How Vitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (2024)

HowVitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (1)

When you think of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer comes to mind. Best known as one of the co-founders of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency coin founded back in December 2013 and currently on a meteoric rise.

HowVitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (2)

The coin is described as a “decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one" that facilitates the creation of new cryptocurrencies and programmes that share a single blockchain. You can view it as the Android or iOS of the crypto space.

The future of cryptocurrency involves blockchain technology. One of the most crucial aspects of blockchain is the elimination of reliance on intermediaries heavily present in the current digital economy. With the rise of blockchain, we will see more growth and potential to be discovered.

Let’s dive into the empowering story of Buterin, how he paved his way into crypto and created Ethereum, and other notable factors.

TL;DR - Some Highlights

  • Class for gifted children
  • IQ level of 257
  • Studied Computer Science in University of Waterloo
  • Dropped out after 1 year
  • Learned about Bitcoin from his father in 2011
  • Part of Thiel Fellowship
  • Funded $100k to start Etherium
  • Youngest crypto billionaire
  • Can speak in many languages
  • Created own programming language in Solidity
  • Awarded an honorary doctorate
  • ...and MANY other awards

What’s the Childhood of a Crypto Billionaire, Vitalik Buterin, Like?

Born in Kolomna, Russia, to Dmitry Buterin, a computer scientist, and Natalia Ameline, Buterin lived there until he was six. His family emigrated to Canada where Buterin was placed into a class for gifted children and was drawn to mathematics, programming, and economics.

He went on to attend the Abelard School, a private high school in Toronto. After graduation, Buterin enrolled into the University of Waterloo which he eventually dropped out after a year of computer science and landed the Thiel Fellowship. He used his time to co-found and work on several startups in cryptocurrency and digital finance. He’s also well-known for having an IQ level of 257.

HowVitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (3)

Founded in 2011, the Thiel Fellowship’s mission is prominently defined by its tagline on its website: “Two years. $100,000. Some ideas can't wait.”

Are you a blockchain engineer looking to achieve the next big thing? During the course of the two-year program, Fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the Thiel Foundation’s network of technology founders, investors, and scientists. “If you want to be optimistic about the future, just look at what young people are creating now,” said Allyson Dias, director of the Thiel Fellowship.

Welcome to Ethereum

Buterin is now the world's youngest crypto billionaire. Buterin owns approximately 334,000 Ether, which were trading for just above $3,415 per coin as of May 2021. At that value, his wallet is worth about $1.14 billion.

HowVitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (4)

When Buterin was 17, he learned about Bitcoin from his father in 2011 who has a membership management software company that he grew from $0 to $10M. At the University of Waterloo, where Buterin was a student, he took advanced courses and was a research assistant for cryptographer Ian Goldberg, who co-created Off-the-Record Messaging and was the former board of directors chairman of the Tor Project.

Buterin began writing in 2011 for a publication called Bitcoin Weekly. The website eventually shut down due to insufficient revenue. Later, Mihai Alisie co-founded Bitcoin Magazine with him where he continued to contribute as a leading writer.

He also held a position on the editorial board of Ledger, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes full-length original research articles on the subjects of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Buterin wasn’t interested in Bitcoin the first time he heard it and regarded it as a currency with no intrinsic value as doomed to fail. The second time changed the world as Ethereum grew to become the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. How did this become a reality?

In 2013, Buterin, who was 19 years old, flew to visit developers in other countries who shared his enthusiasm for code and inspired a movement. He returned to Toronto later that year and published a white paper proposing Ethereum, before the project's launch in 2015.

Buterin’s Most Notable Awards and Achievements

Buterin said in his student testimonial at the Abelard School: "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."

Awards and Achievements

Are You the Next Blockchain Mastermind?

Simplicity, Universality, Modularity, and Agility. These are the four design principles that developed Ethereum.

Besides English and Russian, Buterin can speak in many different languages like French, Cantonese, Ancient Latin, and Ancient Greece. As the lead developer of Ethereum, he is also well-equipped with programming languages like Pascal, C++, Basic, Javascript, and many more.

He created his own programming language in Solidity for Ethereum. It is a curly-bracket language influenced by C++, Python, and JavaScript. Solidity is an object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts. Smart contracts help govern the behaviour of accounts within Ethereum. Want to learn Solidity code? Watch this: Learn Solidity: Full Course For Beginners.

There are also new entrants like Simplicity and CX programming languages that blockchain use. Based on the type of development you have in mind, you can develop your skills for it and build different forms of Blockchain and cryptocurrency-based solutions.

"When I came up with Ethereum, my first first thought was, okay this thing is too good to be true," Buterin says. "As it turned out, the core Ethereum idea was good, fundamentally, completely, sound.”

Buterin is active on Twitter and has 2.2M followers. Follow his account here.

