Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies go far beyond the financial system – Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin

• Bitcoin was born out of a financial crisis and its solutions remain financial in nature.
• Ethereum is more than a financial instrument; it is a platform that brings inclusivity including handling of tokens.
• The ongoing crisis according to Vitalik Buterin is not a financial crisis but a virus one.

It has been more than ten years since Bitcoin was incepted with the sole purpose of revolutionizing the financial system. The vision of Satoshi Nakamoto was to come up with a system that is decentralized in nature, works independently from government control, and provides access to financial services to everybody around the world. Bitcoin was born in a financial crisis (during the 2008/2009 global recession).

At the moment, the world is dealing with a pandemic that has turned literally everything upside down. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of hundreds of people around the world and the death toll continues to rise. In the United States alone, more than 105,000 people have lost their lives. At the same time, the US is protesting the killing of a man, George Floyd due to police brutality.

As the above disasters continue to ravage the world, the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts in regard to Bitcoin being a financial tool. He says that Ethereum unlike Bitcoin is “less financial in nature.” However, Ethereum outperforms Bitcoin in providing a platform for “handling coins/tokens/money of some form.”

Buterin continues to explain that the 2020 crisis is not in any way a financial crisis but “it’s a virus crisis.” In his opinion, the current global situation is a “crisis of overbearing policing in many places and much more.” In conclusion, Buterin states that:

“Cryptocurrencies ended up being very much correlated to wider economic trends. It doesn’t mean they don’t protect from other things (e.g. political barriers/interference), but it does mean that narratives need to adjust.”