Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin travels the globe to keep crypto alive as the U.S. cracks down
Summary
We met in a sparsely furnished room at the top of a sprawling industrial complex in the Holešovice district, a neighborhood once synonymous with slaughterhouses and steam mills, thats now home to Bohemian artists and some of cryptos most rebellious believers. They call him "V God" in China, Time magazine dubbed Buterin crypto royalty in its April 2022 cover story, and he faces mobs of fans desperate for a moment of his attention — and a selfie — virtually anywhere he goes on the planet. While he appreciates centralized exchanges like Binance for offering a smoother user experience to non-technical people living in countries where the average GDP is less than $10,000 per capita, he believes that ultimately, the sector has to become more decentralized. A lot of people got rich before the increase in interest rates and subsequent collapse of Luna in May 2022 set off a chain reaction that sent the entire market tumbling down, spurring a crypto winter that persists to this day. What ultimately put him on the map was baking smart contracts — a programmable piece of code that aims to replace middlemen like banks and lawyers in certain types of business transactions — into the blockchain.