Vitalik Buterin’s view on separating blockchain use and crypto from Singapore
- Vitalik Buterin believes that it will not work to distinguish between blockchain use and crypto.
- Buterin also acknowledges that the country’s enthusiasm is encouraging, but all this may be for nothing.
On Monday, Vitalik Buterin gave an interview to The Straits Times, a Singapore-based English-language daily newspaper. In the interview, he stated that Sinagpore’s hospitable attempts at crypto regulations may not succeed, given its questionable approach to the asset class.
Buterin also acknowledges that the country’s enthusiasm is encouraging, but all this may be for nothing.
Regulators around the world want to support the upcoming technologies, but also find cryptocurrencies “unnatural and frightening” at the same time, he described.
In Singapore, regulators are trying to distinguish between blockchain use and cryptocurrency. India is trying to follow suit, and some Chinese regulators have already tried to expand blockchains that don’t need cryptocurrencies.
However, Buterin said that there is a strong connection between blockchain and crypto, as you cannot actually have one without the other. He described:
“In my opinion, a few regulators in China have undoubtedly tried to have one without the other, and the reality is that if you don’t have cryptocurrency, the blockchains you’re supposed to have aren’t real, and nobody’s going to pay attention.”
Regulators are ‘disheartening cryptocurrency theory’: Buterin
Regulators are also trying to “dismantle the cryptocurrency theory” without banning crypto entirely. However, the country had previously positioned itself as a crypto-friendly authority, it has initiated stricter rules in recent months.
Apart from that, Buterin accepted that it can be difficult for countries and regulators to strike a healthy balance between supporting new technologies without becoming a breeding ground for bad crypto actors. But when it comes to balancing crypto regulation, “there are better ways to do it, and there are worse ways,” Buterin described.
After China banned the use of cryptocurrencies, many crypto companies fled to friendlier governments like Singapore. However, the “big risk of being friendly” is that the countries end up influencing people like Terra co-founder Do Kwon, who is being questioned for fraud in the aftermath of the Terra-LUNA case, Buterin commented.
Do Kwon spent a lot of time in Singapore, and many people were linked to the Terra-LUNA case, according to Buterin:
“It’s one hundred percent true that if a state is not well known about crypto regulations, they can easily end up being frozen as the base for all the Do Kwon people. And it’s not as mandatory as a country would like. In the meantime, think I doubtless it is possible to participate productively and gain benefits.”