Web design and app development and programming are the key skills to help you develop better decentralised applications (Dapps) if you want to work in an ETH-based company. Blockchain has changed the technology industry and new jobs are surfacing. If you’re interested in becoming a blockchain developer, take a look at some resources by Ethereum:

Access community guides and resources here.

Learn more about the Ethereum Foundation here.

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HowVitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (5)

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How Vitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer (2024)

FAQs

How did Vitalik invent Ethereum? ›

Vitalik Buterin created ethereum after developers weakened his "beloved" World of Warcraft character. "On that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring," Buterin wrote on his bio page. He eventually launched ethereum at just 21 years old in 2015.

Why did Vitalik Buterin found Ethereum? ›

Nine years ago, Buterin dreamed up Ethereum as a way to leverage the blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin for all sorts of uses beyond currency. Since then, it has emerged as the bedrock layer of what advocates say will be a new, open-source, decentralized internet.

At what age did Vitalik Buterin created Ethereum? ›

How Vitalik Buterin Co-Founded Ethereum at the Age of 19 as a Developer. When you think of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer comes to mind.

Who is the main founder of Ethereum? ›

Vitalik Buterin is the co-creator of Ethereum, a blockchain platform for decentralized financial applications. 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.

How much of Ethereum is owned by Vitalik? ›

How many ETH does Vitalik Buterin own? Vitalik Buterin holds around 290,000 ETH across two known wallets.

What does Ethereum development involve? ›

Ethereum is a blockchain-based computing platform that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications—meaning not run by a centralized authority. You can create a decentralized application for which the participants of that particular application are the decision-making authority.

Why is Eth so successful? ›

The Ethereum ecosystem is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the surging popularity of its dApps in areas such as finance (decentralized finance, or DeFi apps), arts and collectibles (non-fungible tokens, or NFTs), gaming, and technology.

How rich is the Ethereum founder? ›

Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin's Net Worth Hits $1.46 Billion As Ether Reaches New All-Time High. New!

What is the core idea behind Ethereum? ›

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain network powered by the Ether token that enables users to make transactions, earn interest on their holdings through staking, use and store nonfungible tokens (NFTs), trade cryptocurrencies, play games, use social media and so much more.

When did Ethereum start and how much? ›

Price history of ETH:

On August 7, 2015, the first Ethereum transaction was carried out using the transaction hash of block 46147. Since its creation in 2015, Ethereum was under $1 for the major part of 2015, but by March 2016 Ether crossed the $10 mark, when it briefly reached $10.03 on March 4, 2016.

When was the first Ethereum created? ›

Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin. Additional founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin. In 2014, development work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015.

Who owns the most Ethereum? ›

Top 10 Owners of Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETH)
StockholderStakeShares owned
First Horizon Advisors, Inc.0.01%20,216
Milestone Wealth LLC0.01%21,478
Main Management LLC0.01%14,096
Ancora Family Wealth Advisors LLC0.00%11,960
6 more rows

How many coins did Vitalik burn? ›

The UpOnly podcast interviewed Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin yesterday. Buterin chatted with Cobie and Ledger of the FTX-affiliated podcast for almost two hours, in which he revealed the complexity of burning 90% of 500 trillion tokens.

How many Ethereum are owned? ›

The Ethereum network began with 72 million Ether coins in circulation.
...
Ethereum supply: How many ether (ETH) coins are there?
Long position overnight fee-0.0500%
Spread5.50
2 more rows
Jul 31, 2022

How many devs are working on Ethereum? ›

Developers are segmented into community developers who work on decentralized applications (dapp), and protocol developers who work on the core protocol. It's no surprise that Ethereum leads the race on total developers, with a total of 2,980 developers in 2020, and 3,920 in 2021.

Is Ethereum a development platform? ›

Ethereum offers an extremely flexible platform on which to build decentralized applications using the native Solidity scripting language and Ethereum Virtual Machine.

How do I start developing on Ethereum? ›

How would you like to get started?
  1. Learn Ethereum development. Read up on core concepts and the Ethereum stack with our docs. ...
  2. Learn through tutorials. Learn Ethereum development step-by-step from builders who have already done it. ...
  3. Start experimenting. Want to experiment first, ask questions later? ...
  4. Set up local environment.

Why Ethereum is the future? ›

The reasons that Ethereum crypto is the future of cryptocurrency, and why it has the potential to be worth more than Bitcoin, are simple. It's a decentralized platform that allows developers to create their own applications on top of it, as opposed to Bitcoin which only allows for one application.

Why did Ethereum grow so fast? ›

One of the primary reasons for the rise in the price of Ethereum is the surging popularity of DeFi (Decentralized Finance). Ethereum hosts a lot of DeFi projects on its blockchain network with most of the activities including DeFi happening on it.

Why Ethereum is more important than Bitcoin? ›

The main difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin is the fact that Ethereum is programmable. That feature broadens the scope of Ethereum, making it more than just a digital currency. It makes Ethereum a marketplace for financial services, games and apps.

