Vitalik Buterin calls Michael Saylor’s comments on Bitcoin ‘insane’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is criticizing MicroStrategy president Michael Saylor’s comments suggesting that he is in favor of crypto users using major banking institutions to provide custody on Bitcoin.

In an X post, Vitalik Buterin called Michael Saylor “crazy” for comments he made in an interview with Madison Reidy regarding Bitcoin (BTC). He disagrees with Saylor’s statements, specifically that he “explicitly advocates a regulatory takeover approach to cryptocurrency protection.”

Saylor argued that Saylor’s approach implies that regulated public entities should own digital assets so that regulators and law enforcement would be more inclined to invest in them. Regulatory takeover could lead to major financial institutions eventually seizing Bitcoin.

Many others, including Bitcoin custodian Casa’s chief security officer Jameson Lopp and ShapeShift founder Erik Voorhees, also shared Buterin’s view, saying that convincing people to trust third-party custodians could have a range of negative effects and that it goes against Bitcoin’s decentralized nature. he said. crypto.

“There is a lot of precedent for how this strategy can fail, and to me that is not what crypto is all about,” Buterin said in his post.

I’ve probably done more than most to propagate the “mountain man” trope (which I think is outdated, by the way; snarks and AA have completely changed the trade-off) and I’m pleased to say that @saylor‘s comments are crazy.

He clearly seems to be advocating something…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) 22 October 2024

In an Oct. 21 interview with financial markets reporter Madison Reidy, Saylor took a swipe at what he called “crypto-anarchists,” unregulated entities that do not accept government, taxes or reporting requirements. He said he believes it increases the risk of digital assets being compromised.

Instead, Saylor suggested that Bitcoin holders should trust “too big to fail” banks that are “designed to be custodians of financial assets.” His latest comments appear to contradict his previous approach of advocating self-custody in the crypto space.

Self-custody means that individuals control and protect their own assets, not banks or exchanges.

In a 2022 interview with Blockware, Saylor noted that most individuals, families, and small and medium-sized companies prefer to hold their own private keys or multi-signature agreements rather than entrusting their funds to large banking institutions.

“I don’t think it’s a problem, I think everyone will have the ability to store their own Bitcoin,” Saylor said.

Blockware notes in its post that Saylor’s comments at the time came three weeks after the FTX collapse, in which users lost billions of BTC remaining on the platform, sparking an ongoing legal dispute.

MicroStrategy, meanwhile, holds 252,220 BTC, making it the largest Bitcoin reserve held by a company. Saylor announced that he owns more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin as of August 2024.