Vitalik Buterin reclaims the cryptocurrency community’s right to redefine ‘inflation’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claimed that the cryptocurrency community has already “claimed the right to butcher” the word inflation.

Buterin’s comments came in response to a post by X from digital media company Axios, which said the word “inflation” now means higher prices rather than rising costs.

As X Community Notes (CN) suggests, despite the “sarcastic” nature of the Axios post, CN stated that “the definition of inflation does not change.”

Buterin’s Farcaster post debated Axios’ definition of inflation by arguing that the cryptocurrency community has already established a redefinition of the word.

“(…) We have already decided that this now just means ‘an increase in the aggregate supply of money’.”

Buterin’s rebuttal to the Axios post garnered support from other Farcaster users, including former Coinbase employee Binji.eth.

Traditionally, inflation refers to an increase in the general price level of goods and services, which reduces the purchasing power of money because it becomes less valuable.

But the semantic shift in culturally redefining inflation, as Buterin explains, suggests that ongoing global inflation stems from an essentially unlimited “aggregate supply.”

Related: Ethereum validator P2P.org enables ETH re-staking on EigenLayer.

Tech investor Lee Edwards criticized Axios’ initial X joke post:

“You can educate your readers instead of confirming their misconceptions.”

Buterin has visited Farcaster several times recently to push for community-driven solutions and initiatives that prioritize privacy and exploit remediation.

From proposing a solution to Ethereum’s Miner Extracted Value (MEV) problem to advocating for zero-knowledge (ZK) proof social media expansion, Buterin’s involvement in the decentralized community is not surprising.

However, he has yet to address the growing community concerns regarding Ethereum Foundation researchers Dankrad Feist and Justin Drake joining EigenLayer.

The decision to become an advisor to EigenLayer in exchange for significant compensation in EIGEN tokens has sparked significant debate in the cryptocurrency community.

Some community members supported the transparency of the disclosure, while others criticized the decision, suggesting “huge rewards” would influence the decision.

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