Primarily known as one of the co-founders of Ethereum and Bitcoin Magazine, Vitalik Buterin was among the first to get involved in the cryptocurrency world. TechTrends provides you with a comprehensive guide on Vitalik Buterin biography.
Vitalik Buterin nationality is Russian-Canadian. He is a writer and programmer who co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and has been writing articles for the Bitcoin community since 2011. In addition, he is primarily known for being the man behind Ethereum, a platform managed on a blockchain network of computers for decentralized applications, or dApps. If you are keen to know all about Vitalik Buterin biography, early life, education, career, family, net worth, and accomplishments, keep reading.
Vitalik Buterin Biography
People have been describing Vitalik Buterin as “Boy Genius” and “Wunderkind” since he has accomplished a lot at an early age. The 27-year-old Russian-Canadian genius is one of the men behind creating Ethereum, known as the second most valuable cryptocurrency that exists in the world. Vitalik Buterin’s identity is well known in the crypto world, unlike unknown, mysterious Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Vitalik, however, tries to be involved and lead the way in the development and advocacy for the technological movement in blockchain. Moreover, he takes part in conferences and online discussions surrounding the technical aspects of the tech, its general philosophy, and how it influences mankind. Let’s get to know all about this math genius’s early life, education, family and career.
Early Life and Family
Vitalik was born in the old city of Kolomna, Russia on January 31, 1994. His parents are Dmitry Buterin, a computer scientist, and Natalia Ameline. At the age of 6, his family decided to move to Canada since they were looking for better employment opportunities. Vitalik was a child prodigy in his day and his gift did not go unnoticed.
Education
Vitalik Buterin Education is one of the crucial parts of Vitalik Buterin Biography. While studying in the third grade of elementary school, Vitalik’s precocious talent in learning caught the attention of the authorities. He appeared as an oddity to his peers and even teachers. Therefore, he was moved to a gifted program held at his school. His aptitude for math, economics and computer programming developed at a very early stage of his shining life. Later, he started going to Abelard School, which was a prestigious private high school in the Toronto Area of Canada. Vitalik continued to impress at Abelard for four years, showing remarkable aptitude for acquiring knowledge and focusing on intellectual inquiry. It was during that time, when 17-year-old Buterin first began learning about Bitcoin, with the help of his father.
When he finished high school, he got admitted to the University of Waterloo in 2012. He took advanced courses and became the research assistant to cryptographer Ian Goldberg. He even won a bronze medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics that year. However, he dropped out of the university program a year later. He described the reason behind his decision, saying that his interest in crypto projects was starting to take a toll on his studies; therefore, he planned to simplify things.
In 2013, he met with foreign developers who had the same enthusiasm as him for code. Later that year, his Ethereum white paper was published. Following that, he received a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship – a scholarship made by venture capitalist Peter Thiel. He used his award to work on Ethereum full-time.
Buterin got an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel on November 30, 2018, on the Dies Academicus. The day marks an occasion on which doctorate titles are given to distinguished scientists.
Personal Life
To get into details of Vitalik Buterin biography, let’s take a look at his net worth, age, height, weight, girlfriend and dating.
Buterin is a 27-year-old man, who was born on January 31, 1994. He is 1.86m in height and weighs 75 kg. It is held that the Ethereum creator’s IQ level is between 140 and 160. There are no details provided on his siblings or any other relatives. Furthermore, no details have been found on his religious beliefs or political views.
As for Vitalik Buterin girlfriend and dating, he has never released any news about his relationships. He is not committed to anyone or does not want the public to know about his relationship status. Moreover, there is no information related to him having children either. He is still a young man and his field of expertise demands a lot of focus and dedication. Due to this plausible reason, he may not be open to dating.
As of 2022, Vitalik Buterin net worth is estimated to be $120 million. A net worth of that amount is pretty huge when compared to Vitalik Buterin age. The 27-year-old has made his million-dollar empire with the help of his genius mind and hard work in the programming industry. His primary source of income is Ethereum payments.
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
While his Facebook page has about 10K fan links, he has 875K followers on Twitter. On Instagram, he is followed by 4.6K people whereas on YouTube, the Ethereum founder has about 56K subscribers.
Career
Another area to cover in Vitalik Buterin biography is his career. Starting at some time around 2007, Buterin grew an interest in World of Warcraft, an online roleplaying game. For three years, he spent hours going forward in the storyline of the game and gathering weapons. In 2010, however, it all came down to a halt as Blizzard deleted the damage component of the Siphon Life spell of his warlock game character. According to Buterin, this profoundly affected him and even made him cry to sleep that night when it happened.
Since he is a deeply philosophical person, the incident introduced him to centralized services’ inherent problems.
Bitcoin Discovery
At the age of 17, in 2011, Buterin’s father taught him about Bitcoin. It was a turning point in Vitalik Buterin biography and life. He did not immediately think of the cryptocurrency concept as appealing. Therefore, he did not pay attention to it that much. As far as he was concerned, the notion of a currency system without an intrinsic value appeared as something doomed for failure. After a month, Bitcoin came across his way once again; however, this time it had a better impression. Since the influence of the World of Warcraft disaster was still fresh on his mind, he thought of Bitcoin and blockchain technology as an alternative to centralization. He blamed centralization was for most of the ills in the world.
