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Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a small band of developers huddled in a drafty Berlin loft strung with dangling lightbulbs, laptops balanced on mismatched chairs and chipped tables. They weren’t corporate titans or venture-backed founders — just idealists working long nights to push a radical idea into reality.

From that sparse office, they launched “Frontier,” Ethereum‘s first live network. It was bare-bones — no interface, no polish, nothing user-friendly. But it could mine, execute smart contracts, and let developers test decentralized applications. It was the spark that transformed Ethereum from an abstract concept into a living, breathing system.

Bitcoin had captured headlines as “digital gold,” but what they built was something else entirely: programmable money, a financial operating system where code could move funds, enforce contracts, and create businesses without banks or brokers.

One year earlier and 520 miles away in Zurich, Paul Brody got a call from IBM security: A kid was wandering the lab unattended.

“That’s not a child,” Brody told them. “That’s Vitalik. He’s a grown-up — he just looks really young.”

Paul Brody and Vitalik Buterin with IBM and Samsung executives at CES 2015, where IBM unveiled its first blockchain prototype built on Ethereum’s early code.

Paul Brody

At the time, Buterin was building the bones of Ethereum. The blockchain was still in its alpha stage, an early version of what would become a $420 billion platform rewiring Wall Street and powering decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenized markets across the globe.

Brody, then leading a research team at IBM, remembers how quickly the idea clicked.

“One of the guys on the research team came to me and said, ‘I’ve met this really interesting guy. He’s got a really cool idea…It’s like a version of bitcoin, but we’re going to make it much faster and programmable,'” he said. “And when he said that to me, I thought, ‘That’s it. That is what I want. That is what we need.'”

With Buterin’s help, IBM built its first blockchain prototype on Ethereum’s early code, unveiling it at CES in 2015 alongside Samsung. “That was how I ended up down this path,” Brody said. “I was done with all other technology and basically made the switch to blockchain.”

Even now, as EY’s global blockchain leader, Brody remembers feeling a pang of envy. “This is a kid, and it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was jealous of Vitalik… to be able to do that.”

He added, “I don’t think opportunities like that could have been surfaced when I was that age.”

Now, a decade later, that experiment has quietly rewired global markets.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“It’s very impressive, just how much the space has succeeded and grown into, beyond pretty much anyone’s expectations,” Buterin told CNBC in Cannes on the sidelines of the blockchain’s flagship event in Europe.

Buterin said the change over the past decade has been staggering. Ten years ago, he recalled, the crypto community was “just a very small space,” with only a handful of people working on bitcoin and a few other projects.

Since then, Ethereum has become “this big thing,” Buterin reflected, with major corporations now launching assets on both its base layer and layer-two networks. Parts of national economies are beginning to run on Ethereum infrastructure, a far cry from its cypherpunk origins.

But Buterin warned that mainstream adoption brings risks as well as benefits. One concern is that if too few issuers or intermediaries dominate, they could become “de facto controllers of the ecosystem.” He described a scenario where Ethereum might appear open, but, in practice, all the keys are managed by centralized providers.

“That’s the thing that we don’t want,” he said.

Prague to the Riviera

Two years earlier in Prague, CNBC met Buterin at Paralelní Polis, a sprawling industrial complex turned anarchist tech hub in the city’s Holešovice district. The building’s labyrinthine staircases and shadowed corridors felt like a physical map of the crypto world itself — part resistance movement, part experiment in reimagining power.

It was a place built on Václav Benda’s concept of a “parallel society,” where decentralized technologies offered refuge from state surveillance and control. It’s the kind of place where Buterin, a self-described nomad, found himself at home among cypherpunks and cryptographic idealists.

At the time, Buterin described crypto’s greatest utility not in speculative trading, but in helping people survive broken financial systems in emerging markets.

ETHPrague 2023 was held at Paralelní Polis in the Czech Republic.

Pavel Sinagl

“The stuff that we often find a bit basic and boring is exactly the stuff that brings lots of value,” he told CNBC at the time. “Just being able to plug into the international economy — these are things that they don’t have, and these are things that provide huge value for people there.”

Even in Prague, where coders worked to make payments fast and censorship-resistant, the technology felt like a resistance movement — privacy-preserving, anti-authoritarian, a lifeline in countries where banking collapses were common and money couldn’t be trusted.

