Ethereum's Buterin Predicts Rise of New Rivals To Musk's Twitter

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, said more rivals to Twitter Inc. could spring up.

Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin said more rivals to Twitter Inc. could spring up for a better social media experience. (AFP)

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, said more rivals to Twitter Inc. could spring up amid a push for a better social media experience.

Buterin, speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Thursday, said he's “hopeful in the next five to 10 years there's going to be some kind of better social media platform” whether that's “Twitter itself or whether we'll see a big ground-swelling with alternatives -- we could even see both.”

He said one of the problems on Twitter that bugs him is the way other accounts try to leverage his posts and profile to market highly speculative cryptocurrency tokens that often lack any rules of operation.

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Buterin was responding to questions about Twitter following Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition of the the company. Musk plans to eliminate half of the social media company's workforce to cut costs, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Elon is a very high variance actor,” Buterin said. He could make Twitter “really great” or “really terrible” -- and the latter scenario might open up “opportunities for other people to do something great.”

Twitter may also end up somewhere in the middle between those two extreme outcomes, Buterin added.

The Ethereum network Buterin helped to create is the most important blockchain commercially, facilitating an array of financial applications. Buterin said he intends to maintain a leadership role at Ethereum but that he wants to create space for others to contribute as well.