Vitalik Buterin clarifies what he doesn't like about ICOs

Creator of the second most popular cryptocurrency in the world, Canadian with Russian origins, Vitalik Buterin has multiply stated he does not like the current mechanism of initial coin offerings. In his latest interview in South Korea he has given an explanation of what is wrong with ICOs and what he thinks on the realism of the scenario when one day cryptocurrencies replace fiat money.

According to Buterin, the cons of ICOs lie in centralization. One of the main things about cryptocurrency is it’s decentralized, with P2P blockchains, the ICOs, however, are not. Thus, just like it was before, many people have to trust a shady group of people who just claim they can create something amazing – and this, by the way, might be the reason some experts compare ICOs to Ponzi schemes. Buterin did not do so in that statement, but he expressed hopes that soon it will be harder to get funds with ICOs, “regardless of whether or not regulation is implemented”.

When talking about Ethereum development, Vitalik Buterin stated that his team would continue developing network updates, “two to five, with early prototypes in one year”. Buterin reminded that the preview version of Raiden has already been released and soon the full upgrade will be implemented.

Prior to these statements, Buterin has had a clash with the authors of Raiden, when they launched an ICO aimed to fund the development of this protocol update and swiftly started to build his own development fund to finance open-source Ethereum scaling updates.