Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Calls Out Misleading ICO Marketing

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum , today issued a public warning on social media for cryptocurrency and ICO (initial coin offering) investors to avoid doing business with projects that are misleadingly marketed as being connected to him.

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Buterin wrote: "Please do not put a single ETH into token sales that show a selfie with me to signify endorsement when in reality I barely know who they are." As he is known to be very active in the community, attending hackathons, meetups and conventions all the time, issuing friendly advice and taking photos with everyone that approaches him, a great deal of people have such Buterin selfies.

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Only earlier this month, during a trip to Israel, he warned that "we are in an ICO bubble".

During that trip he also said: “If most ICOs fail, that is a risk (to Ethereum itself). We need to avoid over-publicizing these projects. The way to evaluate them is mostly by the résumé of the people in charge because there is no real way to judge such new projects.

That is why there are projects that declare they are linked to this or that organization or even me – even if I am not linked to them. In the long run, the market will need to find a way to judge which projects make sense and what their appropriate worth is. It is not clear how things will look in a year or two. In the end the market will need to cool down. A lot of projects will fail and people will lose money.”