I feel bad for Vitalik because I think that he's a well-meaning 200IQ guy whose talents are being used to help scammers fleece ordinary people of their life's savings.
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/buterins-quantum-quest/
A more cogent explanation is that Vitalik finally found the right way to pull a con.
I'm willing to accept that people's actions from when they're 19 shouldn't color their lives years later. But maybe people's actions when they were 19 are good to examine to put context into a project they began when they were 20.
Sometimes even smart people are wrong about stuff, that doesn't make them necessarily malicious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Alchemy