Vitalik Buterin: ‘Batshit’ Michael Saylor comments ‘not what crypto is about’
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has branded recent comments from MicroStrategy supremo Michael Saylor on bitcoin custody and the role that banks should play in it as “batshit insane.”
Buterin made the comment in response to an X post by bitcoin custody firm Casa’s chief security officer Jameson Lopp. “Bitcoin self custody isn’t just about being a paranoid mountain man,” wrote Lopp. “There are many long-term negative ramifications to convincing people to trust third-party custodians.”
He then went on to list a number of these ramifications, including an increased risk of loss or seizure, and the deprioritization of permissionless scaling. He concluded by saying, “Self custody is not merely important to individual bitcoin holders. It’s important for the continued strengthening and improvement of the entire network.”
Read more: Is Bitcoin protected by the First Amendment as Michael Saylor says?
On Sunday, Saylor posted a video to X and YouTube in which he defended his belief that large financial institutions will end up owning a large and ever-growing portion of bitcoin’s supply.
He claimed that the Bitcoin network will improve as companies and governments displace “crypto-anarchists.” He also claimed that institutions like BlackRock or MicroStrategy, unlike self-sovereign Bitcoiners, “will reliably file and pay their taxes,” and poked fun at Bitcoiners who insist on self-custody by saying, “You have an OG crypto community that’s very hardcore about it, but if you look at where all the money is — 99.9% of the money — is actually in the traditional economy.”
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Admitting that he “probably did more than most to spread the ‘mountain man’ trope,” Buterin explained that Saylor “seems to be explicitly arguing for a regulatory capture approach to protecting crypto,” and pointed out that, “There’s plenty of precedent for how this strategy can fail.”
He rounded off his reply by saying, “for me, it’s not what crypto is about.”
There also seems to be a certain amount of irony to Saylor’s comments, given that he paid $40 million to settle claims that he evaded tax payments and $8.5 million to settle claims of accounting fraud.
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