What are your thoughts on Vitalik Buterin?

I just learnt the other day that the term “BTC maximalists” could be traced back to Vitalik Buterin. It appears that back in 2016, he used this term to criticise how the way BTC users firmly believed that “it’s BTC’s way or the Highway” was unethical. Perhaps he meant it to be a thinly veiled attack because he had come up with Ethereum then and wanted more people to pay attention to it?

In any case, how do you feel about Vitalik Buterin? Do you think that he shouldn’t have leveraged such criticism against BTC HODLers? Or are you sympathetic towards him as someone who was just trying to garner greater public interest for his product?