Vitalik Buterin goes after gold, saying crypto is a better bet

Ethereum’s star founder, Vitalik Buterin, has said that crypto is “the best bet” compared to gold and that gold is very impractical in response to Zach Weinersmith, who questioned the advantages of crypto over gold.

The gold/crypto debate

Zach Weinersmith, who is a New York Times writer, suggested that people should buy gold instead of bitcoin because it already fits the fundamental ethos of crypto, where there is no centralized authority for the currency. In response, Vitalik strongly objected to gold stating that it is very painful and cumbersome to use. And this is even more true when trading with an unverified source or party and storage options are limited because multiple people cannot access it, as in the case of a multi-sig crypto wallet.

In his conclusion on the gold vs. crypto debate, he pointed out that since gold is less adopted than crypto, crypto is a much wiser alternative.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adam also spoke out in favor of Buterin, adding that “gold also has the risk of huge centrally controlled inflation due to asteroid mining.“

However, some industry experts consider crypto and gold to be the same. Indeed, during the current market downturn, neither crypto nor gold have lived up to their claims to be an inflation hedge.

Vitalik’s take on bitcoin

Vitalik’s rejection of gold dates back to 2018, when he tweeted that bitcoin was a much better store of value than gold, even if the PoW system was a concern.