Vitalik Buterin

Best known for being the inventor and co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian writer and programmer. He has been an active member of the Bitcoin community since 2011 and has written many articles for Bitcoin magazine. 

Early life

Born in Kolomna, Russia, he lived there until six and then moved to Canada with his parents. From his early childhood, Buterin could add three-digit numbers in his head twice as fast as the average person of his age. 

In 2011, Buterin became curious about Bitcoin. The idea of a currency without any physical form filled him with suspicion, but when he studied it from a closer perspective, he was nothing short of baffled.

The birth of Ethereum

In 2013, he published a white paper proposing Ethereum. And the next year, he dropped out of university and started working on his dream full-time. 

Buterin describes Ethereum as a “decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one.” At first, the plan was about digital currency, but it became much more as time progressed. Buterin and his team soon realised that with a few lines of code, it was relatively easy to create decentralised file storage and concepts like name registry. 

In January 2014, the project was first announced publicly. The core team consisted of Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alise, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood and Joe Lubin.

Ethereum today

To this date, Ethereum provides much more to its users than its coin Ether. Starting from NFTs, crypto games and crypto gaming tokens, Buterin and his team of like-minded individuals have taken Ethereum to a new level. 

Currently, Vitalik has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion. Buterin firmly believes that Ethereum will dominate the metaverse within the upcoming 10 years, and he is working towards that goal.