'Heed these words of warning:' Ethereum founder threatens to leave if the crypto community doesn't grow up

• Frank Chaparro
 

• Dec. 28, 2017, 11:19 AM
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Vitalik Buterin/Twitter

• Ethereum's founder is fed up with the immaturity of the cryptocurrency community.
• He threatened on Twitter on Wednesday that he would leave if folks in the space didn't get their act together.

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Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, thinks crypto is heading in the wrong direction.

Buterin, 23, on Wednesday lamented the immaturity of communities across the cryptocurrency market. He said folks in the space should understand the difference between enacting positive change for society and just moving a bunch of money around.

Twitter

Buterin said that energy was being squandered on meme-ing about luxury cars and inappropriate jokes, and that if things didn't change he would leave the space altogether.

Twitter

The market for digital coins has exploded this year, with bitcoin and ether — the cryptocurrency powered by the Ethereum blockchain — leading the way.

Ether is up more than 8,500% since the beginning of the year, and Ethereum has paved the way for hundreds of initial coin offerings, a cryptocurrency twist on initial public offerings that helps startups raise capital outside traditional financial services.

Autonomous Next, a fintech-analytics firm, estimates that over $4 billion has been raised via ICOs. In total, the market for digital coins has exploded from under $18 billion at the start of the year to a whopping $560 billion now, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.

Still, Buterin has questioned whether such gains are grounded in reality. He tweeted this earlier this month, soon after the crypto market surpassed $500 billion for the first time:

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He continued:

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The 500 wealthiest people in the world made $1 trillion in 2017

• Alison Millington
 

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Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos Mike Segar/Reuters

• The 500 wealthiest people in the world got $1 trillion richer in 2017 according to a new Bloomberg report.
• The Bloomberg Billionaires Index revealed that total fortunes hit more han $5 trillion.
• 67 new and hidden billionaires were also discovered in 2017.

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The 500 wealthiest people on the planet got $1 trillion richer in 2017, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The staggering 23% increase is more than four times higher than last year, and brought total fortunes to more than $5 trillion.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the 500 richest people in the world, revealed that billionaires controlled $5.3 trillion by the end of trading on December 26, up from $4.4 trillion on December 27, 2016.

The 440 billionaires on the Index who added to their fortunes in 2017 gained a combined $1.05 trillion.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos regained the title of richest person in the world in October, knocking Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to second and adding the most wealth in the world throughout the year with a $34.2 billion gain.

Bezos' net worth topped $100 billion at the end of November and currently sits at $99.6 billion.

Gates, meanwhile, has a net worth of $91.3 billion, having donated much of his fortune to charity this year, including a $4.6 billion donation to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in August. 

He wasn't the only one who dropped on the list due to donating a substantial amount of cash — George Soros revealed in October that his family office had given $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations over the past several years, according to Bloomberg, putting Soros at number 195 on the Index with a net worth of $8 billion.

A big year for tech

The 38 Chinese billionaires on the Index added $177 billion in 2017, a 65% gain that was the biggest of the 49 countries represented, according to Bloomberg. The number of Asian billionaires also surpassed the U.S. for the first time, according to a UBS Group AG and PricewaterhouseCoopers report.  

Still, the U.S. has the largest presence on the Index, with 159 billionaires who added $315 billion, an 18% gain that gives them a collective net worth of $2 trillion.

Meanwhile, the 57 technology billionaires on the Index added $262 billion, a 35% increase that was the most of any sector on the list.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg had the fourth largest U.S. dollar increase on the Index, adding $22.6 billion, or 45%.

The Index also discovered 67 hidden billionaires in 2017, including Renaissance Technologies' Henry Laufer, fish billionaires Vitaly Orlov of Russia and Chuck Bundrant of Trident Seafood, New York real estate moguls Ben Ashkenazy and Joel Wiener, and bitcoin investors Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss.

A billion 'doesn't buy what it used to'

However, 60 of the top 500 did not add to their fortunes, and 58 some even saw them fall, losing a combined $46 billion.

French telecommunications billionaire Patrick Drahi saw his fortune drop 39% to $6.3 billion, while Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal — the richest person in Saudi Arabia — dropped $1.9 billion to $17.8 billion after a crackdown against corruption.

Sixty billionaires also fell from the ranking completely.

According to Bloomberg, as the wealth of the richest people in the world skyrockets, a billion dollars "doesn't buy what it used to," with house prices hitting $300 million, the cost of divorce at $1 billion, and a painting by Leonardo da Vinci selling for $450.3 million at a Christie’s auction in November, the most expensive work ever sold.

"It’s part of the second-most robust and second-longest bull market in history," Mike Ryan, chief investment officer for the Americas at UBS Wealth Management, told Bloomberg. "Of all the guidance we gave people over the course of this year, the most important advice was staying invested."

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Bitcoin is losing its dominance over the crypto market

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An electric board showing exchange rates of various cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, top left, at a cryptocurrency exchange in Seoul, South Korea. Thomson Reuters

• Bitcoin had an incredible run in 2017, but in one respect the coin is worse off than it was at the beginning of the year.
• Its share of the cryptocurrency market has more than halved since January 2017.

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2017 was an incredible year for bitcoin.

In addition to appreciating by more than 1,500% since the start of the year, it also now has two futures markets, which have lured numerous traditional Wall Street players into the nascent digital coin space.

Still, in one respect the coin is far worse off now than it was at the start of 2017.

At the beginning of the year bitcoin commanded nearly 90% of the cryptocurrency market, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. That number fell off a cliff in March, after which it shortly rebounded as bitcoin soared to eye-popping new highs.

That number started to decline again in early December, reaching a low of 42% on Monday.

It's a similar story for Ethereum. For some time it looked as if it could take over bitcoin's No. 1 spot. Its share of the market has fallen from about 32% in June to near 13% on Wednesday.

Take a look at this chart showing the market capitalization of the largest cryptocurrencies:

CoinMarketCap

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Bitcoin plunges on fears South Korea will shut exchanges

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Markets Insider

• Bitcoin has fallen below $14,000 in overnight trading on statement from South Korean government that trading is "overheated."
• The cryptocurrency is down more than 10% on the day.

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Bitcoin plunged below $14,000 after the South Korean government warned it may close some cryptocurrency exchanges amid "irrationally overheated" trading.

Bloomberg News reported that South Korea would require cryptocurrency transactions to name participants and bar banks from offering virtual accounts. The government may also direct law-enforcement officials to close some exchanges.

"Cryptocurrency speculation has been irrationally overheated in Korea," the South Korean government said in a statement reported by Bloomberg. "The government can't leave the abnormal situation of speculation any longer."

Here's the chart as of 11:45 a.m. UK time on Thursday (6:45 a.m. ET), with the cryptocurrency falling more than 10% to touch $13,850:

Markets Insider

South Korea is an important market for cryptocurrency trading. Mati Greenspan, an analyst with the trading platform eToro, said in an email this month: "Recent estimates state that 21% of all global BTC volume are done in Korean Won."

Earlier in December, South Korean officials reportedly barred local finance firms from handling bitcoin futures, one of the hottest new financial products to launch in years.

South Korea has taken a tough stance on digital currencies, banning initial coin offerings earlier this year. ICOs involve startups issuing their own digital currencies to raise funds.

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