Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, believes that ETH could be a viable alternative to Sweden and Norway’s attempts to make society cashless. The country recently pulled back after discovering that centralized payment systems collapse when physical infrastructure fails.
However, in the crypto world, this movement has prompted a different response. The idea is that a distributed system can take on that role.
“The Nordics are walking the initiative of the Cashless Association because centralized implementation of the concept is too vulnerable,” wrote Vitak Baterin, co-founder of Ethereum, in X. Guardian Both countries now report that they are requiring citizens to maintain cash reserves.
Nordic is walking the Cashless Society initiative because centralized implementation of the concept is so vulnerable. It turns out that cash is needed as a backup.
Ethereum must be sufficient and private enough to be able to play this kind of role in a reliable way. …pic.twitter.com/efvyt254qn
– vitalik.eth (@vitalikbuterin) May 25, 2025
Sweden cut cash usage to just 1% of transactions while Norwegian VIPPS app dominated the commercial transaction, but the Russian Ukrainian invasion revealed a serious vulnerability if infrastructure attacks could paralyze the entire payment network.
Reflecting his emotions, Buterin said, “It turns out that cash is necessary as a backup.”
Looking at his own garden, Butarin raised measured observations of cases in Sweden and Norwegian.
“Ethereum needs to be sufficient and private enough to be able to play this kind of role in a reliable way,” he wrote.
Cash vs Code
response Decrypt’s Inquiries regarding Buterin’s statement, Sam Macpherson, CEO of decentralized financial protocol development company Phoenix Labs, disagrees with the evaluation of the co-founders of Ethereum.
“Ethereum is already there. It’s designed to be as resilient as possible to hostile actors,” MacPherson said, pointing to managing billions without major failures.
Such a distributed system, he argued, is “designed to be as safe as possible from scratch.”
Still, offline capabilities rank as one of the main challenges when Ethereum assumes the role of providing a more resilient alternative to cash. Without electricity or the internet, Ethereum would not work on its own.
On the other hand, proofs of zero knowledge, as Baterin pointed out in his answer, can theoretically allow offline payments, but they remain experimental.
“We basically know how to do that, but there’s the limitation that any solution relies on reliable hardware,” Buterin says.
You can open another opportunity with Stablecoins. Stablecoins are fixed to Fiat currencies such as the US dollar.
“Stablecoins is the exact solution to this scenario,” said Anthony Anzalone, founder of Walletless Blockchain Platform Xion. Decryption. Stubcoin “exploded with use and adoption” because it “doesn’t rely on one centralised party,” he explained.
@rohangrey had many deep thoughts in this direction.
We basically know how to do that, but there is the limitation that any solution relies on post-enforcement on reliable hardware and double spenders.
– vitalik.eth (@vitalikbuterin) May 25, 2025
Countries with “unstable governments and currencies” are the most obvious use cases and context, Anzalon said.
However, Stablecoins face their own questions about resilience, especially in terms of privacy.
“There are several privacy protocols that have the potential to make Ethereum private enough to act as a meaningful alternative to cash, but Resilience is a completely different matter.” Decryption.
Faced with a crisis scenario like the one facing Sweden and Norway today, Ethereum has been able to demonstrate its resilience by not strictly requiring users to access electricity, a secure operating system, and non-hackable Web3 wallets.
“We must come a long way before Ethereum is resilient enough to exchange cash transactions with an undeclared roadmap,” says Bickle.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
