Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin
Buterin in 2015
Native name	Виталик Бутерин
Born	Vitaly Dmitrиевич Buterin 31 January 1994 (age 31) Kolomna, Russia
Education	University of Waterloo
Known for	Ethereum, Bitcoin Magazine
Awards	Thiel Fellowship
Fields	Digital contracts, digital currencies, game theory
Website	Personal website

Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin (Russian: Вита́лий Дми́триевич Буте́рин; born 31 January 1994), better known as Vitalik Buterin (Russian: Вита́лик Буте́рин), is a Russian-Canadian programmer, writer, and theorist, best known as a co-founder of Ethereum. He became involved with cryptocurrency early, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011, and has influenced modern finance through blockchain technology, pioneering decentralized systems beyond cryptocurrencies. By the age of 31, his work served as a case study in the convergence of technology and economics.

During this time, Buterin attempted to join the crypto platform Ripple but was unable to do so due to US visa issues. Determined to succeed, he completed a whitepaper outlining Ethereum, described as a “decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one.” Ethereum aimed to provide a platform for creating new crypto assets and programs using the same blockchain ledger. Initially intended to improve Bitcoin with a scripting language, Bitcoin’s rejection led Buterin to pursue Ethereum independently.

He co-founded Ethereum with Mihai Alisie, Jeffrey Wilcke, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Amir Chetrit.  The concept was first introduced in 2013, unveiled at a 2014 conference in Miami, and officially launched in 2015. An initial coin offering for Ether raised US$18 million to support the platform’s development.

The team established the Ethereum Foundation, a Switzerland-based non-profit, to oversee and manage the platform, support the development of decentralized applications, and advance blockchain technology worldwide.

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Localcoinatm, “Ethereum (ETH): What Is It & How Does It Work?” Achieved, Retrieved April 2024

Early life and education

Vitalik Dmitriyevich Buterin was born on January 31, 1994, in Kolomna, Russia, an industrial town of approximately 150,000 near Moscow, known for its historic Kremlin. His father, Dmitry Buterin, is a computer scientist, and his mother, Natalia Ameline, has a background in finance. Kolomna’s harsh winters, dusty summers, and industrial environment contributed to a simple, challenging upbringing. Both parents are intellectuals, come from middle-class families, and live on wages.

He lived in Russia until age six before his family immigrated to Canada for better employment opportunities. Showing early talent, he was placed in a gifted program in third grade, influenced by his father Dmitriy Buterin, a computer scientist. While in grade three, Buterin exhibited advanced levels of IQ and was drawn to mathematics, programming, and economics.  He then attended the Abelard School, a private high school in Toronto.

Buterin learned about Bitcoin at age 17 from his father, sparking an interest that defined his career. After high school, he attended the University of Waterloo, where he took advanced courses and worked as a research assistant for cryptographer Ian Goldberg, co-creator of Off-the-Record Messaging and former chairman of the Tor Project’s board of directors. In 2012, he won a bronze medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics in Italy.

In 2011, Buterin began writing for Bitcoin Weekly to earn Bitcoin. In September 2011, Mihai Alisie invited him to co-found Bitcoin Magazine, where he became a leading writer. Buterin attempted to join Ripple, but U.S. visa issues prevented employment. In 2013, he visited developers abroad and later returned to Toronto to publish a white paper proposing Ethereum

He dropped out of university in 2014 after receiving a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship, a scholarship created by venture capitalist Peter Thiel, to work on Ethereum full-time. In 2014, Buterin launched Ethereum, a decentralized blockchain platform that became the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.  When asked why, Dmitry responded:  “It was really interesting. All three of us had a very similar reaction that we supported him because we all knew that he’s a very bright wonderful young adult and, if he drops out, he will be totally fine.”

The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel awarded Buterin an Honorary Doctorate on 30 November 2018 during Dies Academicus, honoring him as an exceptionally creative and innovative thinker who has played a decisive role in shaping the digital revolution. Game theory, economic incentives, and mechanism design are central to his research, aligning with the Faculty’s Center for Innovative Finance (CIF).

Buterin is now the world’s youngest crypto billionaire, owning approximately 334,000 Ether, which traded at just above $3,415 per coin as of May 2021, giving him a wallet value of about $1.14 billion. Reflecting on his education, Buterin said: "I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to work in such an interesting and interdisciplinary area of industry, where I have the chance to interact with cryptographers, mathematicians and economists prominent in their fields, to help build software and tools that already affect tens of thousands of people around the world, and to work on advanced problems in computer science, economics and philosophy every week."