He said: “I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day, I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”
He held a negative view when it came to the corporate world and its desire for centralized control. A great number of early Bitcoin adopters also had the same opinion. Buterin insisted that power was “zero-sum-game”, meaning that big players should be dis-empowered if the common man ever became empowered.
Bitcoin Magazine
With his interest and curiosity in Bitcoin piqued, Vitalik was keen on having some Bitcoin to further understand its concept. In addition, he had his heart set on being a part of the thriving and experimental Bitcoin economy. However, at that age and time, he could not afford to buy Bitcoin as he did not have the financial resources. Moreover, he did not have the computing power for mining Bitcoin. The mainstream Bitcoin mining had surpassed CPUs and GPUs, going into the arena of FPGAs by 2011.
Feeling disappointed but undeterred, he skimmed through online Bitcoin forums searching for anyone willing to pay for work in Bitcoin. Chatting on a Bitcoin forum, he came across a fellow that offered him 5 Bitcoin for every article he writes. It equaled around $3.5 per article. Buterin’s impressive writing ability attracted the attention of Romanian Bitcoin enthusiast Mihai Alisie. The due started corresponding with each other quite frequently.
During the end of 2011, Buterin and Alisie co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, with the 27-year-old as Head Writer. Thriving at success, Bitcoin Magazine became the leading cryptocurrency publication since they decided to transition it to print media format from online. It was later bought by BTC Media. Buterin, however, kept writing a post until 2024.
Ethereum
Reaching one of the primary aspects of Vitalik Buterin biography, Ethereum is his greatest accomplishment. Buterin was writing about Bitcoin for almost two years and getting feedback from the Bitcoin community. Thus, he became more entrenched in the world of blockchain. He did not fall behind in seeing what a few others in the community were starting to see. It was that blockchain technology had the capability of supporting more than only a payment processing system. His attempts to pitch the concept of turning Bitcoin network into a more application-friendly build were unsuccessful. He aimed for it to create useful, decentralized apps that do not need functionality-layering procedures.
Since Buterin came undone in convincing the Bitcoin community during that time, he started writing an entirely new blockchain. Instead of utilizing the “crude” scripting language used by Nakamoto, Buterin implanted a more refined and robust Turing-complete programming language. Theoretically, it meant that the new blockchain he wrote could back any type of use-case right from the core network build with no need for layering. Buterin went on to write the white paper for the new blockchain and named it Ethereum. He then released it to a number of friends and associates who shared the word further.
Quite successfully, the idea was a massive accomplishment. The year after, there was a public crowd sale for the project, raising about $18.4 million dollars. The Ethereum Foundation was built in Switzerland. Not late after, in 2015, they released the first version of Ethereum. It has gone on to be the most well-known and popular platform for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Decentralized Applications (DApps), and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). The native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain is Ether and it is known as the second most valuable crypto in terms of market cap.
On the Project, the Ethereum founder said in 2020: “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
During his shining career, the Ethereum founder garnered many awards, which is an interesting aspect of Vitalik Buterin biography.
- Vіtаlіk Вutеrіn rесеіvеd Тhіеl Fеllоwѕhір in 2014.
- Вutеrіn gоt thе Wоrld Тесhnоlоgу Аwаrd іn thе ІТ Ѕоftwаrе саtеgоrу in 2014.
- Vіtаlіk wаѕ оn thе Fоrtunе 40 undеr 40 lіѕt in 2016.
- In 2018, Hе wаѕ оn thе Fоrbеѕ 30 undеr 30 lіѕt.
- Hе wаѕ іn thе Fоrtunе thе lеdgеr 40 undеr 40 lіѕtѕ in 2018.
- Hе rесеіvеd а Unіvеrѕіtу оf Ваѕеl Ноnоrаrу dосtоrаtе in 2018.
Philanthropy
Looking at the next part of Vitalik Buterin Biography, you learn that the Ethereum creator is a philanthropist as he has long been donating money to good causes. In 2017, he gifted the Machine Intelligence Research Institute $763,970 Ether. He donated $2.4 million Ether to the SENS Research Foundation in 2018, which carries research on rejuvenation biotechnologies and human life extension.
He also donated $50,000 to the SENS Research Foundation in 2020, along with Sam Bankman-Fried and Haseeb Qureshi, with a total of $150,000. The purpose was for the organization to do research on aging and illnesses related to aging.
50,693,552,078,053 SHIBA coins worth $1.14 billion USD were contributed to India’s Crypto Covid relief fund in 2021.
He also donated $336 million in 430 trillion Dogelon Mars ($ELON) to the Methuselah Foundation, on May 12, 2021.
Plans For the Future
According to Buterin, Ethereum will be “ruling the Metaverse” in a decade. The Metaverse is a notion of a digital or virtual world where people are provided with a chance to interact with their avatars.
He is confident that Ethereum is wonderfully positioned to be a fundamental part of the Metaverse.