How does ETH make money? ›

When a user interacts with the network by performing an action, it pays a transaction fee to miners and validators to process the transaction, also known as gas fee. The fee that users pay is often regarded as revenue for Ethereum, but most of it is burnt away with the rest being given to miners.

Is the founder of Ethereum a billionaire? ›

I'm not a billionaire anymore,” Buterin, 28, wrote Friday in a Twitter post. Buterin created Ethereum in 2014 and is the owner of a digital wallet that as recently as November contained holdings worth about $1.5 billion.

How is Ethereum used in real life? ›

Through its ground-breaking combination of features like smart contracts, Ethereum is used for a variety of innovative applications in finance, web browsing, gaming, advertising, identity management, and supply chain management.

Who controls Ethereum? ›

Decentralized governance

No one person owns or controls the Ethereum protocol, but decisions still need to be made about implementing changes to best ensure the longevity and prosperity of the network. This lack of ownership makes traditional organizational governance an incompatible solution.

How long did Ethereum take to develop? ›

Several codenamed prototypes of Ethereum were developed over 18 months in 2014 and 2015 by the Ethereum Foundation as part of their proof-of-concept series.

Why is it called Ethereum? ›

Coined by Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin after browsing a list of fictional elements on Wikipedia; based on ether.

What was Ethereum lowest price? ›

Ethereum (ETH) Price History

Therefore, the current Ethereum market cap is $145,230,805,001. Over the last year, Ethereum price is -67.63%. The highest price of ETH in the last year was $3,793.36 and the lowest price of ETH in the last year was $1,065.75.

What was first project on Ethereum? ›

Although the July 2015 birth of the Ethereum blockchain brought the project to life, its development would be a lengthy process spanning years. Called Frontier, the first iteration of the Ethereum blockchain simply got the chain off the ground and running, hosting smart contracts and proof-of-work (PoW) mining.

Who are the biggest Ethereum investors? ›

The biggest Ethereum holder by far is the Eth2 Deposit contact, followed by Wrapped Ether, with 4,798,197 Ether. Other big investors in Ethereum currently include Binance, with the Binance 7 wallet holding 1.9 million Ether and the Binance 8 wallet holding over 678,000.

How many people own 1 Ethereum or more? ›

In July, there were 1.076 million Ethereum addresses that held at least one ETH.

Why is Vitalik Buterin worried about crypto? ›

Bitcoin isn't generating enough fees to secure its system

He explains that efficiency and security are closely connected issues. "The question is always: how much security can you buy for every dollar per year that you spend on paying for it?" he said.

Why the creator of Ethereum is concerned about? ›

Vitalik Buterin, who co-created Ethereum in 2013, said in an interview with Time Magazine published on Friday that he is worried about trends he has observed in the space, telling the publication that “cypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong.”

Is Vitalik Buterin still a billionaire? ›

I'm not a billionaire anymore,” Buterin, 28, wrote Friday in a Twitter post.

Who owns the majority of Ethereum? ›

Top 10 Owners of Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETH)
StockholderStakeShares owned
Rye Brook Capital LLC0.09%276,900
Rothschild Investment Corp.0.08%250,574
Benedetti & Gucer, Inc.0.02%70,491
Garde Capital, Inc.0.01%31,502
6 more rows

Why is Vitalik Buterin important? ›

Vitalik "Vitaly" Buterin (born January 31, 1994) is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer and founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011.

Who is CEO of Bitcoin? ›

Dennis Jarvis

Why did Ethereum grow so much? ›

One of the primary reasons for the rise in the price of Ethereum is the surging popularity of DeFi (Decentralized Finance). Ethereum hosts a lot of DeFi projects on its blockchain network with most of the activities including DeFi happening on it.

Who is the youngest billionaire in bitcoin? ›

Five years ago Sam Bankman-Fried hadn't bought his first bitcoin, but today, he's one of the youngest billionaires in the world thanks to the cryptocurrency, and one of the most powerful people in the young but fast-growing crypto industry.

How many people hold Ethereum? ›

Key points. Blockchain tracking website Glassnode shows there are more than 3.9 million active crypto wallets, which is an all-time record. Each wallet has a minimum Ethereum amount equivalent to $312 on average -- this suggests growing adoption among small investors.

Who is controlling Ethereum? ›

No one person owns or controls the Ethereum protocol, but decisions still need to be made about implementing changes to best ensure the longevity and prosperity of the network. This lack of ownership makes traditional organizational governance an incompatible solution.

Which country controls Ethereum? ›

Formal development of the software underlying Ethereum began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse). The idea of putting executable smart contracts in the blockchain needed to be specified before it could be implemented in software.

Which country owns Ethereum? ›

Ether is the native currency of Ethereum, an open-source blockchain platform. Ethereum was founded in 2013 by Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin and several other crypto entrepreneurs.

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