May 5, 2026

Capitalizations Index – B ∞/21M

Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Rebuts Criticism From Bitcoin Advocate

NewsBTC
Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Rebuts Criticism From bitcoin Advocate

Although Ethereum is one of the most well-recognized projects in this budding industry, it has undoubtedly gained notoriety in some circles of the cryptocurrency industry. While many have kept their apprehension self-contained, one gritty cynic took to Twitter to speak his mind, claiming that ETH is best kept a “science experiment.” Yet, Vitalik Buterin, arguably the most notable co-founder of Ethereum, released a long-winded response that aimed to debunk the critic’s conjectures.

bitcoin Investor Bashes Ethereum

On Friday, Tuur Demeester, an altcoin cynic, bitcoin proponent, and investor, compiled his years of skepticism towards Ethereum, issuing a 50-part Twitter thread on the matter. Through his scathing messages, Demeester, the founder of Adamant Capital, a so-called “bitcoin Alpha Fund,” conveyed a multitude of reasons why he’s skeptical of the project.

In his eyes, Ethereum’s underlying architecture and culture is the stark opposite of bitcoin’s. Yet, the former project is apparently still seeking to achieve decentralization and immutability, while becoming a store of value, an asset issuance platform, and a smart contract facilitator. Demeester sees these unbridled ambitions as non-sensical, explaining the project is a “science experiment at best,” before quipping that its ~$15 billion valuation is too high.

Along with these overarching criticisms, the critic also claimed that the project’s scaling prospects, especially with sharding and Proof of Stake (PoS), are dismal. Demeester noted that nothing gets delivered on time, claiming that the integration of sharding is a “pipe dream,” and that PoS is fundamentally flawed. The Adamant Capital chief even added that the draft Correct-By-Construction Casper whitepaper was lackluster, specifically citing an “unmerciful peer review” from “reputable developers.”

Coalescing his points into a single comment, the bitcoin advocate flat-out stated that Ethereum is the “Yahoo of our day — an unscalable ‘blue chip’ cryptocurrency.”

Related Reading: Crypto Developments Aplenty at Devcon4, Serenity Among Them
Vitalik Buterin Didn’t Take The Criticism Lying Down

And while Demeester’s comments festered in the mind of the crypto community for a day, on Saturday, Vitalik Buterin made it clear that he wasn’t going to take the criticism lying down. Buterin, a Russian-Canadian coder extraordinaire and long-time bitcoin community member, took to Ethereum’s official subreddit to release a point-by-point refutation of the critic’s qualms.

Tuur’s criticism discussion thread from ethereum

The developer first claimed that he finds Ethereum’s culture “far saner [than that of bitcoin],” but joked that he’s evidently biased on that front. Commenting on the “science experiment” quip, Buterin noted that this isn’t a valid argument, potentially touching on the sentiment that at this stage, all blockchain projects are still fleshed-out prototypes. Buterin even rebutted Demeester’s claims that on-scale scaling for Ethereum is nothing more than a quixotic dream, writing:

“The core principles [of sharding] have been known for years, the core design for nearly a year, and details for months, with implementations on the way. Sure, sharding is not yet finished. Though more incremental stuff has been going well, eg. uncle rates are at near record lows despite very high chain usage.”

In closing, Buterin claimed that Demeester skipped over “the progress that the Ethereum community has made in expanding and professionalizing,” even in terms of scaling protocols that could eventually turn the project on its head. And on the matter of PoS qualms, the cryptocurrency savant said that many objections to this consensus mechanism “are cultural, not technical,” subsequently hinting that having a culture that’s fine with tradeoffs is part of Ethereum’s strengths.

Featured Image from Shutterstock

The post Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Rebuts Criticism From Bitcoin Advocate appeared first on NewsBTC.

Previous Article

EF360 Global Technology Trainee Program

Next Article

White Hat Hackers Earned $878,000 from Crypto Bug Bounties in 2018, Data Shows

You might be interested in …

Re: [ANN] FACTOM – Introducing Honesty to Record-Keeping

Re: [ANN] FACTOM – Introducing Honesty to Record-Keeping Jump to:  (Why?) Published at Sun, 26 Feb 2017 16:05:42 +0000 [wpr5_ebay kw=”bitcoin” num=”1″ ebcat=”” cid=”5338043562″ lang=”en-US” country=”0″ sort=”bestmatch”]

Here’s How SonoCoin Is Trying To Use Sound To Transfer Value

Companies are rushing to try and make peer to peer, blockchain based value transfer quicker and simpler right now and this company thinks it’s been able to do just that.


bitcoin just broke through a major resistance level and interest in the space has never been higher. Companies of all shapes and sizes are popping up, looking to take advantage of the rush to develop and establish the blockchain-centric infrastructure that’s going to serve as the foundation for technological advance for many years to come and many of these are conducting ICOs to try and pick up funding. The ICO space, however, and likely as a direct result of the above statement, is pretty crowded right now and a company that wants to stand out and – in turn – to attract investor capital through an initial offering has to serve up something unique. Reports have just hit press that a company called SonoCoin is about to launch its efforts to do just that and, at a glance, the company looks as though it certainly checks the ‘unique offering’ box.

SonoCoin has developed a blockchain based peer-to-peer value transfer system that uses a digitally encrypted audio file as its transfer token. In contrast to bitcoin, which uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol, SonoCoin uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol to verify transactions and, again unlike bitcoin, the exchange token can be sent via any means through which a standard data/audio file can be sent – email, messenger application, etc.

So how does it work?

The company has developed an algorithm that takes a transaction hash, a secret key and the index (which is defined as the number of outputs when the coin was formed) and converts it into a .wav file.

This file can then be sent from one device to another (basically, so long as the devices have a microphone and a speaker that can emit, recognize and interpret sound, which pretty much all mobile devices do right now) and, on receipt, an application (which is already available for some devices) specifically designed to interpret these SonoCoin sound files will record and register the transaction.

And why is this news now?

The company is currently conducting a presale of its tokens and intends to move into the second phase of this presale on December 14, at the end of next week. During phase one and phase two (phase one has been active since this time last week), a total of 30 million coins will be issued. Subsequent to the presale, 40 million coins will be issued as part of the full ICO.

How successful the ICO will be remains to be seen but the assumption is that, post-completion, SonoCoin will look to pick up a listing for its coins on the major exchanges in the space – Bittrex, Poloniex, etc. and it’s at that point that we’ll really get an idea of the market appetite for this sort of alternative-format type value transfer.

Here’s the company’s Whitepaper for anyone looking to get a better idea of how SonoCoin works.

What do you think of this sort of application of blockchain technology? Will the ability to transfer value via sound files aid mainstream adoption of algorithm-based peer-to-peer transactions? Let us know in the comments section below!


Image courtesy of Tess Watson via Flickr

The post Here’s How SonoCoin Is Trying To Use Sound To Transfer Value appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.