Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Opposes KYC Implementation In DeFi: It's Discriminatory

Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared some controversial ideas concerning the ongoing trend in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space to comply with the know-your-client (KYC) regulations imposed on traditional finance.

What Happened: Speaking at the recent ETHDenver conference, Buterin said that he opposes imposing KYC on DeFi users since "privacy is important" and suggested that it is also discriminatory since it precludes access to the services to some people simply based on where they were born, adding that "inclusion is important."

Buterin said that he thinks that KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) norms compliance would force "the system to discriminate much more by nationality," since entire countries can be labeled a "money laundering risk."

He concluded: "Just because of where you were born [...] you have a much harder time participating — and that sort of stuff really [...] goes against what I think are against the core benefits of what the blockchain space is trying to accomplish."

See Also: IS REGULATION BAD FOR CRYPTO? 

ETH Price Action: As of press time, Ether is trading at $2,631 after seeing its price increase by about 1% over the last 24 hours.

Photo: Courtesy of TechCrunch on Flickr