When ETH drops below $1800, what is Vitalik thinking about?

By: blockbeats|2025/04/01 11:00:04
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Original Title: "What Is Vitalik Thinking When ETH Falls Below $1800"
Original Source: Golden Finance

As ETH continues to plummet and many users are shouting "Fix your eth" under Vitalik's tweets, people are curious about what Vitalik, as the founder of Ethereum, is thinking.

When ETH drops below src=ETH Falls Below $1800 Source: Coingecko

On March 29, 2025, Vitalik posted two blog posts in a row, revealing his current thoughts. Apparently, Vitalik is not particularly concerned about the ETH price.

Below are the two recent blog posts by Vitalik:

First One: The Cyclical Model of Culture and Politics

One thing that has often confused me as I grew up is that people frequently claim that we live in a "deeply neoliberal society" that highly values "deregulation." I am puzzled because although I see many people advocating for neoliberalism and deregulation, the overall reality of government regulation is very different from any regulation that could reflect these values. The total number of federal regulations has been continuously increasing. KYC, copyright, airport security checks, and various other rules are constantly tightening. Since World War II, the percentage of US federal tax revenue to GDP has remained roughly the same.

If you told someone in 2020 that in five years, the US or China would lead in open-source AI while the other would lead in proprietary AI and asked them which would lead where, they might stare at you as if you were asking a tricky question. The US is a country that values openness, and China is a country that values closedness and control; US technology is generally more inclined toward open-source, come on, that's obvious! However, they are completely wrong.

What's going on? In this article, I will propose a simple explanation that I call the cyclical model of politics and culture:

The model is as follows:

How a culture treats new things is a product of the prevalent attitudes and incentive mechanisms of that culture at a particular time. How a culture treats old things is mainly influenced by status quo bias.

Each period adds a new tree ring to the tree, and as a new ring is formed, people's attitudes toward new things also take shape. However, soon these boundaries become fixed and hard to change, a new ring starts to grow, influencing people's attitudes toward the next wave of topics.

We can analyze the above situation and other situations from the following perspectives:

· While there is indeed a trend of deregulation in the United States, this trend was most pronounced in the 1990s (if you look closely, you can actually see this from the chart!). By the 21st century, the tone had shifted towards stronger regulation and control. However, if you look at the specific things that "matured" in the 1990s (such as the internet), you will find that they eventually came under regulation, based on the principles dominant in the 1990s, allowing the United States (and much of the world that followed suit due to imitation) several decades of relative internet freedom.

· Taxation is constrained by budgetary needs, which are primarily determined by the needs of healthcare and welfare programs. The "red lines" in this regard were drawn as far back as 50 years ago.

· Both law and culture consider any moderately risky activity involving modern technology more suspicious than inherently dangerous activities like mountain climbing, which has a very high mortality rate. This can be explained by the fact that dangerous mountain climbing has been something people have been doing for centuries, and attitudes become more entrenched when the general risk tolerance is much higher.

· Social media matured in the 2010s, with culture and politics viewing it both as part of the internet and as a unique entity. Therefore, attitudes of restriction towards social media usually did not extend to the early internet—even though internet authoritarianism was on the rise, we did not see particularly strong attempts to clamp down on unauthorized file-sharing.

· Artificial intelligence matured in the 2020s, with the United States leading and China close behind, so adopting a "complementary commodification" strategy in AI aligns with China's interests. This intersects with the widespread developer support for open-source. The result is an environment of open-source AI that is very real but also quite specific to AI; older tech fields remain closed off, like walled gardens.

More generally, the implication here is that it is challenging to change a culture's approach to existing things and the way in which attitudes toward hardened things are formed. It is easier to invent new patterns of behavior to transcend old ones and strive to maximize our opportunities to obtain good norms. This can be achieved in various ways: developing new technologies is one way, using (physical or digital) communities on the internet to experiment with new social norms is another.

For me, this is also one of the attractions of the crypto space: it provides an independent technical and cultural foundation to do new things without the burden of existing status quo bias. We can bring vitality to the forest by planting and nurturing new trees instead of planting the same old tree.

Second, We Should Talk Less About Public Goods Funding and More About Open Source Funding

For a long time, one topic I have been very concerned about is how to fund public goods. If a project provides value to a million people (and there is no fine way to select who benefits and who does not), but each person only receives a small part of the benefit, then it is likely that no one will feel that funding this project is in their interest, even if the project is very valuable overall.

In economics, the language of "public goods" has a century-old history. In digital ecosystems, especially in decentralized digital ecosystems, public goods are extremely important: in fact, there are good reasons to believe that the average commodity people might want to produce is a public good. Open-source software, academic research on cryptography and blockchain protocols, open educational resources, and more are all public goods.

However, the term "public goods" faces significant challenges. In particular:

1. The term "public goods" is often used in public discourse to refer to "government-produced products," even though it is not a public good in economic terms. This creates confusion because it gives the impression that whether a project is a public good does not depend on the project itself and its attributes, but on who is building it and what their self-proclaimed intent is.

2. It is widely believed that public goods funding lacks rigor, operates based on social expectation bias (sounds good rather than actually good), and favors insiders who can play social games.

For me, these two issues are related: the term "public goods" is easily influenced by social games, largely because the definition of "public goods" is easily expanded.

Let's see what happens when you search for "building public goods" on Twitter. I just did a search, and here are some of the initial results:

You can continue scrolling and find many projects describing themselves as "building a public good."

This is not to criticize individual projects; I am not familiar with the two projects mentioned above, and they may both be great projects. However, both of these examples are commercial projects with their own tokens. There is nothing wrong with being a commercial project, and launching your own token is usually not wrong either. However, when it is so easily diluted to this point, the term "public goods" today seems to refer to just a "project."

Open Source

As an alternative to the concept of "public goods," let's consider the term "open source." When you think about some core examples of digital public goods, you'll find that they are all open source:

· Academic blockchain and cryptography protocol research

· Documentation, tutorials...

· Open-source software (e.g., Ethereum clients, libraries...)

On the other hand, open-source projects seem to default to being public goods. You can certainly come up with counterexamples: if I write software highly tailored to my personal workflow and put it on GitHub, much of the value created by that project may still be owned by me personally. However, the act of open-sourcing (rather than keeping it secret) is certainly a public good, with benefits widely distributed.

One true advantage of the term "open source" is that it has a clear and widely accepted definition. The Free Software Foundation's free software definition and the Open Source Initiative's open source definition have existed for decades, with a natural way to extend these definitions to other areas beyond software (e.g., writing, research).

In the crypto space, the inherent state and multiparty nature of applications, as well as the new centralization vulnerabilities and control vectors implied by these factors, do suggest that we may need to slightly expand this definition: open standards, internal attack testing as introduced in this article, and escape testing can be valuable additions to the FSF + OSI definition.

So, what's the difference between "open source" and "public goods"? Well, let's have the bot give a few examples:

I personally don't agree with the claim that examples in the first category are not public goods. A project having a high contribution threshold does not prevent it from being a public good, and the companies benefiting from that project are as well. Additionally, a project can absolutely be a public good while things around it are private goods.

The second category is more interesting. First, we should note that these five examples are all in physical space, not digital. Therefore, if we want to focus on digital public goods, there's no reason based on the above examples to object to just focusing on "open source." But what if we do want to cover physical goods? Even in the crypto space, there is a zeal for better managing physical things, not just digital ones; in a sense, this is what the whole concept of a networked polity is about.

Open Source and Local Entity Public Goods

Here, we can make an observation: while providing these things at a local level is an "infrastructure building" issue and can be done in an open source or closed-source way, the most effective means of providing these things globally often ends up involving... true open source. Clean air is the most obvious example: a lot of research and development has been done, much of it open source, to help people around the world enjoy cleaner air. Open source can help make any type of public infrastructure easier to deploy globally. The question of how to effectively provide physical infrastructure at a local level remains important – but this issue is equally relevant to democratically managed communities and companies.

National defense is an interesting case. Here, I would like to put forward the following argument: if you create a project for national defense reasons that you are not willing to open source, then it is very likely that, although it may be in the local public interest, it may not be in the global public interest. Weapon innovation is the most obvious example. Sometimes, one side in a war may have stronger moral reasons than the other side, making it reasonable to assist them in their offensive actions, but on average, developing technology to enhance military capabilities does not make the world better. The exception (defense projects that people would want to open source) may actually be related to a "defense" capability; an example could be decentralized agricultural, power, and internet infrastructure that can help people stay fed, functional, and connected in challenging environments.

Therefore, here, shifting the focus from "public goods" to "open source" seems to be the best option. Open source should not mean "anything built with open source is equally noble"; it should be about building and open sourcing things that are most valuable to humanity. But distinguishing which projects are worth supporting and which are not is already the primary task of public goods funding mechanisms, and this is well known.

Original Article Link

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China's Central Bank and Eight Other Departments' Latest Regulatory Focus: Key Attention to RWA Tokenized Asset Risk


Foreword: Today, the People's Bank of China's website published the "Notice of the People's Bank of China, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, State Administration for Market Regulation, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission, State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Further Preventing and Dealing with Risks Related to Virtual Currency and Others (Yinfa [2026] No. 42)", the latest regulatory requirements from the eight departments including the central bank, which are basically consistent with the regulatory requirements of recent years. The main focus of the regulation is on speculative activities such as virtual currency trading, exchanges, ICOs, overseas platform services, and this time, regulatory oversight of RWA has been added, explicitly prohibiting RWA tokenization, stablecoins (especially those pegged to the RMB). The following is the full text:


To the people's governments of all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps:


  Recently, there have been speculative activities related to virtual currency and Real-World Assets (RWA) tokenization, disrupting the economic and financial order and jeopardizing the property security of the people. In order to further prevent and address the risks related to virtual currency and Real-World Assets tokenization, effectively safeguard national security and social stability, in accordance with the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the People's Bank of China," "Law of the People's Republic of China on Commercial Banks," "Securities Law of the People's Republic of China," "Law of the People's Republic of China on Securities Investment Funds," "Law of the People's Republic of China on Futures and Derivatives," "Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China," "Regulations of the People's Republic of China on the Administration of Renminbi," "Regulations on Prevention and Disposal of Illegal Fundraising," "Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Foreign Exchange Administration," "Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China," and other provisions, after reaching consensus with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and with the approval of the State Council, the relevant matters are notified as follows:


  I. Clarify the essential attributes of virtual currency, Real-World Assets tokenization, and related business activities


  (I) Virtual currency does not possess the legal status equivalent to fiat currency. Virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, Tether, etc., have the main characteristics of being issued by non-monetary authorities, using encryption technology and distributed ledger or similar technology, existing in digital form, etc. They do not have legal tender status, should not and cannot be circulated and used as currency in the market.


  The business activities related to virtual currency are classified as illegal financial activities. The exchange of fiat currency and virtual currency within the territory, exchange of virtual currencies, acting as a central counterparty in buying and selling virtual currencies, providing information intermediary and pricing services for virtual currency transactions, token issuance financing, and trading of virtual currency-related financial products, etc., fall under illegal financial activities, such as suspected illegal issuance of token vouchers, unauthorized public issuance of securities, illegal operation of securities and futures business, illegal fundraising, etc., are strictly prohibited across the board and resolutely banned in accordance with the law. Overseas entities and individuals are not allowed to provide virtual currency-related services to domestic entities in any form.


  A stablecoin pegged to a fiat currency indirectly fulfills some functions of the fiat currency in circulation. Without the consent of relevant authorities in accordance with the law and regulations, any domestic or foreign entity or individual is not allowed to issue a RMB-pegged stablecoin overseas.


(II)Tokenization of Real-World Assets refers to the use of encryption technology and distributed ledger or similar technologies to transform ownership rights, income rights, etc., of assets into tokens (tokens) or other interests or bond certificates with token (token) characteristics, and carry out issuance and trading activities.


  Engaging in the tokenization of real-world assets domestically, as well as providing related intermediary, information technology services, etc., which are suspected of illegal issuance of token vouchers, unauthorized public offering of securities, illegal operation of securities and futures business, illegal fundraising, and other illegal financial activities, shall be prohibited; except for relevant business activities carried out with the approval of the competent authorities in accordance with the law and regulations and relying on specific financial infrastructures. Overseas entities and individuals are not allowed to illegally provide services related to the tokenization of real-world assets to domestic entities in any form.


  II. Sound Work Mechanism


  (III) Inter-agency Coordination. The People's Bank of China, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and other departments, will improve the work mechanism, strengthen coordination with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, coordinate efforts, and overall guide regions to carry out risk prevention and disposal of virtual currency-related illegal financial activities.


  The China Securities Regulatory Commission, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the People's Bank of China, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and other departments, will improve the work mechanism, strengthen coordination with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, coordinate efforts, and overall guide regions to carry out risk prevention and disposal of illegal financial activities related to the tokenization of real-world assets.


  (IV) Strengthening Local Implementation. The people's governments at the provincial level are overall responsible for the prevention and disposal of risks related to virtual currencies and the tokenization of real-world assets in their respective administrative regions. The specific leading department is the local financial regulatory department, with participation from branches and dispatched institutions of the State Council's financial regulatory department, telecommunications regulators, public security, market supervision, and other departments, in coordination with cyberspace departments, courts, and procuratorates, to improve the normalization of the work mechanism, effectively connect with the relevant work mechanisms of central departments, form a cooperative and coordinated working pattern between central and local governments, effectively prevent and properly handle risks related to virtual currencies and the tokenization of real-world assets, and maintain economic and financial order and social stability.


  III. Strengthened Risk Monitoring, Prevention, and Disposal


  (5) Enhanced Risk Monitoring. The People's Bank of China, China Securities Regulatory Commission, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, State Administration of Foreign Exchange, Cyberspace Administration of China, and other departments continue to improve monitoring techniques and system support, enhance cross-departmental data analysis and sharing, establish sound information sharing and cross-validation mechanisms, promptly grasp the risk situation of activities related to virtual currency and real-world asset tokenization. Local governments at all levels give full play to the role of local monitoring and early warning mechanisms. Local financial regulatory authorities, together with branches and agencies of the State Council's financial regulatory authorities, as well as departments of cyberspace and public security, ensure effective connection between online monitoring, offline investigation, and fund tracking, efficiently and accurately identify activities related to virtual currency and real-world asset tokenization, promptly share risk information, improve early warning information dissemination, verification, and rapid response mechanisms.


  (6) Strengthened Oversight of Financial Institutions, Intermediaries, and Technology Service Providers. Financial institutions (including non-bank payment institutions) are prohibited from providing account opening, fund transfer, and clearing services for virtual currency-related business activities, issuing and selling financial products related to virtual currency, including virtual currency and related financial products in the scope of collateral, conducting insurance business related to virtual currency, or including virtual currency in the scope of insurance liability. Financial institutions (including non-bank payment institutions) are prohibited from providing custody, clearing, and settlement services for unauthorized real-world asset tokenization-related business and related financial products. Relevant intermediary institutions and information technology service providers are prohibited from providing intermediary, technical, or other services for unauthorized real-world asset tokenization-related businesses and related financial products.


  (7) Enhanced Management of Internet Information Content and Access. Internet enterprises are prohibited from providing online business venues, commercial displays, marketing, advertising, or paid traffic diversion services for virtual currency and real-world asset tokenization-related business activities. Upon discovering clues of illegal activities, they should promptly report to relevant departments and provide technical support and assistance for related investigations and inquiries. Based on the clues transferred by the financial regulatory authorities, the cyberspace administration, telecommunications authorities, and public security departments should promptly close and deal with websites, mobile applications (including mini-programs), and public accounts engaged in virtual currency and real-world asset tokenization-related business activities in accordance with the law.


  (8) Strengthened Entity Registration and Advertisement Management. Market supervision departments strengthen entity registration and management, and enterprise and individual business registrations must not contain terms such as "virtual currency," "virtual asset," "cryptocurrency," "crypto asset," "stablecoin," "real-world asset tokenization," or "RWA" in their names or business scopes. Market supervision departments, together with financial regulatory authorities, legally enhance the supervision of advertisements related to virtual currency and real-world asset tokenization, promptly investigating and handling relevant illegal advertisements.


  (IX) Continued Rectification of Virtual Currency Mining Activities. The National Development and Reform Commission, together with relevant departments, strictly controls virtual currency mining activities, continuously promotes the rectification of virtual currency mining activities. The people's governments of various provinces take overall responsibility for the rectification of "mining" within their respective administrative regions. In accordance with the requirements of the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments in the "Notice on the Rectification of Virtual Currency Mining Activities" (NDRC Energy-saving Building [2021] No. 1283) and the provisions of the "Guidance Catalog for Industrial Structure Adjustment (2024 Edition)," a comprehensive review, investigation, and closure of existing virtual currency mining projects are conducted, new mining projects are strictly prohibited, and mining machine production enterprises are strictly prohibited from providing mining machine sales and other services within the country.


  (X) Severe Crackdown on Related Illegal Financial Activities. Upon discovering clues to illegal financial activities related to virtual currency and the tokenization of real-world assets, local financial regulatory authorities, branches of the State Council's financial regulatory authorities, and other relevant departments promptly investigate, determine, and properly handle the issues in accordance with the law, and seriously hold the relevant entities and individuals legally responsible. Those suspected of crimes are transferred to the judicial authorities for processing according to the law.


 (XI) Severe Crackdown on Related Illegal and Criminal Activities. The Ministry of Public Security, the People's Bank of China, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, as well as judicial and procuratorial organs, in accordance with their respective responsibilities, rigorously crack down on illegal and criminal activities related to virtual currency, the tokenization of real-world assets, such as fraud, money laundering, illegal business operations, pyramid schemes, illegal fundraising, and other illegal and criminal activities carried out under the guise of virtual currency, the tokenization of real-world assets, etc.


  (XII) Strengthen Industry Self-discipline. Relevant industry associations should enhance membership management and policy advocacy, based on their own responsibilities, advocate and urge member units to resist illegal financial activities related to virtual currency and the tokenization of real-world assets. Member units that violate regulatory policies and industry self-discipline rules are to be disciplined in accordance with relevant self-regulatory management regulations. By leveraging various industry infrastructure, conduct risk monitoring related to virtual currency, the tokenization of real-world assets, and promptly transfer issue clues to relevant departments.


  IV. Strict Supervision of Domestic Entities Engaging in Overseas Business Activities


(XIII) Without the approval of relevant departments in accordance with the law and regulations, domestic entities and foreign entities controlled by them may not issue virtual currency overseas.


  (XIV) Domestic entities engaging directly or indirectly in overseas external debt-based tokenization of real-world assets, or conducting asset securitization activities abroad based on domestic ownership rights, income rights, etc. (hereinafter referred to as domestic equity), should be strictly regulated in accordance with the principles of "same business, same risk, same rules." The National Development and Reform Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and other relevant departments regulate it according to their respective responsibilities. For other forms of overseas real-world asset tokenization activities based on domestic equity by domestic entities, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, together with relevant departments, supervise according to their division of responsibilities. Without the consent and filing of relevant departments, no unit or individual may engage in the above-mentioned business.


  (15) Overseas subsidiaries and branches of domestic financial institutions providing Real World Asset Tokenization-related services overseas shall do so legally and prudently. They shall have professional personnel and systems in place to effectively mitigate business risks, strictly implement customer onboarding, suitability management, anti-money laundering requirements, and incorporate them into the domestic financial institutions' compliance and risk management system. Intermediaries and information technology service providers offering Real World Asset Tokenization services abroad based on domestic equity or conducting Real World Asset Tokenization business in the form of overseas debt for domestic entities directly or indirectly venturing abroad must strictly comply with relevant laws and regulations. They should establish and improve relevant compliance and internal control systems in accordance with relevant normative requirements, strengthen business and risk control, and report the business developments to the relevant regulatory authorities for approval or filing.


  V. Strengthen Organizational Implementation


  (16) Strengthen organizational leadership and overall coordination. All departments and regions should attach great importance to the prevention of risks related to virtual currencies and Real World Asset Tokenization, strengthen organizational leadership, clarify work responsibilities, form a long-term effective working mechanism with centralized coordination, local implementation, and shared responsibilities, maintain high pressure, dynamically monitor risks, effectively prevent and mitigate risks in an orderly and efficient manner, legally protect the property security of the people, and make every effort to maintain economic and financial order and social stability.


  (17) Widely carry out publicity and education. All departments, regions, and industry associations should make full use of various media and other communication channels to disseminate information through legal and policy interpretation, analysis of typical cases, and education on investment risks, etc. They should promote the illegality and harm of virtual currencies and Real World Asset Tokenization-related businesses and their manifestations, fully alert to potential risks and hidden dangers, and enhance public awareness and identification capabilities for risk prevention.


  VI. Legal Responsibility


  (18) Engaging in illegal financial activities related to virtual currencies and Real World Asset Tokenization in violation of this notice, as well as providing services for virtual currencies and Real World Asset Tokenization-related businesses, shall be punished in accordance with relevant regulations. If it constitutes a crime, criminal liability shall be pursued according to the law. For domestic entities and individuals who knowingly or should have known that overseas entities illegally provided virtual currency or Real World Asset Tokenization-related services to domestic entities and still assisted them, relevant responsibilities shall be pursued according to the law. If it constitutes a crime, criminal liability shall be pursued according to the law.


  (19) If any unit or individual invests in virtual currencies, Real World Asset Tokens, and related financial products against public order and good customs, the relevant civil legal actions shall be invalid, and any resulting losses shall be borne by them. If there are suspicions of disrupting financial order and jeopardizing financial security, the relevant departments shall deal with them according to the law.


  This notice shall enter into force upon the date of its issuance. The People's Bank of China and ten other departments' "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risks of Virtual Currency Trading Speculation" (Yinfa [2021] No. 237) is hereby repealed.


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