Vitalik Buterin calls MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor a ‘total clown’

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has taken a shot at MicroStrategy chief executive officer Michael Saylor, calling him a “total clown” after the latter called the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency “inherently unethical.”

Fast facts

• “Why do maximalists keep picking heroes that turn out to be total clowns?” Buterin wrote on Twitter on Sunday as a reply to a video clip of Saylor saying that securities laws are based on the 10 commandments in the Bible and hence not antiquated.

• Saylor has previously classified Ethereum as a security, citing its background of being issued through an initial coin offering (ICO), hard forks, having a management team and more. 

• Business intelligence and software company MicroStrategy is the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, according to estimates.

• “For it to be a commodity there can’t be an issuer, and the truth is you can’t really make decisions. I mean one of the fundamental insights in the crypto industry is that the fact that you can change it, is what makes it a security,” Saylor said in an interview with Altcoin Daily.

• Earlier this month at the Blockchain Economy Istanbul conference, the MicroStrategy CEO also questioned Ethereum’s ethics — “’Ethically sound’ means I need to know that nobody could change [the protocol], which includes Vitalik,” Saylor said.