European digital law: Buterin calls for curbing algorithms, not ideas

Regulation sometimes looks like a room that is too tidy. Nothing sticks out. Not a draft. And this is precisely what Vitalik Buterin criticizes the European Union: wanting a “clean” internet, without roughness, to the point of reducing the oxygen available for crypto innovation. In a long message published on

An “internet without interstices”: what the DSA really changes according to Vitalik

The DSA does not target a handful of giants, it targets the ecosystem, including services linked to cryptocurrencies. Any platform that affects European users falls within the scope. Small, tall, European or not: no one is completely “off-screen”. This logic has an obvious virtue: closing the back doors that some used to declare themselves irresponsible.

But this architecture also has a secondary effect: it creates diffuse, constant regulatory pressure, like background noise. Bonds adjust according to size and risk, of course. Except that the philosophy remains the same: there should be no gray area.

This is where the label “no-space” is born, like underlines Vitalik. No unregulated space. No digital corners where crypto content deemed problematic could sneak in. The stated intention is not total censorship. The heart of the text instead talks about risk assessments, transparency, and design choices. But in practice, the message sent to the platforms can be summed up bluntly: “don’t let anything slip through”.

For Buterin, it is not the existence of the marginal that is the problem, it is its industrial promotion.

Buterin: the real danger is the algorithms that push the poison into large format

Buterin's argument is almost clinical: a free society should not seek to eradicate all the ideas it considers harmful. In the same logic, he who defends the idea of ​​lightening and clarifying Ethereum to get closer to a true “absence of trust” insists on one point: instead of wanting to erase everything, we must break the mechanisms which give power to this content.

For him, the priority is to prevent these ideas from becoming dominant through algorithmic mechanics. In other words, you don't fight a rumor by deleting it everywhere, you fight the machine that turns it into a trend.

And this is where the criticism becomes political. “Zero tolerance” has a natural slope: excess. When the goal becomes “no flaws,” the tool becomes surveillance. Then technocratic enforcement. Then the dependence on referees. And suddenly, a public debate is treated like a gas leak.

Buterin talks about pluralism, basically. The contradiction is uncomfortable, but it is structuring. Wanting to eliminate it means taking the risk of creating a smooth… and fragile society. In the crypto world, this fragility is paid for in cash: as soon as a framework becomes too rigid, innovation does not die, it moves.

And when regulation pushes towards more control, an old crypto reflex comes to the surface: the protection of privacy.

Privacy, data, “privacy coins”: a possible boomerang effect

In this context, the “privacy-first” narrative is gaining strength. Not necessarily as a speculative promise, more as a philosophical reminder: digital privacy is not a luxury, it is a layer of security. Not all users read the laws, but they understand very well when the air becomes heavy.

The debate has revived interest in privacy coins like Monero or Zcash. Not because everyone wants to become invisible. But because many discover a simple truth: the more we monitor, the more we store. And the more we store, the more we expose. Data is flammable material. It always ends up burning somewhere.