Ethereum co-founder on why he got into crypto: Empower the little guy, ‘screw’ the big guy — ‘they already have enough money’

Ethereum co-founder on why he got into crypto: Empower the little guy, ‘screw’ the big guy — ‘they already have enough money’

Before Vitalik Buterin , he first learned about bitcoin in 2011, when he was 17 years old. , but Buterin eventually connected with the idea of bitcoin after a second look, he in 2016. Like many bitcoin evangelists, Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer, was curious about the decentralized payment system. Back then, "I had a much more cartoon mentality," he told Wired. "I saw everything to do with either government regulation or corporate control as just being plain evil. And I assumed that people in those institutions were kind of like Mr. Burns [on "The Simpsons"], sitting behind their desks saying, 'Excellent. How can I screw a thousand people over this time.'" Though his take on good and evil "substantially updated" as time went on, he told Wired, Buterin still felt motivated to get involved with bitcoin to adjust the balance of power between "the big guy" and "the little guy." "I think a large part of the consequence is necessarily going to be disempowering some of these centralized players to some extent," he said in 2016. "Because ultimately power is a zero sum game. And if you talk about empowering the little guy, as much as you want to couch