Vitalik Buterin became successful in designing a revolutionary layer of blockchain technology with the help of smart contracts. In 2014, Buterin being only 20 years old, introduced Ethereum on stage at a Bitcoin conference in Miami. This journey turned into a $400 billion worth ecosystem, and only seven years after that day, Forbes awarded him the title of the world's youngest crypto billionaire.
Who is Founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin?
He was born in 1994 in the town of Kolomna, close to Moscow. His father, Dmitry Buterin, and his mother, Natalia Ameline, moved to Canada when Vitalik was six years old to work under better conditions. Vitalik, whose father was a computer scientist, had a natural talent for mathematics and programming and took a serious interest in economics at a very early age. He was a child who always fascinated his family and friends with his intelligence. He was very good at arithmetic, adding three-digit numbers without paper at twice the speed of his peers. So he was transferred to a special education program for talented students at primary third grade. Although this program was meant to provide more learning opportunities, he was separated from his peers, making him introverted. He spent all his time with the computer and playing computer games. Back then, he set most of his professional and personal relationships on the Internet and continued improving his skills. Hungry to learn and develop, Buterin spent 4 years at a private high school in Toronto, which he will describe as the most interesting and productive years of his life. Here the point of view of education has changed, making learning one of his priorities in life. Another thing was the computer game World of Warcraft he cared about. He spent enormous time on this game until an update of his game character. Vitalik is ruined after this update. This point actually marked a serious turning point in their belief in authority and autonomous government.
How Old Is Founder of Ethereum?
Vitaly Dmitrievich "Vitalik" Buterin is a Russian-born Canadian computer programmer, better known as the founder of Ethereum. He was born on January 31, 1994. in 2011, he entered the cryptocurrency world as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. The founder of Ethereum is currently 27 years old.
How He Met Cryptocurrency?
In 2011, he got familiar with Bitcoin thanks to his father, who is a Bitcoin investor. He thought Bitcoin would not reach a long-term valuation; after he researched this topic, became active on forum sites, and developed relationships with the community, he began to realize the unlimited potential of the technology behind Bitcoin.
He wanted to be a part of this new and experiential economy, but he neither had a computer capable of mining nor the money to buy it. He searched on forums for places where he could get paid by Bitcoin in return for his work. When he started to write articles for a blog, he got paid 5 Bitcoin per his writing, and at that time, Bitcoin was worth only 80 cents. He saved money and could get a t-shirt by paying 50 Bitcoin. Day by day, he became more interested in the system. During this period, he became familiar with different perspectives of cryptocurrencies, such as economic, technological, and political. The more he gained more experience about Bitcoin, the more he became well-known with his works and writings in the forum community. During this period, his articles attracted the attention of Mihai Alisie, a Bitcoin enthusiast from Romania, and as a result of correspondence, they founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. He devoted so much time to writing here that he dropped the college and spent all Bitcoin savings traveling around the world to attend various conferences. In that way, he met people who aimed to improve the Bitcoin network's capacity and upgrade it to a more effective and competent version. Following two years full of self-development, growth and learning, he visited Israel in October 2013. Then, he met people behind 'Covertscoins' and 'Mastercoin' projects. These projects were experimenting with the usage of blockchain in various applications. For example, creating tokens through Bitcoin, enabling users to use financial contracts, and so.
They were using Bitcoin's blockchain, also adding new features to Bitcoin transactions. Buterin realized he could generalize protocols used in the projects with a Turing-complete program language and, without hesitation, shared this idea for the current projects. However, everybody told him that it was an exciting idea, but the timing was not good. So Buterin decided to do this on his own with determination and self-confidence. At that time, in 2013, Buterin actually wanted to prepare an infrastructure for the Ripple protocol, but back then Ripple was a company founded before only 9 months. Vitalik learned he could get a U.S visa, but the company should have been established at least one year ago. So, he went to Europe.
Ethereum Launches
In January 2014, the project was announced with a core team of 6 people, including Alicia and Buterin. The team introduced Ethereum at the Bitcoin conference in Miami, and a few months later, put Ethereum on the market for sale to finance. Vitalik received a $100,000 worth Thiel Fellowship. About $18 million worth of Bitcoin was received in Ethereum mass sale. Bitcoin was worth $650 during the mass sale, but then, it dropped value, so the team suffered a million-dollar loss. Nevertheless, the team founded the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland, responsible for developing Ethereum's open-source software with the rest of the money.
Without any doubt, there were many technological developments, labor and determination behind the scenes. At this point, Ethereum had a strong launching into the cryptocurrency market. Large cryptocurrency exchanges started to trade Ethereum one after another, suddenly Etherum's value was growing. Although it was only the first product release, large companies such as Microsoft and IBM were conducting projects on the Ethereum platform and communicating with Vitalik and his team to work together. Today, the market capitalization of Ethereum is about $350 billion. Vitalik's wealth is expanding, too.
So What Vitalik Says?
He was aware that the market and investors still suffer from some problems, even if he was the founder of a structure worth more than $350 billion. Vitalik gave several speeches and tweeted to raise awareness of the people involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. These tweets were often about criticism of the greedy investor profile, human psychology, and blockchain technologies. In 2017, "These people don't understand the purpose of the cryptocurrency market," said Vitalik. "People can start a positive change for humanity, but they only aim to find a way to make easy money," added he. He stands behind his words, emphasizing cryptocurrencies are still new and variable; conscious investments should be made.
Today Vitalik Buterin is 27 years old. There is no specific place where he lives, but he said that Toronto, Singapore, and Berlin are his favorite cities. He is pretty optimistic about the platform's future, saying that the only killer of Ethereum is Ethereum. As we all know, with the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, mining will be over. Instead, it will become a more green and energy-saver network along with the PoS consensus. Buterin and his team are working on releasing newer, more stable, secure, and effective versions of Ethereum, with the most critical goals such as scalability, optimization, cost-effectiveness, and security.