My only contact with Vitalik Buterin was after I read a glowing article he penned last year on Kennilworth Exploration, a bitcoin security at the time listed on BitFunder:
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/5316/kenilworth-exploration-bitcoin-crowd-investing-meets-real-world-mining/.
I alerted him to some inaccuracies in the story, and the strong probability that it was a scam.
He replied that he had done all the necessary DD and was assured it was a bone fide operation, and was confident in his article, and in the company. [incidentally the first response to my warning came from Elizabeth Ploshay, then Customer Service Manager for Bitcoin Magazine, now on the Bitcoin Foundation; I hope there's no other link here]
As it transpires, Kennilworth has turned out to be a scam and investors lost all their money. (Kennilworth thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=222746.0.) Skimming through that thread one might notice the infamous UKYO chimes in: " ... the promise of Gold is 100%. It is more of a question of exactly "how much". Ukyo is of course infamous for abruptly shutting down weexchange and stealing over 90% of depositor's funds, and also for his involvement with Neo&Bee.
So I wonder - did Vitalik have anything to gain from promoting Kennilworth? These days he seems to be all over the planet promoting Ethereum, and given his publishing/media background maybe that is quite fitting. And yes he is also a smart coder. I have this lingering doubt.
Did this 'genius boy wonder' really not have a clue that Kennilworth was a scam (and fairly obvious at that)?
And simply floating Ethereum with no substance whatever seems to me to have all the hallmarks of a 'take the money, go silent, and disappear into the ether' scam. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
It may be a circumstantial connection, but I felt like I should at least put it out there. Who knows, maybe someone can cleanly refute it and give me and maybe others more faith that Ethereum will really have more substance than it's name suggests.
