Vitalik Buterin Criticizes El Salvador President’s Mandatory Bitcoin Adoption Policy

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of

Ethereum, spoke out against President Nayib Bakele’s mandatory bitcoin usage for merchants. He said it was against the “ideals .”

” of cryptocurrency.

Buterin commented in response to a Reddit article titled “Unpopular opinion: El Salvador President Mr. Nayab (Nayib) Bukele should not be praised by Crypto community.”
The Ethereum co-founder didn’t hesitate to mention “Bitcoin Maximalists,” who he believed were praising the El Salvadoran President without critiquing.

“Shame on everyone (ok, fine, I’ll call out the main people responsible: shame on Bitcoin maximalists) who are uncritically praising him.”

Buterin said that Bitcoin maximalists are easy to please when someone in authority does something or speaks in favor of BTC.
President Nayib Bukele has been facing criticism from opponents and the international community ever since El Salvador’s legislators voted in favor of making the cryptocurrency a legal tender earlier this year.
The so-called Bitcoin Law was enacted in September. El Salvadorans were also allowed to access the Chivo wallet app by the government.
But Buterin called mass adoption of Bitcoin “reckless,” stating:

“Additionally, this tactic of pushing BTC to millions of people in El Salvador at the same time with almost no attempt at prior education is reckless, and risks a large number of innocent people getting hacked or scammed.”

However, President Bukele stated earlier that bitcoin adoption was optional for citizens in El Salvador.

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Ethereum at a Crossroads: Will ETH Fall to $1,250?

The largest altcoin by market cap has been among the biggest underperformers during the late 2024/early 2025 bull run, which saw many assets, including BTC, chart fresh peaks.

ETH’s most recent performance has been even more painful, as the asset dumped to its lowest level since November 2023 at under $1,800. The question raised now by analysts is whether ETH will continue losing ground and dump to $1,250.

ETH at $1,250?

Remember 2021? Back then, ETH was charting massive gains and its price soared toward $5,000. In fact, speculations emerged about a potential event called the ‘flippening,’ in which Ethereum could surpass Bitcoin and become the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

Fast-forward some three and a half years later and that seems as distant from reality as fiat money becoming disinflationary. ETH bottomed below $1,000 during the 2022 bear market but went on the offensive again two years later. It failed to decisively overcome the $4,000 target despite its numerous attempts to conquer it in 2024. The latest rejection came in mid-December.

Since then, ETH’s price has nosedived hard, which culminated (for now) earlier this week with a drop below $1,800. As such, Ethereum not only erased all the gains registered after Trump’s presidential election victory but even plunged to its lowest levels since November 2023.

According to Ali Martinez, a crypto analyst with over 130,000 followers on X, the asset’s price drop meant that it had broken out of a years-long parallel channel, which could spell further trouble. In fact, he forecasted a slump to $1,250 – a level not seen in over two years.

#Ethereum $ETH targets $1,250 after breaking out from this parallel channel! pic.twitter.com/XS3N9p8Unr

— Ali (@ali_charts) March 14, 2025

But ETH Whales Keep Buying

CryptoPotato has repeatedly reported in recent weeks Ethereum whales’ predominantly bullish behavior. Recall that within a 48-hour period alone, they accumulated 1.1 million ETH, which is nearly 1% of the total supply. At the prices back then, it was worth over $2 billion in USD.

Martinez brought another chart showing that these large entities acquired more than 420,000 ETH in the following five days, valued at $800 million at today’s prices. Such massive accumulations should benefit the underlying asset as they decrease the immediate selling pressure. However, ETH’s price is yet to stage a notable recovery as it still sits below $2,000.

Whales have bought more than 420,000 #Ethereum $ETH in the last five days! pic.twitter.com/ZFF57gbq0e

— Ali (@ali_charts) March 14, 2025

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Ethereum

Why Is Ethereum (ETH) Falling Without Major Liquidations? ITB Breaks It Down

The price of ether (ETH) has been steadily declining for months, with this plunge taking a turn for the worse recently. However, the market intelligence firm IntoTheBlock found that the latest dip did not trigger huge liquidations compared to previous events.

According to an IntoTheBlock tweet, ETH liquidations have remained relatively moderate despite the cryptocurrency dropping to levels not seen in more than a year.

ETH Is Dipping Without Major Liquidations

IntoTheBlock says the moderate liquidations can be traced to a significant decline in high-risk loans across lending platforms. Investors are taking a risk-off stance as they apply more caution in their positions. This is likely driven by macro concerns regarding potential global tariff tensions.

The United States has been knee-deep in economic uncertainty for a while after President Donald Trump imposed tariffs against its major trade partners, including China, Canada, and Mexico.

Although some industry analysts believe the trade tariffs will positively impact cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin (BTC), in the long term, the market has experienced high volatility since Trump made the announcements earlier last month. On the day Trump imposed the tariffs, about $400 billion was wiped out from the market, with the overall capitalization falling by at least 11% within 24 hours.

According to CoinMarketCap data, ETH has nosedived from the $2,800 level to at least $1,760 since early February. The second-largest crypto asset has been struggling, and just this week, it fell by roughly 13% after failing to hold a support level above $2,000. The coin is now trading at levels not seen since 2023. It was worth $1,900 at the time of writing.

ETH Price Outlook

CryptoPotato reported that ETH buyers have retreated and found support at the $1,800 level. However, it remains uncertain if ETH has bottomed and if this support level will be strong enough to reduce the selling pressure and allow the asset to start a recovery.

At its current price, ether is roughly 60% down from its mid-December high of $3,990. Unfortunately, further down pressure could drag the asset to $1,600. These possible scenarios, coupled with Ethereum’s underperformance against Bitcoin, have fueled investor caution.

Meanwhile, IntoTheBlock discovered a few days ago that ETH holders may be seeing this dip as a buying opportunity and are loading up on the asset. This is seen in the amount of ETH that left crypto exchanges last week—$1.8 billion worth of assets, marking the highest weekly amount since December 2022.

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Ethereum

Ethereum Double Trouble: ETH Prices Fall Below $1,800 Price Crash Amid Testnet Attack

Crypto market capitalization has tanked to its lowest point since early November with $240 billion getting wiped out over the past day.

This has resulted in a 6% fall to $2.6 trillion as all post-US election gains have now been wiped out.

Ethereum has taken the brunt of the fall, losing a whopping 16% over 12 hours as it fell from around $2,140 to just below $1,800. Moreover, ETH is struggling to recover and was trading at $1,860 at the time of writing.

ETH Death?

The last time Ethereum traded below $1,800 was in October 2023, when it was slowly emerging from the two-year-long bear market.

There is solid support at current levels, which must be held to prevent the asset from tanking back to bear market lows following the formation of what appears to be a double-top chart pattern.

Analysts have warned that if support here is lost, ETH could fall as low as $1,200.

Ethereum is currently down a painful 62% from its all-time high in 2021, and the ETH/BTC ratio – which is a measure of the price of ETH in terms of Satoshis – is at its lowest level since December 2020, having fallen to 0.023 today, according to Tradingview.

Only Dogecoin (DOGE) had heavier losses than Ethereum in the crypto top twenty today, with the memecoin melting by 11%.

It does beg the question of who would be selling ETH at $2,000 and the answer appears to be whales that are trying to avoid being liquidated, according to Lookonchain.

Needless to say, the Ethereum derision and FUD had escalated to new heights on Crypto Twitter as traders and investors licked their wounds.

Ethereum Testnet Attacked

The ETH angst has been exacerbated by problems with Pectra testing and an unknown attacker sending zero-token transfers, causing empty blocks.

On March 9, Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden said the issue had been fixed:

“We suspected that the attacker was reading some of our chats, so we decided not to publicize the fix, but only update a few nodes that we controlled in order to get more full blocks on the network,”

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