His notable awards include the Thiel Fellowship, 2014, World Technology Award in the IT Software category, 2014, Fortune 40 under 40 list, 2016, Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2018, Fortune the ledger 40 under 40 list, 2018 and University of Basel Honorary doctorate, 2018

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Career

Bitcoin Magazine

In early 2011, 17-year-old Vitalik Buterin was introduced to Bitcoin by his father, Dmitry Buterin. Initially skeptical, he decided three weeks later to study it in depth, which changed the trajectory of his life.

With no funds to buy bitcoins or mining equipment, Buterin began writing for Bitcoin Weekly, earning five bitcoins per article (about $3.50). His articles caught the attention of Romanian enthusiast Mihai Alisie. In September 2011, Alisie invited him to co-found Bitcoin Magazine, the first serious cryptocurrency publication, which reached about 1.5 million readers before its 2015 acquisition.

Buterin became increasingly active in the Bitcoin community. His articles and opinions gained widespread attention, and he began communicating with developers and enthusiasts worldwide, laying the foundation for his later creation of Ethereum.

In May 2012, the first print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, the original publication devoted exclusively to Bitcoin, debuted. Founded by Vitalik Buterin and Mihai Alisie, that first edition, with its iconic Anonymous mask on the cover, has become one of the most sought-after collectibles in the Bitcoin space.

Buterin and Alisie later joined forces with Orlando, Florida-based Coin Publishing LLC to produce 22 issues. BTC Media (now BTC Inc) acquired Bitcoin Magazine in 2015 and moved the publication entirely online. In 2016, Vitalik was briefly on the editorial board of Ledger. Ledger is a peer-reviewed cryptocurrency and blockchain-based journal that was one of the first on the subject.

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Nasdaq, “Get Ready for a New Print Edition of Bitcoin Magazine!” Achieblockchain journal that was amongved, Retrieved January 2019

Possible job at Ripple

Vitalik Buterin once reached out to Jed McCaleb, the current CTO of Stellar (XLM), for a potential job at Ripple. The deal fell through, however, as Ripple could not support Buterin's U.S. visa. In 2013, he published the whitepaper of Ethereum and was awarded a grant of $100,000 the following year, which led him to drop out of college and work on Ethereum full-time.

In 2014, disenchanted with academics, Buterin accepted a Thiel Fellowship for his preliminary work on Ethereum and left the University of Waterloo during his freshman year to focus on the smart contract platform.

The University of Basel’s Faculty of Business and Economics later awarded him an honorary doctorate during the annual Dies Academicus celebration, which commemorates the opening of the university. The Dean, Prof. Dr. Aleksander Berentsen, described Buterin’s blockchain innovations as “game-changing,” adding that he has “blazed a trail for science and industry to follow and work together.”

Buterin commented on the honor, stating: “I’m honored to have received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel, the oldest university in Switzerland. Switzerland is well known for its innovative blockchain research.”

Ethereum

Buterin is the inventor of Ethereum, described as a "decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one" that facilitates the creation of new cryptocurrencies and programs that share a single blockchain (a cryptographic transaction ledger). In January 2014, the project was announced publicly for the first time. The core team consisted of Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alise, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood

and Joe Lubin. To date, Ethereum offers its users much more 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. He became the world's youngest crypto billionaire at age 27 when Ether, Ethereum's native cryptocurrency, first crossed $3,000 per coin in May 2021.

Buterin first proposed the kernel of this work in late November 2013. Though now evolved in many ways, the key functionality of a blockchain with a Turing-complete language and an effectively unlimited inter-transaction storage capability remains unchanged.

This introductory paper was initially published in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, before the project's launch in 2015. It's worth noting that Ethereum, like many community-driven, open-source software projects, has evolved since its initial inception.

Initially intending to improve Bitcoin by adding a scripting language for applications, Buterin’s proposal was ignored, leading him to develop Ethereum. He co-founded the platform with Mihai Alisie, Jeffrey Wilcke, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Amir Chetrit. Unveiled in 2014 at a Miami conference, they held an initial coin offering for Ether, raising US$18 million to fund Ethereum’s development.

The team then established the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in Switzerland, that would run the crypto platform.

