Vitalik Buterin Warns of the Consequences of Elected Officials Launching “Political Coins”

Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, delved back into politics on social media, warning users about the consequences of elected officials launching “political coins.”

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has once again taken to social media to share his thoughts on the regulatory landscape surrounding digital assets.

In a Jan. 23 reply on X, Buterin stated that the regulatory space governing digital assets had entered a “new order” with “the most powerful people in the world […] cheering on the idea of anyone creating tokens for anything, at any scale.”

Although he did not explicitly mention US President Donald Trump launching his Official Trump (TRUMP) token, Buterin hinted that similar projects were “sugar-high short-term fun” rather than tokens helping many to build wealth.

“Now is the time to talk about the fact that large-scale political coins cross a further line: they are not just sources of fun, whose harm is at most contained to mistakes made by voluntary participants, they are vehicles for unlimited political bribery, including from foreign nation states,” the Ethereum co-founder added.

Buterin's remarks echoed those he made in a July 2024 blog post where he urged voters to not immediately flock to political candidates claiming to be “pro-crypto” but to “explore their underlying values” first.

At the time — amid the Republican National Convention to nominate Trump as the party's presidential candidate — the Ethereum co-founder also did not specifically mention the US elections but called out “crypto-friendly“ authoritarian governments.

Trump's memecoin causes heads to spin in DC

Since the TRUMP launch on Jan. 17, many critics both in and out of the crypto industry have suggested the project could enable foreign governments to influence the US president by purchasing the token through back channels or directly. The Foreign Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution restricts members of the government from receiving gifts from foreign states.

According to a Jan. 21 Fortune report, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was considering a lawsuit over the TRUMP token but stated that it was on shaky legal ground. Before Trump, no US president had ever launched a cryptocurrency or had such potentially wide-reaching financial entanglements with foreign companies and governments.