Vitalik Buterin, the leader of Ethereum, has criticized political bitcoin as “perfect bribery vehicles.”
You don’t even need to take a lawmaker any coins to give money, Buterin said in a tweet. ” Instead, you simply buy and hold the gold, and this increases the value of their assets quietly”.
He continued, noting that the “deniability” component makes “politician coins” possible excellent bribery tools.
The Ethereum leader explained that holding a crypto has the dual economic consequences of “donating to the issuer” by directly increasing the value of their holdings, and “gambling” as you have a possibility of your play going up. Thus, Buterin said that people can contribute to coin issuers while erroneously claiming, when asked, that they are only speculating or “gambling” on the cryptocurrency.
Because they are such a flawless bribe, the risk of lawmaker cash is high. You don’t even need to take a politician any coins to offer them in exchange for them. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings … https ://t.co/8Zkd7KcpuA
— vitalik. eth ( @VitalikButerin ) January 23, 2025
Buterin was apparent in his place:” I recommend officials do not go down this path”.
In a follow-up tweet, he argued that politician coins are no” only sources of fun, whose harm is at most contained to errors made by volunteer members”, but “vehicles for unlimited political corruption, including from foreign nation-states”.
Buterin continued,” This is the time to discuss the distinction between sugar-high short-term excitement that novices should not suggest, and long-term fulfillment and wealth-building.” He compared some crypto initiatives to “modern, hyper-addictive smartphone sports” and others to” standard, chess-style game.”
Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump made his comments after they unveiled the Solana-based image coins TRUMP and MELANIA. Within hours of their launch, the pennies attracted billions of dollars in investment, and they faced widespread criticism both inside and outside the crypto industry.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a regular crypto writer, joined Official Jake Auchincloss in calling for an investigation into the Trump and Melania image currencies, raising questions about conflicts of interest and national security.
Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur, wrote in a blog on the social media platform Bluesky that Trump’s crypto opportunity was” never crypto any more than Madoff was just buying and selling stock.”
In a tweet, Caitlin Long, CEO of Custodia Bank, stated that “one of the side effects of meme-coining is that Trump then has a genuine opportunity to change the tax of #crypto in the U.S. S”.
TRUMP is currently worth$ 33.87, down 9.7 % on the day, per CoinGecko data. Trump’s private interest in the memecoin is unknown at the time of writing, based on publicly accessible information.
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