Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Tells Investors To Diversify, Gets Hammered On X

Updated: 08 January 2024

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin advised investors to diversify and be ”boring” with most of their investment portfolio, triggering a landslide of criticism by users on social media platform X.

Buterin said diversification is good and urged people to save until they can “cover multiple years of expenses,” while telling them to ”just don’t” use more than 2x leverage.

He was responding to a tweet by X user alex_avoigt, who claimed that Bill Gates had started diversifying his portfolio by selling some of his Microsoft shares after meeting legendary investor Warren Buffett

“Be careful with diversification,” he said. “Bill Gates’ fortune today is 138 billion dollars, if he hadn’t diversified it would be 1.33 trillion dollars. Be careful with diversification and with friends who recommend it.”

After Bill Gates became friends with Warren Buffett, he began to diversify his portfolio and sold Microsoft shares.

Bill Gates' fortune today is 138 billion dollars, if he hadn't diversified it would be 1.33 trillion dollars.

Be careful with diversification and with friends who… pic.twitter.com/7ZLT6NkgBS

— Alex (@alex_avoigt) January 6, 2024

Buterin called that ”awful advice” and proceeded to provide his own, which is when the wrath of X descended on him.

This is awful advice. Some actual financial advice:

* Diversification is good.
* Save. Get to the point where you have enough to cover multiple years of expenses. Financial safety is freedom.
* Be boring with most of your portfolio.
* Don't use >2x leverage. Just don't. https://t.co/CIvDJcD3UG

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 7, 2024

X Users Hit Back At Buterin’s Advice

A crypto investor named CoinMamba replied to Buterin’s post, saying, “Good advice if you are already a millionaire. But these don’t apply to someone who is trying to get rich.”

Tether and VanEck strategist Gabor Gurbacs also replied to Buterin’s post, asking whether he was “still selling ETH.” The X user Dark Crypto Lady asked the same question and accused Buterin and his “friends” of continuing to sell Ethereum.

“This doesn’t sound bullish,” said, Autism Capital, while the commodities and futures trader Googly was disgruntled with the leading altcoin’s underperformance.

“I can’t take this advice anymore,” said Googly. “I have over-invested in ETH, by a lot. It is what it is. Every day I am checking price and it’s underperforming.”

As fate would have it, the Ethereum price was down 0.6% to trade at $2,225.38 as of 5:40 AM EST. ETH was also down almost 10% from its 2024 high of $2,434, which it recorded on Jan. 2.