Ethereum was first described in Buterin's white paper, in late 2013. Buterin argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. But when he failed to gain

agreement, he proposed the development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.

Because Buterin authored the Ethereum whitepaper, he is often credited as the platform’s founder, though many computer scientists contributed. Dr. Gavin Wood developed Ethereum’s Solidity language, and Charles Hoskinson influenced early development. Today, Wood and Hoskinson lead Polkadot and Cardano, respectively. Buterin presented his blockchain vision at the 2014 North American Bitcoin Conference, and later that year, the team conducted an initial coin offering (ICO) for ETH to early investors.

The public announcement of Ethereum occurred at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami in early 2014. Buterin delivered a 25-minute speech describing Ethereum as a “general-purpose global computer operating on a decentralized permissionless network,” outlining applications from crop insurance to decentralized exchanges and DAOs. By 2015, the Ethereum blockchain was deployed, marking a new era in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology that would support a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem.

The Ethereum blockchain launched in July 2015 under the codename "Frontier." Its first version used a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, similar to Bitcoin, in which computers solve complex algorithms to validate transactions and earn ETH rewards. Unlike Bitcoin, ETH has no maximum supply, making it inflationary until the 2022 Ethereum Merge. The initial block reward was set at five ETH. Early Ethereum miners used GPUs instead of large ASIC rigs, making mining more accessible compared to Bitcoin and Litecoin.

Reflecting on the Ethereum Project in 2020, Buterin conveyed: “I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to work in such an interesting and interdisciplinary area of industry, where I have the chance to interact with cryptographers, mathematicians and economists prominent in their fields, to help build software and tools that already affect tens of thousands of people

around the world, and to work on advanced problems in computer science, economics and philosophy every week.”

However, in a 2018 New Yorker article, his father suggests that Buterin is trying to avoid the focus on him as the philosopher king of the blockchain world. “He is trying to focus his time on research,” Dmitry (Buterin’s father) said. “He’s not too excited that the community assigns so much importance to him. He wants the community to be more resilient

Vitalik Buterin became a billionaire in May 2021 at age 27, when Ethereum traded around $3,000, valuing his holdings over $1 billion. Ethereum’s all-time high of approximately $4,870 in November 2021 further increased his fortune. The 2022 crypto winter caused Ethereum to drop over 80%, temporarily removing it from billionaire status, but by August 2025, Ethereum’s recovery to over $4,200 restored its ten-figure wealth. His portfolio includes holdings in Aave Ethereum (AETHWETH), WhiteRock (WHITE), Moo Deng (MOODENG), and Wrapped Ethereum (WETH).

Unlike many crypto billionaires, Buterin’s wealth remains closely tied to Ethereum, reflecting his confidence in the platform. His 2025 vision focuses on strengthening Ethereum’s infrastructure and expanding the decentralized ecosystem. He advocates simplifying Ethereum’s protocol by replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V to improve performance and reduce code complexity while maintaining smart contract capabilities.

Buterin continues to influence Ethereum’s development, promoting faster transaction finality, a stateless client architecture, enhanced privacy, and scaling Layer 1 by 10x within a year. He has criticized fake decentralization in the industry, emphasizing user guarantees and a return to core principles of decentralization and empowerment, as highlighted in his Ethereum Community Conference statements.

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Open-source software

Throughout his career, Buterin has championed open-source software and contributed to various projects beyond Ethereum, including Kryptokit and DarkWallet. He has also been a vocal advocate for privacy on the Ethereum network, proposing innovative solutions like stealth addresses. KryptoKit extension allows users to send bitcoin payments and encrypted messaging in a matter of clicks.

Buterin is also the author of Pybitcointools, a Python library for Bitcoin signatures and transactions. Vitalik Buterin joined the project in an ownership role in 2014 alongside Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees. The Toronto-based KryptoKit had launched a month earlier.

He was also involved in Bitcoin software projects, including multisig.info and the Bitcoin private key secret-sharing utility btckeysplit. He also, alongside other people, co-authored a paper on Colored Coins, which are altcoins marked with specific properties to reflect digital or physical assets (a stock, a derivative, a car, or a house).

Meeting with Russian President

On June 2, 2017, during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform. Buterin discussed potential applications of Ethereum’s technologies in Russia, and the President expressed support for establishing connections with possible Russian partners. The conversation followed Putin’s meetings with leaders of major foreign companies and business associations.