Charles Hoskinson, the founder of the Cardano blockchain, has recently expressed that Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, has an 18% chance of becoming a prisoner.
Hoskinson’s latest negative remark towards the Ethereum figure follows Buterin’s repeated appearance on a ranking of the most influential figures in the crypto community.
Vitalik Buterin’s 18% Chance Prison Sentence
In a recent tweet, CoinDesk disclosed that Vitalik Buterin has emerged four times since 2014 as the Most Influential crypto personality in its ranking. Buterin has appeared more times than other prominent personalities, such as Do Kwon of Terra Luna, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) of Binance, Gary Gensler of the U.S. SEC, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, and Jack Dorsey of Twitter (now X).
Balaji Srinivasan, former Chief Technology Officer of Coinbase and the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, made three appearances on CoinDesk’s ranking. Aside from the two, all other crypto-based personalities have made just two appearances.
Given Vitalik Buterin’s repeated emergence, CoinDesk posted a question seeking opinions from the crypto community on whether Buterin would make the fifth appearance in the 2023 ranking.
Charles Hoskinson weighed in on the conversation. However, instead of commenting on Vitalik Buterin’s influential status, he tilted the discussion in another direction. In particular, Hoskinson remarked:
“Appearing on Coindesk’s most influential list carries an 18 percent chance of a prison sentence,” teasing it as some ‘fun fact.’
Fast Fact: appearing on Coindesk's most influential list carries an 18 percent chance of a prison sentence https://t.co/SdAOqcPOPQ
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) December 3, 2023
Notably, the foundation of Hoskinson’s “18% chance of prison” is that of the 16 crypto personalities in the CoinDesk ranking, three have had devastating legal encounters with prison sentences in sight.
Three of 16 is 18.75%. Therefore, Hoskinson argued that each individual on CoinDesk’s personality rankings has an 18% chance of facing a prison sentence.
Crypto Community Reacts
Meanwhile, some crypto community members argued Hoskinson appears jealous because he has failed to feature in the ranks of the most influential crypto personalities. Crypto Youtuber Lex Blazer remarked:
“I know CoinDesk is biased against you, but damn, not even once? How many blockchain features has Cardano pioneered at scale?”
Others contended that the Cardano founder was intentionally refusing to acknowledge that “Vitalik is the greatest of all time (GOAT).”
It is worth mentioning that Hoskinson and the Ethereum community have been at loggerheads, which all stemmed from Hoskinson’s removal from the Ethereum cycle years ago.