Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the second-largest blockchain network, doesn’t fancy the idea of purchasing digital currencies, like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH), with personal loans. Judging by his statement on Twitter today, Buterin believes that betting on the future price of cryptocurrencies with borrowed funds isn’t worth the risk. Although taking loans to invest in certain assets is so common for many people, it’s quite on a high-risk side in crypto, due to volatility.
Buterin’s take on buying crypto with loans
First of all, Buterin made his thoughts known after seeing a tweet from a Bitcoiner on December 20. In the tweet, the Bitcoin investor jokingly said he took out about US$46,250 loan at 7.9 percent, to purchase about 2.55 Bitcoin. At the due time (2026), the investor predicted that the cryptocurrency would surpass US$22,000 per BTC. Someone else responded to the tweet, asking how to get through with his loan.
Perhaps, this attracted the attention of the Ethereum co-founder, who discouraged the whole idea. More like a warning, Buterin wrote:
“Please don’t do things like this. I would NEVER recommend anyone take out a personal loan to buy ETH or other ethereum assets. […] 7 years ago, before ethereum even began, I had only a few thousand dollars of net worth. I nevertheless sold half my bitcoin to make sure that I would not be broke if BTC went to zero.”
The Ethereum co-founder, meanwhile, boasts of an estimated net worth of $400 million to $500 million currently, following the success of Ethereum network, especially.
But MicroStrategy issues debts to buy Bitcoin
MicroStrategy, a publicly-traded business intelligence company, has been bullishly stacking lots of Bitcoin on its reserve in recent months. Some weeks ago, the company issued about US$550 million in debt to purchase more Bitcoin. When asked about his opinion on this, in regards to his statement, Buterin replied:
“Isn’t the microstrategy thing just them trying to turn their company into a de-facto bitcoin ETF for regulatory arbitrage purposes?”