No, Buterin did not advise Catalonia to hold an ICO

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has always been a strict opponent of initial coin offerings. In the past, he stated that this mechanism is, unlike cryptocurrency, overly centralized. He also quickly established a fund that helps Ethereum developers after he realized some of them are trying to hold ICOs to get funds required for covering development and implementation costs.

This is why the message from El Pais about Buterin advising Catalonia to hold an ICO in order to establish cryptocurrency sphere looked suspicious right from the start: if Buterin always made clear he does not like ICOs, why advise a government in need to hold what he considers a bad procedure? However, since the initial emergence of the rumor many media, including even Cointelegraph, reposted this, and V. Buterin had to rebut the messages on his Twitter.

Lately, amidst the increasing tension of Spanish authorities and the Catalonian government, the members of the latter have voiced plans to issue their own state cryptocurrency to become fully independent from the central bank of Spain. They also decided to create something very similar to Estonian digital residency program.