This year, Buterin keynoted Ethereum’s flagship conference at the Palais des Festivals — the same red carpet venue that hosts movie stars each spring.

It was a fitting symbol of Ethereum’s journey: from underground hacker dens to a network that governments, banks, and brokerages are now racing to build upon.

Brody, who currently leads blockchain strategy at EY, says what matters most is how deeply Ethereum is integrating into traditional finance. “The global financial system is really nicely described as a whole network of pipes,” he said.

“What’s happening now is that Ethereum is getting plumbed into this infrastructure,” Brody continued, noting that until recently, crypto operated on entirely separate rails from traditional finance.

Now, he said, Ethereum is being wired directly into core transaction systems, setting the stage for massive financial flows — from investors to everyday savers — to migrate away from older mechanisms toward Ethereum-based platforms that can move money faster, at lower cost, and with more advanced functionality than legacy systems allow.

Ethereum Co-Founder Joe Lubin on Ethereum Treasurys as the cryptocurrency turns 10

Becoming the plumbing of Wall Street

Stablecoins — digital dollars that live on Ethereum — power trillions in payments, tokenized assets and funds are moving on-chain, and Robinhood recently rolled out tokenized U.S. equities via Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based layer two.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of all stablecoin activity.

Between Circle’s IPO and the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, now signed into law by President Donald Trump, regulators have new reason to engage with, rather than fight, this transformation.

Data from Deutsche Bank shows stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year — more than Mastercard and Visa combined. The bank itself has announced plans to build a tokenization platform on zkSync, a fast, cost-efficient Ethereum layer two designed to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Digital asset exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken are racing to capture this crossover between traditional securities and crypto.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains 'dual purpose' behind trading platform's new crypto offerings

As part of its quarterly earnings release, Coinbase said this week it’s launching tokenized stocks and prediction markets for U.S. users in the coming months, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last year, offering qualified investors on-chain access to yield with real-time redemptions settled in USDC.

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its staying power as the trusted network for global finance. Buterin told CNBC in Cannes that there’s a misconception about what institutions actually want.

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

He added that firms frequently ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Institutions are choosing various layer twos to meet specific needs — Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank zkSync, Coinbase and Kraken Optimism — but they all ultimately settle on Ethereum’s base layer.

“The value proposition of Ethereum is its global reach, its huge capital flows, its incredible programmability,” Brody said.

He added that the fact it isn’t the fastest blockchain or the one with the quickest settlement times “is secondary to the fact that it’s overall the most widely adopted and flexible system.”

Brody also believes history points toward consolidation. He said that in most technology standards wars, one platform ultimately dominates. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become that dominant programmability layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a risk-off, scarcity-driven asset.

Engineers, he said, “love to work on a standard… to scale on a standard,” and Ethereum has become precisely that.

Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, in Cannes for Europe’s largest annual gathering for the blockchain.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same pattern from inside the ecosystem.

“Institutions choose Ethereum over and over again for its values,” Stańczak said. “Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance.”

When institutions send an order to the market, they want to be sure that it’s treated fairly, that nobody has preference, and that the transaction is executed at the time when it’s delivered. “That’s what Ethereum guarantees,” added Stańczak.

Those assurances have become more valuable as traditional finance moves on-chain.

Scaling without losing its soul

Ethereum’s path hasn’t been smooth. The network has weathered spectacular booms and busts, rivals promising faster speeds, and criticism that it’s too slow or expensive for mass adoption. Yet it has outlasted nearly all early competitors.

In 2022, Ethereum replaced its old transaction validation method, proof-of-work — where armies of computers competed to solve puzzles — with proof-of-stake, where users lock up their ether as collateral to help secure the network. The shift cut Ethereum’s energy use by more than 99% and set the stage for upgrades aimed at making apps faster and cheaper to run on its base layer.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in Prague, where he finds refuge with like-minded programmers looking to change the world through cryptography-powered technology.

CNBC

The next decade will test whether Ethereum can scale without compromise.

Buterin said the first priority is getting Ethereum to “the finish line” in terms of its technical goals. That means improving scalability and speed without sacrificing its core principles of decentralization and security — and ideally making those properties even stronger.

Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, could dramatically increase transaction capacity while making it possible to verify that the chain is following the rules of the protocol on something as small as a smartwatch.

