Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Shares Insights on Sam Bankman-Fried’s Reputation

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has revealed that a larger section of the crypto community did not respect Sam Bankman-Fried as depicted by the mainstream media.

Buterin has been a long critic of Bankman Fried since the collapse of the latter’s digital asset exchange, FTX, and has made new revelations concerning the matter.

Speaking in a podcast interview with Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy, Buterin spoke on the reputation of SBF, how the sector continues to recover from the infamous scandal, and the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

According to Buterin, the crypto industry had reservations about SBF from the beginning although no one expected $8 billion to go into thin air.

“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.”

The main reason for Buterin’s 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 added.

Recall that after the collapse of FTX, Buterin noted that people were mostly drawn to the marketing of FTX which he compared to the “1930 dictators” adding that cryptocurrencies are more than the lifestyle and brands of the company. 

AI will augment human power

Buterin also spoke on the rapid development of AI in several industries including cryptocurrencies hailing the level of adoption so far.

According to him, AI would help human capabilities in the workspace and should be embraced at this stage citing the example of ChatGPT.

“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 touched on the ability of AI to disrupt the creative space including the production of movies in Hollywood. Although he stated that he doesn’t want to see artists get replaced, he added that he would love to see an author easily produce a movie with the numerous tools provided by AI. 

“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.”