since saying Bitcoin “seems like a scam” in 2021. Accepting crypto donations now while defending the industry, Trump is set to be a headline speaker at next week’s Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

Following the failed assassination attempt against Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks during a Pennsylvania rally Saturday, Selkis’ comments drew mixed reactions. “The Civil War for the country started today,” Selkis wrote, prior to posting, “Praying for peace. Preparing for war.”

Without explicitly naming any politician, Buterin wrote that a politician’s thoughts on crypto years ago are a relevant gauge for future expectations. How a politician acts when supporting freedom and supporting corporations are at odds with each other is telling too, he wrote.

Emphasizing the importance of decentralization among crypto pioneers like Satoshi Nakamoto, Buterin reprised a quote from the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. He described Nakamoto’s response to someone doubting cryptography’s ability to solve political problems as a rare statement on the subject, and an early lesson that informed crypto’s core values.

“We can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom,” Satoshi wrote of peer-to-peer networks. “Governments are good at cutting off the heads of centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure [peer-to-peer] networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.”

“Thank you for writing this,” Linda Xie, the co-founder of Bountycaster, a bounty service for the decentralized social media network Farcaster, wrote on Twitter. Previously, she posted, “I'm not a single-issue voter on crypto and won't support someone just because they are pro-crypto.”

Following Buterin’s blog post, Selkis wagered that Buterin wouldn’t debate him because it would reveal “how little he understands politics outside of textbooks.” Still, Selkis pondered whether Buterin could present himself one day as “a debate equal.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward