Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, may be eligible for the Nobel Prize in Economics due to his contributions to cryptocurrency, according to two distinguished economists who recently participated in a podcast. This occurs before the award announcement on Monday, October 14.
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarro, two economics professors, discussed the potential winners of the forthcoming Nobel Prize in Economics on the podcast for their joint economic blog, Marginal Revolution. They eventually contemplated whether the Ethereum co-founder could emerge victorious after tossing around a few names.
“I have an unusual pick, I suspect you’ll agree with me. I would give it to Vitalik Buterin,” Cowen explained. “Vitalik has built a platform, created a currency, you could say refuted Mises regression theorem in the process, obviously following in the footsteps of Satoshi [Nakamoto].”
In 2013, Ethereum was co-founded by Buterin and four other individuals. The asset has since become the second largest cryptocurrency globally, with a market capitalization of $293.5 billion.
Buterin has maintained his position at the vanguard of the Ethereum community, advancing discussions regarding account abstraction, decentralization, and industry alignment.
Tabarro responded, “I believe you would have believed [Bitcoin and Ethereum] were impossible if you had considered the matter beforehand; however, they are currently operational in the real world.” Additionally, Vitalik has continued to contribute to developing Ethereum’s mechanism by transitioning to a proof-of-stake system.
In 2022, Ethereum transitioned from the proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake, a process referred to as “The Merge.”
The network’s energy consumption was reduced by 99% due to this action, which was executed without any complications. Cowen and Tabarro shared a chuckle as they observed the seamless process, likening it to changing a car’s tires while it is in motion.
“He writes on monetary economics and there’s no economist who has anything better to say on the topics he writes on. And that, to me, is worth a lot in this consideration,” Cowen said. “And he’s super polite, [he] would bow to the king or whatever is required. He’d be wonderful at the ceremony, there’s no issues there at all.”
The duo also proposed that Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, be awarded the prize. However, they also questioned whether the award could be given to an anonymous individual.
On Tuesday, an HBO documentary asserted that Bitcoin Core Developer Peter Todd was the enigmatic inventor of crypto. Todd has since denied this claim, and most of the Crypto Twitter community has also rejected it.
