Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin shares some of the biggest predictions he made in the last decade, including those that were wrong, and how much he has learned.
that crypto adoption was high but stablecoin adoption was higher as businesses use USDT for their operations.Last week, I actually went to Argentina! My verdict: generally correct. Cryptocurrency adoption is high but stablecoin adoption is really high too; lots of businesses operate in USDT. Though of course, if USD itself starts showing more problems this could change.Buterin then went on to reflect the negative impact of Bitcoin regulation he predicted about ten years ago.
Today, Buterin believes Bitcoin’s decentralization would allow it to survive in any super-hostile regulatory climate, but at a cost – “It could not thrive.” “Successful censorship resistance strategy requires a combination of technological robustness and public legitimacy,” he wrote.The Ethereum co-founder recalled how he was briefly an apologist for PoW energy waste in 2012. However, he became excited when he learned aboutas a promising alternative in 2013 and he fully bought the idea by 2014. Buterin tagged his transition as a broader intellectual evolution.
Buterin also highlighted his predictions about the timeline of Ethereum’s PoS and Sharding while admitting that they were wrong and laughable. He also noted that underestimating the complexity of software development was his core underlying mistake. But what was my core underlying mistake? IMO it’s that I deeply underestimated the complexity of software development, and the diff between a python PoC and a proper production impl. 2014-era ideas were waaay too complex, eg. “12-dimensional hypercubes”: