Amidst the ongoing controversy over serial ETH dumps by Ethereum Foundation, Bitcoin.com CEO claims “this cycle may skip ETH” due to Ethereum’s ill-timed “wokie energy.” Are political leanings so critical in the crypto community in 2025? Lately, Ethereum has been under fire. Ethereum Foundation angered the community by selling large amounts of ETH, bringing its price down every time. Many voiced criticisms towards the EF exec Aya Miyagotchi. Vitalik Buterin insisted that it’s up to him, not the community, to decide on the Ethereum Foundation team board. This statement raised further debate on whether Ethereum is going centralized and not community-based. Read more: https://crypto.news/ethereum-foundation-slammed-for-constant-eth-dumps/ The comments by the EF employee Josh Stark fueled people’s anger even more as his words were loosely interpreted as “in Ethetherum Foundation we use Ethereum to dump ETH.” Riding the wave of people’s ramblings, Bitcoin.com CEO Corbin Fraser published an X post saying that Ethereum has a ‘wokie energy,’ which “did great during the previous cycle,” noting that Ethereum was leaning towards diversity, equity, inclusion, and eco-friendliness, and was approved by “vegetarian WEF lefties” and rallied weirdos and creatives instead of “crypto people.” Ethereum has Wokie energy. It did great during the previous cycle because it checked boxes 🌈 Diversity equity inclusion 🌱 Environmentally friendly 👨🎨 Rallied weirdos and creatives and non crypto people. 🥒 Vegetarian WEF lefty approved The new meta is Manpower. ⚒️ Pow… https://t.co/uO4LzyoBtP — Corbin (@maplesyrupsuckr) January 20, 2025 He went on to say, “New meta is Manpower,” which is, according to Corbin, “PoW mining, DGAF aesthetics, Murcia, memes, Trump. The right. Competition.” Corbin concluded that this cycle may skip Ethereum, although he hopes to be proven wrong. At the end of the post, Corbin added a signature “Tired bag holder,” probably mocking the “milady” signature used by Vitalik Buterin earlier. The alleged blast Although the tweet didn’t get much attention, it had some people discussing the politics of the crypto industry. The Bitcoin.com author David Sencil decided Corbin was cooking and dedicated a feature article to the CEO’s post, diving deep into its meaning. The title proclaims, “CEO of Bitcoin.com Puts Ethereum on Blast for ‘Woke’ Ideology.” In fact, the post got around 500 views and a couple of replies. However, the exchange with several other crypto Xters followed. In his article, Sencil featured an interesting post by a crypto influencer, Beanie, who stated that politics and religion should not have a place in the crypto community and remembered how Ethereum fired Brantly Millegan from Ethereum Name Service for an old post where he expressed his “basic Catholic beliefs.” Never forget that the Ethereum elite cancelled Brantly and got him fired from ENS. Because some troll dug up an 8 year old post of his stating his basic Catholic beliefs. Ethereum needs a radical cultural change. There’s no room for politics and religion in crypto. Focus on tech. — Beanie (@beaniemaxi) January 21, 2025 Beanie noted that Ethereum has a chance to “restore its glory,” under the term of abandoning politics in favor of tech. That’s an interesting and important take, for sure. Ironically, it reminds of the good old term “Ethereum killer,” coined to describe any new blockchain ecosystem that runs smart contracts and hosts dApps created after Ethereum. Some of these projects are killing it, but none killed Ethereum yet. Solana kind of snatched the leadership as a meme token home away, but if we judge from trading volume and market cap perspective, Ethereum is still there, still occupying the top position among projects with similar functionality, meaning that in the long-term, Ethereum proves to be the best-performing Ethereum killer on the market. The alleged loss of glory Ethereum has a lot of work to do. Ethereum taught people what scalability issues are and how long it can take to tackle them (like forever ?). However, the criticisms aimed at Ethereum and its alleged left-wing or liberal vibes seem to be hit-and-miss. Why? First off, why speak about “restore of glory” when the project in question is one of the global leaders in the sector? It is like speaking about the “crash” or even “death” of Bitcoin when it slides down by several percent and remains one of the most valuable assets in the whole damn world. What’s with Ethereum’s glory? The crisis is there , no doubt. However, the project has been evolving in the conditions of constant crisis for years. It is political vibes that don’t speak to some (to many in the Trump fever era?) and distract a part of the crypto community from the solid market presence of Ethereum. David Sencil doesn’t question the cemented market position of Ethereum in his article, though. Businesses develop products for their users and do not just do things in a vacuum. That’s why political leanings that may adhere to the people around the project may be a key to loyalty and not the failing point. The lead Shiba Inu developer, Shyhoshi Kusama, stepped into the conversation and expressed a similar stance. Silly take. Smart businesses build for their users. Coke tailors products to fit the market. You won't find Grey Goose in Saudi (yet). To think it isnt smart to build according to your market because that market has certain beliefs or to align with them is incorrect. Besides,… — Shytoshi Kusama™ (@ShytoshiKusama) January 21, 2025 OK, people hate ‘wokism.’ Musk hates it, for sure. But is it “wokie energy” that drives Ethereum Foundation to dump ETH in bulk? Is it lefty philosophy that makes Buterin take control over the Ethereum Foundation board and dismiss the voices of the community? Do the people who comment on Ethereum’s wokism follow their credo of telling the technology from ideology? Rather, it seems that they express their anger over Ether’s self-inflicted underperformance on the market and Buterin’s unpopular decisions and opinions, including the urge not to fall for Trump simply because all of a sudden he became “pro-crypto.” You might also like: Vitalik Buterin outlines plans to ‘make Ethereum cypherpunk again’
