Vitalik Buterin revives proposal for personalized stablecoin baskets over USD

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has reposted an earlier proposal to ditch the U.S. dollar as the default reference point for stablecoins. He suggests that users hold personalized baskets of prediction market shares tied to their own spending patterns instead. The proposal follows a trend where more countries are choosing to conduct their trades in non-dollar settlement alternatives, ranging from TradFi proposals like BRICS currencies to decentralized finance experiments.

What did Vitalik Buterin propose? Buterin recently reposted an idea he first outlined months earlier on the social media platform X, in a longer essay about the future of prediction markets. His central question is simple: "If we're making a synthetic stable, what should it really be stable WITH RESPECT TO?" His answer involves a local large language model (LLM) on each user's device that would analyze that person's spending habits and assemble a custom basket of prediction market positions representing a set number of days of expected future expenses. A personal finance assistant that runs locally, presumably without trying to upsell you anything.

Wealth growth would come from holding stocks, $ETH, or other assets, while stability would come from the personalized basket. The proposal also requires that prediction markets be denominated in assets people actually want to hold, whether that is interest-bearing traditional currencies, wrapped equities, or $ETH. Buterin argued that non-interest-bearing currencies carry opportunity costs that are too high to serve as the base layer.

Buterin has been vocal about the risks of dollar dependence for months. In January, he said that pegging stablecoins to the dollar ties supposedly decentralized systems to a single national currency's monetary policy and geopolitical exposure. Over long time horizons, even moderate inflation could erode usefulness, he argued.

Regarding oracle design, Buterin stated that systems governed primarily by token ownership lack natural defenses and must charge their users significant fees to make attacks uneconomical. Blockchains rely