Could Vitalik Buterin be the dark horse for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics?
Famous economists weigh in as they await today's results
Prominent economists Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen believe that Vitalik Buterin could potentially win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Last year, American labor economist and economic historian Claudia Goldin bagged the esteemed Economics award. She earned the reward for her in-depth account of women's earnings and participation in the labor market over the centuries. On top of covering forces that drive change, her comprehensive research also looked into factors that fuel the lingering gender gap.
So far, a thrilling display of innovation has been seen in the 2024 Nobel Prizes. This is evident in how AI has bagged the spotlight for both Chemistry and Physics awards.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry winners—Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of Google's DeepMind AI, and colleague John Jumper—developed AI-powered tools for protein design and structure predictions. In a similar case, two AI pioneers—Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield—received the Nobel Prize in Physics for aiding in creating machine learning's building blocks.
As for the Economics prize winner, the Nobel Committee will reveal results on Monday. In light of this, two prominent economics professors have discussed their picks for the potential recipient of the grand accolade.
The duo of experts host the Marginal Revolution podcast. In a recent episode, they shared their thoughts on who they believe could win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics.
While expert names such as Michael Woodford and Susan Athey surfaced during their discussion, Cowen ultimately revealed that he has an unusual and non-traditional pick for the prize: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Interestingly, both economists agreed that Buterin was worthy of the award since he contributed significantly to monetary economics. Cowen proceeded to share that “Vitalik built a platform, created a currency, you could say, refuted Mises’ regression theorem in the process, obviously following in the footsteps of Satoshi.”
My new podcast with @ATabarrok on the economics Nobel: who should win, should have won, should not have won, etc. https://t.co/x1Dr9DVBi4
— tylercowen (@tylercowen) October 8, 2024
Famously known as the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin is a Canadian computer programmer whose crypto roots stretch back long before his brainchild blockchain launched in 2015. In fact, his presence was felt in the Bitcoin community since 2011.
Buterin co-founded the Bitcoin Magazine and wrote articles for it. Along with British developer Amir Taaki and crypto-anarchist Cody Wilson, he also launched the dedicated Bitcoin vault Dark Wallet in 2013.
Considered a Bitcoin rival, Ethereum's market capitalization only comes second to that of the crypto pioneer. Ethereum is more than just a currency. It also functions as a powerful blockchain that enables cutting-edge technologies, such as smart contracts and decentralized applications.
Going back to the podcast episode, Tabarrok also commented that Vitalik “has continued to contribute toward the mechanism design of Ethereum by going to proof-of-stake”. In what was considered a milestone in crypto history, this migration reduced the blockchain's energy consumption by a whopping 99%.
As he was able to make Ethereum more scalable and sustainable, Buterin successfully addressed a major attack on cryptocurrency: high energy consumption.
The pair of experts also went on to talk about Buterin's agreeable demeanor. They described him as a crypto representative who is considered both likable and intellectual.
Cowen went on to comment that Buterin is “super polite, would bow to the king or whatever is required. He’d be wonderful at the ceremony, there's no issues there at all. He’s given a lot to charity.”
Indeed, Buterin also has an impressive humanitarian track record. Just recently, he sold 10 billion Moo Deng tokens to ultimately donate 260.15 ETH—valued at around $640,000—to his biotech charity Kanro, which he set up last year. He also previously supported other causes, such as the legal defense campaign for Roman Storm.
However, Tabarrok also remarked that Buterin's crypto contributions are only a runner-up to Satoshi Nakamoto's groundbreaking technology, which ultimately marked the start of the crypto era.
HBO recently released a controversial documentary on who the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto could be. With debatable findings ultimately pointing to computer scientist Peter Todd, the whole crypto community was in chaos. Todd himself has also denied being Nakamoto.