There are also algorithmic changes the team already knows are needed to protect Ethereum against large-scale computing attacks. Implementing those, Buterin said, is part of the path to making Ethereum “a really valuable part of global infrastructure that helps make the internet and the economy a more free and open place.”

Buterin believes the real change won’t come with fireworks. He said it may already be unfolding years before most people recognize it.

“This type of disruption doesn’t feel like overturning the existing system,” he said. “It feels like building a new thing that just keeps growing and growing until eventually more and more people realize you don’t even have to look at the old thing if you didn’t want to.”

Ethereum marks 10 years of development. Here's what's next for the network

Brody can already see hints of that future. Wire transfers are moving on-chain, assets like stocks and real estate are being tokenized, and eventually, he said, businesses will run entire contracts — the money, the products, the terms and conditions — automatically on a single, shared infrastructure.

That shift, Brody added, won’t simply copy old financial systems onto new technology.

“One of the lessons from technology adoption is that it’s not that we replace like for like,” he said. “When new things come along, we tend to build on a new technology infrastructure. My key hypothesis is that as we build new financial products, it will be attractive to build them on blockchain rails — and we’ll try to do things on blockchain rails that we can’t do today.”

If Brody and Buterin are right, the real disruption won’t make headlines. It’ll simply become the way money moves, unseen and unstoppable.

WATCH: Robinhood hits record high as OpenAI, SpaceX go on-chain

Robinhood hits record high as OpenAI, SpaceX go on-chain

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US military is buying Tesla Cybertrucks to use as targets for missiles

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7 hours ago

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August 7, 2025

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US military is buying Tesla Cybertrucks to use as targets for missiles

Elon Musk is getting his wish; Tesla Cybertrucks are going to be used by the US military, but perhaps not in the way he intended.

The U.S. Air Force is looking to purchase two Tesla Cybertrucks and use them for what amounts to target practice.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has touted the Cybertruck as being “bulletproof” and designed to “survive the apocalypse.” He suggested it could be used by the military and even directly pitched the electric pickup truck to the US military.

Considering that the Cybertruck has turned out to be a commercial flop and Tesla is currently experiencing issues selling it, despite reduced production, the automaker could benefit from a Cybertruck order from the US military.

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It looks like it is about to get one.

According to new documents first obtained by ‘The War Zone‘, the U.S. Air Force Test Center (AFTC) is looking to acquire 33 target vehicles—including two Tesla Cybertrucks—for delivery to the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico,

The list of requested vehicles includes various sedans, pickups, SUVs, and bongo trucks, but there are no specific brand requirements for those, except for the Cybertrucks.

They plan to use these vehicles as targets for precision-guided weapons. Why would they need a specific vehicle such as the Cybertruck?

In the document, they had to explain the reason behind requesting a vehicle from a specific brand. They wrote:

[Redacted] intends to use specific Tesla manufactured vehicles for target vehicle training flight test events. In the operating theatre it is likely the type of vehicles used by the enemy may transition to Tesla Cyber trucks as they have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact. Testing needs to mirror real world situations. The intent of the training is to prep the units for operations by simulating scenarios as closely as possible to the real world situations.

It sounds like the justification is that the US military believes that its enemies might start using the Tesla Cybertruck, and it wants to make sure its weapons work on it.

Here’s the document in question:

Electrek’s Take

That’s pretty funny. The US military is buying Tesla Cybertrucks to use as targets to shoot missiles at because they think enemies might start using them.

The jokes write themselves. You read that headline, and you would think that it’s Trump trying to get back to Musk by literally blowing up his dumpster of a truck.

However, the most astonishing aspect is that the US military is not wrong here.

As we previously reported, Chechen leader and self-proclaimed “Putin’s foot soldier” Ramzan Kadyrov managed to obtain a couple of Cybertrucks, which he outfitted with guns. Then he claimed that they went to war in Ukraine.

Now, less than a year later, the US military wants to ensure it is equipped to take down Cybertrucks.

Anyway, good for Tesla. It needs all the Cybertruck sales it can get, considering it is currently selling them at a rate of 20,000 per year when Musk aimed for 500,000 a year.

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Genesis quietly dropped this EV from its US lineup

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11 hours ago

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August 6, 2025

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Genesis quietly dropped this EV from its US lineup

Genesis-EV-US

The Genesis Electrified G80 will no longer be sold in the US. Genesis has already pulled the luxury EV sedan from its website.

