Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum need Satoshi Nakamoto mind on digital finance

Just about a decade ago, Ethereum was hailed as the world’s most innovative blockchain, and even its developer, Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin, became so loved by the crypto community that they called him Nakamoto 2.0. Years later, the second-largest crypto by market cap is crumbling under the weight of its own ambitions. We might know why.

Ethereum’s problems didn’t start with the Ethereum Foundation’s executive director, Aya Miyaguchi; as a matter of fact, we could argue she’s not to blame at all. At the center of it all is Ethereum’s founder, the de facto “board” or “sole decision maker” of the Ethereum Foundation, Buterin. 

Unlike Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, who wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper, built the network, and then simply let it go, Buterin has always been largely influential on what happens in the network. He just didn’t wear the tag on his sleeve until he made one X post on January 21. 

No. This is not how this game works.

The person deciding the new EF leadership team is me. One of the goals of the ongoing reform is to give the EF a "proper board", but until that happens it's me.

If you "keep the pressure on", then you are creating an environment that is…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 21, 2025

Is it bad that he is the only one who decides who leads EF? Well, the programmer doesn’t give off Sam-Bankman Fried energy, so he wouldn’t want to harm the Ethereuj network in any way. But, after ETH’s recent performances, Buterin could be living in the “centralization” tale he sought to rewrite.

A one-man foundation: Community not happy with EF 

The Ethereum Foundation was always supposed to be a decentralized force driving the blockchain’s evolution, beyond what Bitcoin could achieve. Instead, it has become an entity whose decisions seem to revolve around a no “winning” policy that is honestly not working at all. 

Don’t take our word for it; the crypto market went on a bull run in the last two months of 2024 following the US election victory of President Donald Trump. Bitcoin crossed the $100,000 mark for the first time ever in December, surging 45% within 30 days. How much profit did Ethereum holders collect? 

What’s more is that every decision affecting the Ethereum blockchain, whether it’s the shift from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) or the sale of ETH to fund operational costs, has Buterin’s fingerprint all over it.

Bitcoin operates under a completely different model than Ether – what the crypto community on social media brand as true decentralization. There is no “Bitcoin Foundation” that dictates network decisions or sells BTC that it holds. Miners work independently to secure the network, and they choose whether to hold or sell their rewards. 

On the flipside, the latter constantly tinkers with its protocol, and it sometimes feels more like an experimental software project than a decentralized financial system. The Ethereum Foundation has sold over $13 million worth of ETH in 2025 alone, according to Lookonchain monitoring. 

What are the sales for? To reportedly remunerate developers and pay operational costs. But wouldn’t it make sense to use the coin to make the payments instead? Well, Buterin is telling you that this would cause “regulatory concerns.” Does the Ethereum Foundation not believe in the very network they are trying to improve? Guess not. 

ETH maxi admits and acknowledges Ethereum Foundation controls the entire roadmap

Vitalik admits he is the dictator of Ethereum Foundation

Hence: the entire roadmap of ethereum is in the hands of single person

lol pic.twitter.com/KF8oBdIvM7

— Crypto Crystal Baller (@CryptoCrystal_B) January 29, 2025

How decentralized can Ethereum really be if a single entity can impact its price and liquidity this much? We wouldn’t be taking it far to say EF, led by Buterin, is making Ethereum centralized.

Has the PoS transition worked?

Vitalik and his team of developers told the community that Ethereum’s move from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) was the best move for the network. The transition began with the Byzantium and Constantinople upgrades between 2017 and 2019, followed by the launch of the Beacon Chain in 2020. 

In 2021, EIP-1559 introduced fee burns, which paved the way for “The Merge” in 2022, which officially saw Ethereum move to PoS. 

And yet, despite all these upgrades, Ethereum has not completely succeeded in the one area that truly matters: scalability. At times, the gas fees in the network are prohibitively high, you’d actually be required to spend as much as $12 dollars just to send $10 worth of ETH. One would argue that the reoccurring fee spikes negate the whole point of the transition.

This is the harsh reality Ethereum refuses to acknowledge. While the network spent years implementing complex protocol changes, Bitcoin, which still suffers from issues due to the size of its network, has quietly continued to scale efficiently while maintaining its core principles. 

Not among the winners, but leading losses

In a February 3 X post, financial markets analysts in the Kobeissi Letter pointed out that Ethereum fell by more than 35% since the Trump trade war headlines mid-day last Friday. The coin is down 15% in the last 24 hours, now changing hands at $2,580, per Coingecko data.

Even though the whole market is in a bloodbath, Bitcoin and most altcoins initially saw massive gains from the end of 2024 upward market charge, which ETH was not exactly part of.

If there were ever a bigger neon light sign that Ethereum is failing, it would be on the ETH/BTC ratio chart. Ethereum has now broken below 0.029 BTC, hitting a four-year low. 

ETH/BTC finally breaks below .029 to a 4-year low.

No one is stockpiling ETH – no nations, no companies, no Saylors, not even Ethereum Foundation. It's not money, it's just a fee for a dead chain. Wallets are removing it and it will be gone by year-end. There is no second best. pic.twitter.com/jr065c1fKI

— TechLead (@techleadhd) February 2, 2025

The narrative that ETH could be “ultrasound money” is collapsing, and aside from the President Trump family-linked entity World Liberty Financial’s accumulation, not many “popular” companies hold it on their balance sheets. The community has also been singing the same song for years now, the Ethereum Foundation itself is not stockpiling ETH, it’s selling it.

Bitcoin is being adopted as legal tender and kept as a federal reserve in nations like El Salvador and Bhutan. It is held by corporations like MicroStrategy and proposed as a global reserve asset by policymakers. Ethereum, on the other hand, is just a fee token for a network that fewer and fewer people want to use. 

Should Buterin go the Satoshi Nakamoto way?

Satoshi Nakamoto, like any other programmer, had his shortcomings when creating Bitcoin. But he gave the public a network that governments and institutions trust wholeheartedly.

Ethereum supporters like to claim that PoS is a superior system because it conserves energy. But efficiency means nothing if the network isn’t secure, scalable, and, most importantly, affordable. Ethereum is almost three times the size of Bitcoin in terms of network capabilities, yet it still hasn’t crossed Bitcoin’s market cap since its inception.

Bitcoin has no Vitalik Buterin, no single person calling the shots, and no foundation dumping BTC into the market. Ethereum was never going to be “the next Bitcoin,” and without a radical change in governance any time soon, it might not be in the crypto conversation at all.