Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, delved back into politics on social media, warning users about the consequences of elected officials launching “political coins.”
In a Jan. 23 reply on X, Buterin said the regulatory space governing digital assets had entered a “new order” with “the most powerful people in the world [...] cheering on the idea of anyone creating tokens for anything, at any scale.”
Though he did not specifically call out US President Donald Trump for the launch of his Official Trump (TRUMP) token, Buterin hinted that similar projects were “sugar-high short-term fun” rather than tokens helping many to build wealth.
“Now is the time to talk about the fact that large-scale political coins cross a further line: they are not just sources of fun, whose harm is at most contained to mistakes made by voluntary participants, they are vehicles for unlimited political bribery, including from foreign nation states,” said the Ethereum co-founder.
Buterin’s remarks echoed those he made in a July 2024 blog post warning voters not to immediately flock to political candidates claiming to be “pro-crypto” but to “explore their underlying values” first. At that time — amid the Republican National Convention to nominate Trump as the party’s presidential candidate — the Ethereum co-founder also did not specifically mention the US elections but called out “crypto-friendly“ authoritarian governments.
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Trump’s memecoin causes heads to spin in DC
Since the TRUMP launch on Jan. 17, many critics in and out of the crypto industry have suggested the project could allow foreign governments to influence the US president by purchasing the token through back channels or directly. The Foreign Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution restricts members of the government from receiving gifts from foreign states.
According to a Jan. 21 Fortune report, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was exploring a lawsuit over the TRUMP token but said it was on uncertain legal grounds. Before Trump, no US president had ever launched a cryptocurrency or had such potentially wide-reaching financial entanglements with foreign companies and governments.
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