Genesis pulls the Electrified G80 EV from its US lineup

The Electrified G80 went on sale in the US in the first half of 2023, but has struggled to gain any momentum. Last year, Genesis introduced an updated model with longer range, more interior space, and added luxury, claiming it’s now at the flagship level.

Those in the US may never get to see it. Genesis has already removed the Electrified G80 from its website, with only the GV60 and Electrified GV70 now listed.

The luxury car maker confirmed to Car and Driver on Wednesday that the electric G80 sedan is no longer being offered in North America.

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Genesis explained that “the customer is at the core of every decision we make, and we remain flexible as we adapt to ever-changing consumer needs and market conditions.”

Genesis-G80-EV-US
Genesis Electrified G80 updated model (Source: Hyundai)

The 2024 Electrified G80 was the final model year, and the 2025 version was never sold in the US. Powered by an 87 kWh battery, the Electrified G80 was rated with an EPA-estimated range of 282 miles. Although the updated model boasted a larger battery (94.5 kWh) with increased range (up to 295 miles) in Korea, it still falls short of rivals like the Lucid Air or Tesla Model S.

Genesis sold just 397 models in 2024 and another 77 in the first half of 2025. In comparison, Lucid sold over 5,000 Air sedans in H1, while Tesla has sold 2,715 Model S sedans in the US.

Genesis-Electrified-G80-interior
The interior of the new Genesis Electrified G80 update (Source: Hyundai)

Although Korean automakers, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, dodged the maximum 25% tariff, they will still face a 15% duty on imported vehicles. As its slowest-selling EV, it’s no surprise to see Genesis dropping it from its lineup.

With the $7,500 federal tax credit expiring at the end of September, Genesis is pushing big discounts on its remaining EV models.

Genesis is offering an $18,000 EV Lease Bonus on the 2025 Electrified GV70 and $13,750 bonus for the 2025 GV60. Leases currently start as low as $389 per month.

Looking to test one out for yourself? You can use our links below to view 2025 Genesis GV60 and Electrified GV70 models in your area.

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Bluetti’s new Elite 30 V2 288Wh station gets first savings starting from $199, Segway F3 smart eKickScooter $750, NIU e-scooter sale, more

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11 hours ago

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August 6, 2025

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Bluetti's new Elite 30 V2 288Wh station gets first savings starting from 9, Segway F3 smart eKickScooter 0, NIU e-scooter sale, more

Headlining today’s Green Deals is the first discount hitting Bluetti’s new Elite 30 V2 Portable Power Station, which also has an additional solar bundle offer starting from $199. We also spotted the first post-tariff discount from Segway on its new Ninebot F3 Electric KickScooter to $750, as well as NIU’s Fan-tastic Day Sale that is taking up to 42% off its KQi lineup of scooters, including the KQi 300X All-Terrain Suspension Electric Scooter that is back at the best price of 2025 for $750, among others. We also have a new low price on Greenworks’ 82V Commercial 20-inch Cordless Chainsaw kit and a one-day-only discount on Worx’s 12A 7.5-inch Edger/Trencher, and more waiting for you below. Plus, all the hangover savings are at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s Anker SOLIX Summer Power Sale offers, Ride1Up’s increased e-bike savings, and more.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

Get up to $200 in first savings on Bluetti’s new Elite 30 V2 portable 288Wh LiFePO4 power station starting from $199

Back on Friday, Bluetti launched its new Apex 300 Versatile Power Station with up to $3,150 in exclusive savings that has had fans of the brand buzzing, while also eclipsing another new and more compact release. Now, with its latest Solar Generator Sale, Bluetti is cutting the cost on its Elite 30 V2 Portable Power Station to $199 shipped, with that price matching at Amazon for Prime members, bringing it down from the $299 price tag. It just hit the market at the top of the month, but as I said, its release was overshadowed by the larger and more expansive Apex 300 unit and its bundles. You can score a $100 markdown now, though, which sets the bar for future discounts, with a solar bundle option for this model that tacks on a 100W panel for $398 shipped, down from $598.

While larger solar generator setups can help through many situations, more and more people are finding convenience in owning smaller backup power solutions, especially here in NYC, with many folks having limited space to keep them. That’s where units like Bluetti’s Elite 30 V2 Portable Power Station come in, which offers a 288Wh LiFePO4 capacity to cover personal device charging with 600W of steady output that can ramp as high as 1,500W.

