During the October 8 episode of the Marginal Revolution podcast, economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok made an unusual pick by choosing Ethereum’s (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin as the deserved winner of the upcoming 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics. According to Cowen, Buterin deserves the award for monetarily
contributing to economics by creating a currency and following the footsteps of the Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Nobel Prize for Economics awards also referred to as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, was established
by Alfred Nobel in 1895.Each September, the Economics Prize Committee of the Academy, made up of five elected members,
submits invitations to thousands of scientists and University professors in different countries to nominate a candidate for
the prize in economics. Upon receipt of all proposals and attached evidence, the Prize Committee and specially appointed
experts review them and choose the potential laureates.
Having carefully assessed the criteria, Tabarrok emphasized that Buterin has continued to contribute towards the mechanism
design of Ethereum through its groundbreaking transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).As we reported, this move reduced energy
consumption by 99% and was executed with no major disruption. Explaining how interesting this sounds, Tabarrok likened
this transition to a popular video where four Saudi Arabian men managed to change two tires of a car while driving on the
other two tires.
Buterin, who co-founded Ethereum with four others, has been at the forefront of the community and has bagged several
awards in the process. In 2014, he was awarded the prestigious IT software prize at the 2014 World Technology Awards
after beating the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and others. A few months before that, he obtained a maintenance grant of
$100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship to enable him to progress his project. Today, Ethereum is the second largest crypto
asset with a market capitalization of $289 billion.
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