Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that Sam Bankman-Fried, the ex-CEO of the bankrupt exchange FTX, was not respected or trusted by many in crypto.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has shared his views on Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and former CEO of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 after losing $8 billion of customer funds.
Buterin said that many people in the crypto community did not respect SBF and that he had no vision for crypto beyond making money.
In a podcast interview with Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy, Buterin spoke about the reputation of SBF, who was arrested in December 2022 and extradited to the US to face multiple criminal charges related to FTX’s collapse.
Buterin also stated that, in contrast to how the media portrays it, few people in the cryptocurrency industry admired or trusted SBF.
“I think a lot of people have this misconception that everybody deeply respected Sam and that he caught the entire ecosystem by surprise … but if you’re looking at Ethereum influencers like Anthony Sassano, a lot of them disrespected him and FTX from the beginning,”
Buterin added that the main reason for his and others’ judgment was SBF’s inability to project the cause of cryptocurrencies and related technologies without financial benefits.
“He was just not able to articulate a vision of why crypto was good—he just clearly saw it as purely a business opportunity. It’s like, ‘Oh, hey, crypto is this thing where you can make money,” he said.
Buterin has long criticized SBF since the collapse of FTX, which he compared to the “1930 dictators” in terms of marketing and branding. He also said that cryptocurrencies are more than the lifestyle and brands of the company.
AI can disrupt and enhance creativity
Buterin also touched on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on human creativity.
Depending on how it is used, he said, AI can both catalyze and inhibit creativity. It can help people save time and generate new ideas, but it can also distract them from their original goals.
“I think one of the positive aspects of this is that I think it’s a good example of how, instead of AI killing 30% of the jobs, which would be catastrophic and terrible, it’s like, AI is killing 30% of your job, which is an amazing time saver,”
He gave an example of how AI can assist authors in producing movies with various tools and platforms. He said he would love to see an author easily produce a movie with their creativity and an AI platform.
“I would want to see the cost of making a movie go down from $100,000 to one person with basically just his creativity and a couple of months with an AI platform,”
Vitalik Buterin
However, he also acknowledged that AI can pose some challenges and risks to creativity, such as plagiarism, manipulation, and ethical issues.
He said that he does not want to see artists get replaced by AI but rather collaborate with it.
