Read by Vitalik Buterin
What books does Vitalik Buterin recommend?
For a builder who redesigned digital money, Vitalik Buterin's book recommendations are notably concerned with fairness, governance, and the long-term future. The co-founder of Ethereum reads at the seam of economics, philosophy, and social institutions, and this collection of 8 titles is drawn from his Twitter, his essays at vitalik.ca, a foreword, and a podcast appearance. Its subjects are society and politics, economics and finance, and philosophy. He wrote the foreword to Radical Markets, praising how it shows markets can "reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation." He also "highly recommends" William MacAskill's What We Owe The Future and credits Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset with reflecting his own intellectual shift toward acknowledging that "X has flaws" rather than defending it blindly. Toby Ord's The Precipice he holds up as "one example of a model to follow" for layered, accessible writing.
Last updated February 2026 · Every recommendation cited to its original source.
Radical Markets
Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
byEric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
2018368 Pages“Radical Markets turns this thinking on its head... It shows how the emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets can reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Foreword to Radical Markets
What We Owe the Future
A Million-Year View
byWilliam MacAskill
2022352 Pages“I highly recommend Will MacAskill's new book, What We Owe The Future.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Vitalik Buterin's Twitter
The Scout Mindset
Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
byJulia Galef
2021288 Pages“This reflects a broader intellectual evolution I've had: from 'X is what I must defend, so whatever is favorable to X must be correct' to 'I like X, but X has flaws and it seems like Y fixes them, so I support X+Y now'.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Vitalik Buterin's Twitter
The Precipice
Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
byToby Ord
2020480 Pages“The Precipice does a great job of this. Very layman-accessible main section, more technical appendices, even more technical notes. Definitely one example of a model to follow.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Vitalik Buterin's Twitter
Read by Vitalik Buterin
Land is a Big Deal
Why Rent is Too High, Wages Too Low, and What We Can Do About It
byLars A. Doucet
2022306 Pages“Lars's work is intellectually fascinating and among the clearest and most compelling writing in support of land value taxes that I've seen.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Dwarkesh Podcast
Seeing Like a State
How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
byJames C. Scott
1998464 Pages“They make society very legible in the kind of seeing like a state sense of the word.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Vitalik.ca - Decentralized Society
Read by Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Marc Andreessen and 5 others
The Sovereign Individual
Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
byJames Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg
1999448 Pages“The book was certainly a inspirational tome for much individualist cypherpunk thought in the 2000s.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Vitalik.ca - What do I think about network states?
Read by Vitalik Buterin
The Elephant in the Brain
Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
byKevin Simler, Robin Hanson
2018416 Pages“As Hanson and Simler point out in The Elephant In The Brain, if we try to model conversations as information exchange, then we would expect to see people guarding information closely and trying to play tit-for-tat games... In reality, however, people are generally eager to share information.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Source: Vitalik.ca - Plurality philosophy
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Frequently asked questions
What books does Vitalik Buterin recommend?
His 8 recommendations include Radical Markets, What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill, The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef, The Precipice by Toby Ord, and Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott.
What is Vitalik Buterin's top book recommendation?
Radical Markets, to which he wrote the foreword. He praises how its "emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets" can lead to "greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation."
Where do Vitalik Buterin's book recommendations come from?
They are sourced from his Twitter, essays on vitalik.ca, the foreword he wrote for Radical Markets, and the Dwarkesh Podcast, reflecting his public writing on economics, governance, and philosophy.
Has Vitalik Buterin written any books?
Yes, one: Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains, published in 2022, a collection tracing his thinking on Ethereum and decentralized systems.
Why does Vitalik Buterin recommend The Scout Mindset?
He says it reflects his own evolution from "X is what I must defend" to "I like X, but X has flaws and it seems like Y fixes them," describing a more honest, truth-seeking way of holding beliefs.