Bankless founder Ryan Sean Adams has opined that Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin should get nominated for a Nobel prize in economics. 

“The fact that he’s barely considered shows how much ivory tower economists are disconnected from applied theory. Future generations will judge their absence harshly,” he said. 

During a recent episode of The Marginal Revolution Podcast, co-creators and econ professors Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen noted that none of the prominent economists made any contributions to the theory of crypto. 

The podcast hosts have said there is no economist who has more to say on the topics that Buterin writes on. 

Buterin managed to refute the regression theorem proposed by Ludwig von Mises, which argues that money tends to derive its value from its historical use with intrinsic value. Hence, this theorem assumes that the demand for money is regressive. However, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum seemingly refute this theory since they have neither historical utility nor intrinsic value. 

Even though Satoshi might be the leading candidate to get a Nobel prize in economics, the identity of the Bitcoin creator remains unknown. As reported by U.Today, Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz recently suggested that Satoshi is likely dead. 

Buterin, of course, continued to contribute toward the mechanism design of Ethereum. 

That said, it is unlikely that a Nobel Committee would opt for such unorthodox winners. 

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics was received by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson whose work has explored the link between economic development and societal institutions.