Vitalik Buterin has traded barbs with Bitcoiners after accusing Bitcoin of having too many centralized middlemen

By Selena On May 9, 2020

Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Héctor Cárdenas, Fundador & Director CriptoNoticias, pale ales and products Ankur and Danger – Defi expert had a small discussion on Twitter about Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Vitalik Buterin is a Bitcoiner?

According to Héctor Cárdenas, maybe Vitalik is still a Bitcoiner. This has to do with Buterin being the developer for the Bitcoin network. Moreover, Buterin was written articles for Bitcoin Magazine. This made Cárdenas claim that Buterin might still be a Bitcoiner.

This is true and maybe Vitalik still is a Bitcoiner. But in the present, Ethereum is clearly not sharing goals with Bitcoin.#Ethereum is prolonging the legacy financial system, full of intermediaries (look at “DeFi”), and #Bitcoin is creating a new one without the middle man.

— Héctor Cárdenas (@hcarpach) May 8, 2020

Even so, Ethereum is not sharing goals with Bitcoin. Ethereum is prolonging the legacy financial system, full of intermediaries, and Bitcoin is creating a new one without the middle man.

In it, Buterin made a ridiculous view: “BTC people seem happy to have lots of centralized middlemen (BitMEX, Tether, liquid ….)”. It seems Buterin has taken a dig at Bitcoin (BTC) for having too many middlemen. He names derivatives exchange BitMEX, stablecoin issuer Tether, and Blockstream’s sidechain-based Liquid Network.

I really and truly think it’s the opposite. BTC people seem happy to have lots of centralized middlemen (bitmex, tether, liquid….) and it’s the ETH community that’s trying to decentralize these functions with smart contract constructions.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 8, 2020

And Buterin also did not forget to praise Ethereum because, in his opinion, the Ethereum community is competing to decentralize its ecosystem with the help of smart contracts – ETH community that’s trying to decentralize these functions with smart contract constructions.

Although Vitalik claims Bitcoin and Ethereum share values despite the long war between their communities. But Buterin got it wrong when he used the word “centralized” on Bitcoin. And he’s not here to mend fences with Bitcoin maximalists.

Buterin’s position is not compatible with members of the Bitcoin community. They quickly assumed that Buterin cherry-picking and distorting facts. In particular, the most striking is Ankur’s critical comment.

That’d be cherry picking. There are alts like LN and Bisq that don’t trade off the censorship resistant properties. The core BTC community puts a lot more emphasis on building a parallel system than ETH, where the general vibe is to find a way to work around and with regs, imho

— Ankur (@ankurfr) May 8, 2020

Some of them were quick to point out that the entire DeFi ecosystem relies on centralized middlemen. At this point, it seems there will be no truce anytime soon.

Read more: