Economists Vouch for Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin as Nobel Prize Contender

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin may be up for the Nobel Prize in Economics thanks to his contributions to cryptocurrency, two notable economists argued on a recent podcast. This comes ahead of the award announcement on Monday, October 14.

Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarro, two economics professors, spoke on the podcast for their joint economic blog Marginal Revolution as they questioned who may win the upcoming Nobel Prize in Economics. After throwing a few names around, they eventually pondered if the Ethereum co-founder could win.

“I have an unusual pick, I suspect you’ll agree with me. I would give it to Vitalik Buterin,” Cowen explained. “Vitalik has built a platform, created a currency, you could say refuted Mises regression theorem in the process, obviously following in the footsteps of Satoshi [Nakamoto].”

After the list of accomplishments, he quipped: “My goodness, what does someone have to do to get a Nobel Prize?”

Buterin co-founded Ethereum alongside four others in 2013. The asset has since established itself as the second largest cryptocurrency in the world at a market capitalization of $293.5 billion. Buterin has remained at the forefront of the Ethereum community, pushing conversations around account abstraction, decentralization, and industry alignment.

“I think you would have thought [Bitcoin and Ethereum] were impossible if you had thought about it in advance, yet they’re actually working in the real world,” Tabarro said in response. “Not only that, but Vitalik has continued to contribute towards the mechanism design of Ethereum by going to a proof-of-stake.”

In 2022, Ethereum changed from the proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake, in what's colloquially been called The Merge. This move reduced the network's energy consumption by 99% and was completed with relatively no hitches. Cowen and Tabarro laughed together at how smoothly it went, comparing it to changing car tires while the car is still moving.

“He writes on monetary economics and there's no economist who has anything better to say on the topics he writes on. And that, to me, is worth a lot in this consideration,” Cowen said. “And he's super polite, [he] would bow to the king or whatever is required. He'd be wonderful at the ceremony, there's no issues there at all.”

The pair also suggested Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, but speculated if the award could even be given to someone who is anonymous.

On Tuesday, a HBO documentary claimed to have identified Bitcoin Core Developer Peter Todd as crypto’s elusive inventor. This has since been denied by Todd himself and rejected by most of the Crypto Twitter community.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.