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Bluetti’s Elite 30 V2 power station has nine different port options to cover all the bases: two AC outlets, two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, two DC ports, and a car port. It even beats out many counterparts/competitors of the same size range with five ways to recharge its battery: via a standard outlet, utilizing up to a max 200W solar input, using both an outlet and solar panels together, connecting a generator, or using your car’s auxiliary port.

You can get the full rundown on Bluetti’s other new and more expansive release, the Apex 300 Versatile Power Station with up to $3,150 in exclusive savings across several bundle options – all starting from $1,439.

man riding down street on Segway Ninebot F3 Electric KickScooter

Segway’s Ninebot F3 smart eKickScooter with Apple Find My + proximity locking gets first post-tariff cut to $750

Segway is offering a special promotional discount through August 17 on its new Ninebot F3 Electric KickScooter at $749.99 shipped, after using the code F3AUG100OFF at checkout, which beats out Amazon’s pricing by $50.This model launched back in April carrying a $850 original price tag (which Amazon still keeps it listed for) and has since hiked up to a $1,000 MSRP direct from the brand after May’s tariff hikes. The two pre-tariff discounts we saw took the costs down to $700 and $600 back in April, and while it may not be falling that low any anytime soon again, you’re still looking at a solid $100 savings from its starting rate for the third-lowest price we have tracked.

If you want to learn more about this model, be sure to check out our original coverage of this ongoing deal here.

man standing on NIU KQi 300X all-terrain suspension electric scooter

NIU drops the KQi 300X all-terrain e-scooter with a 37-mile range and regen brakes to $750 in latest sale

NIU has launched its Fan-tastic Day Sale through August 17 that is taking up to 42% off its KQi e-scooter lineup. Some of the brand’s models are still out of stock from last month, but among those still available, we spotted the KQi 300X All-Terrain Suspension Electric Scooter at $749.99 shipped, while also matching in price at Amazon. While it carries a $1,299 MSRP normally, at Amazon we’ve been seeing it mostly staying between $1,049 and $1,198, with discounts having been slowly ramping up over the course of the year. You’re looking at the best price of 2025, which saves you $549 off the MSRP and has only been beaten out by the $731 low we last saw pop up in October 2024.

If you want to learn more about this model or the other e-scooter deals, be sure to check out our original coverage of this sale here.

man uses Greenworks 82V 20-inch cordless chainsaw to fell tree

Add commercial-grade power to your arsenal with Greenworks’ 82V 20-inch cordless chainsaw at a new $430 low

Amazon is now offering the Greenworks Commercial 82V 20-inch Cordless Chainsaw for $429.99 shipped. While it carries a $600 MSRP tag directly from the brand, where it’s currently priced at, we’ve seen it keep lower to $500 at Amazon. It’s been on the market for six months now, with the discounts we’ve spotted only taken the costs down to $450 until today. Now, with the 20% markdown here, you’ll save $70 while equipping your arsenal with commercial-grade power.

If you want to learn more about this commercial-grade chainsaw, be sure to check out our original coverage of this deal here.

Worx's 12A 7.5-inch Lawn Edger/Trencher creating perfect line into lawn

Keep uniform lines around yard and gardens with Worx’s 12A 7.5-inch edger/trencher at $90 (Today only)

As part of its Deals of the Day, Best Buy is offering the Worx 12A 7.5-inch Edger/Trencher for $89.99 shipped, with this model being out of stock on Amazon and sitting at a higher $140 MSRP directly from Worx’s website. It normally fetches $130 at full price here, with discounts mostly keeping the costs between $110 and $100 during 2025, though we have seen it go as low as $75 during Prime Day. You’re looking at the fourth-lowest overall price that we have tracked and the third-lowest of the year, with the deal today saving you $40 off the going rate for the rest of the day only.

If you want to learn more about this edger/trencher, be sure to check out our original coverage of this one-day-only deal here.

Best Summer EV deals!

Best new Green Deals landing this week

The savings this week are also continuing to a collection of other markdowns. To the same tune as the offers above, these all help you take a more energy-conscious approach to your routine. Winter means you can lock in even better off-season price cuts on electric tools for the lawn while saving on EVs and tons of other gear.

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