PANews reported on January 24 that according to The Block, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on social media on Thursday that political tokens could lead to "unlimited" bribes. Buterin's comments are part of a broader discussion around the development trends in the cryptocurrency industry, especially in the context of political leaders such as US President Trump embracing cryptocurrencies. Buterin pointed out that some parts of the industry conflict with each other due to their short-term and long-term value, and compared it to "highly addictive mobile games" and chess.
“Over the past year, we are entering a new order where the most powerful people in the world are now cheering the idea of anyone creating a token for anything at any scale,” Buterin wrote on X. “So it’s time to discuss the difference between short-term ‘sugar high’ fun that is not recommended to newbies, and long-term fulfillment and wealth accumulation. It’s not that ‘fun is bad,’ but rather similar to the difference between modern highly addictive mobile games and chess or World of Warcraft. It’s time to discuss the fact that large-scale political tokens cross another line: they are not just a source of fun, where harm is at most limited to mistakes made by willing participants, they are a vehicle for unlimited political bribery, including from foreign governments.”
Two of the most recently announced large-scale political tokens are TRUMP and MELANIA, both of which are associated with President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. Both tokens were launched before Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, and experienced significant price drops shortly after.