Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum and the chief architect of the project, surprised attendees at the recent ETHBerlin event with his presence. His impromptu participation and open reflections on the initial design of Ethereum drew the attention of over 600 developers. Buterin's address not only evoked the early days of Ethereum back in 2014 but also provided a glimpse into the future of the cryptocurrency, now valued at $448 billion. This revelation comes amid the approval of a spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund in the US and the launch of a tokenized fund on the blockchain by BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. Despite Ethereum's growing mainstream acceptance, Buterin highlighted that it is often misconstrued. He compared Bitcoin to digital gold and emphasized that Ethereum's essence is more complex. In a conversation with ETHBerlin organizers Afri Schoedon and Franziska Heintel, Buterin reminisced about his time in Berlin and shared experiences with Ethereum co-founders Gavin Wood and Jeffrey Wilcke. When asked how he would reconstruct Ethereum from the ground up with his current knowledge, Buterin pinpointed issues with Ethereum's Virtual Machine (EVM). He critiqued the EVM's original 256-bit design as less efficient compared to 64- or 32-bit processing. Buterin expressed remorse for the delayed shift from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake consensus mechanism and suggested that a simpler form of Proof of Stake could have been adopted earlier, reducing computational demands. He proposed using SHA-2 encryption instead of the existing Keccak encryption for Ethereum's operations. This article is not investment advice.