Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin, generally known as Vitalik Buterin, is one of the most prominent figures in cryptocurrency. He is best known as the co-founder of Ethereum, a major blockchain platform. The visionary developer from Canada was born in 1994 in Russia and became a key figure in cryptocurrency when he introduced Ethereum in 2013. Vitalik’s contribution to enriching blockchain technology and cryptocurrency is mesmerizing and highly influential.
Early Life And Education
Vitalik Buterin was born in Kolomna, a major city in Russia on January 31, 1994. His family lived in Kolomna in his early days and emigrated to Canada for better living and employment provisions. Buterin’s father, Dimitry was a computer scientist from whom Buterin learned about Bitcoin. Buterin excelled in mathematics, programming, and economics and his extraordinary skills have placed him in a class for gifted children.
His high school education was in The Abelard School, later he went to the University of Waterloo where he took advanced courses and was a research assistant for Ian Goldberg, a famous cryptographer. Vitalik Buterin is an International Olympiad medal winner, he won a bronze medal in the 2012 International Olympiad in Informatics in Italy. He was awarded a grant from the Thiel Fellowship that is worth $100,000. Buterin dropped out of the University of Waterloo in 2014 and proposed the Ethereum whitepaper in the same year. The Ethereum project was launched one year after publishing the whitepaper and is currently one of the top-rated open-source blockchain platforms. Buterin received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel on November 30, 2018.
Career Journey Of Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin’s professional journey exemplifies his dedication and innovation in the blockchain sector. Let’s explore the milestones that define his remarkable path.
Vitalik Buterin And Bitcoin Magazine
Buterin’s journey from an article writer to a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, one of the most prominent publications in the cryptocurrency landscape has been inspiring. His relationship with cryptocurrency started with meeting a person who was trying to start a blog related to Bitcoin. He proposed five BTC to write for him, Buterin accepted this offer and was a major writer until the website was taken down due to Bitcoin’s lack of attention.
His journey with Bitcoin Magazine started in September 2011 when Mihai Alisie approached him about starting a new publication called Bitcoin Magazine, soon after he became the leading writer and the co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. In 2012, Bitcoin Magazine began publishing its print edition and became the first exclusive publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. The Bitcoin Magazine was then purchased by BTC Media in 2014 and Buterin continued his service in Bitcoin Magazine until the administrative changes of the publication. Apart from these two designations, Buterin held a position on the editorial board of Ledger, a scholarly journal that deals with the concepts of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.
Buterin’s Journey from a Writer to the Co-founder of Ethereum
Ethereum is the project that imprinted the footsteps of Vitalik Buterin in the cryptocurrency arena. Ethereum was born after Buterin published it in a whitepaper in 2013. The whitepaper was circulated with enhanced interest and its popularity was in apex position in late 2013 and early 2014. Ethereum project was announced in January 2014 and led by Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Lorio, Gavin Wood, and Joe Lubin. Buterin managed to present Ethereum at a Bitcoin Conference in Miami, the announcement speech was about 25 minutes, and he described the need and potential use of Ethereum in blockchain technology.
Ethereum conducted its initial Coin Offering (ICO) of Ether (the native token of Ethereum) a few months after the conference. Buterin entirely spent his fellowship on the development of the Ethereum project. His ardent interest and visionary perspectives in the cryptocurrency arena helped him build a stand-out image in the sphere and history of advanced technology.
Buterin commented about Ethereum in 2020, he expressed that he was truly grateful to have the opportunity to work in such an interesting and interdisciplinary area of industry, where he had the chance to interact with cryptographers, mathematicians, and economists prominent in their fields, to help build software and tools that already affected tens of thousands of people around the world, and to work on advanced problems in computer science, economics, and philosophy every week. Ethereum has been operated and overviewed by the Ethereum Foundation, a Switzerland-based non-profit organization.
Vitalik Buterin; The Developer you know, The Philanthropist you don’t!
Vitalik Buterin is well known for his philanthropic activities and donation programs to power various research. His major donations include a donation of ETH worth $763,970 to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2017, $2.4 million worth of Ether to the SENS Research Foundation in 2018, etc. His major donations are listed below.
- $1 million worth of Ether to an organization that helps the poor refugees in Africa (2018)
- $50,000 to the SENS Research Foundation in 2020
- $150,000 was donated to the SENS Research Foundation to fight against aging and aging-related diseases.
- $1 billion in crypto to the India Covid Relief Fund
- He reportedly donated 50 trillion SHIB tokens in a single transaction.
- Vitalik contributed 750ETH to Ukraine’s Unchain Foundation which provides humanitarian bits of help during the war.
Vitalik concluded in his recent blog post that it was his firm belief that, out of all the things known and seen in the universe, humans were the brightest stars. He stated that they were the one thing they knew about that, even if imperfectly, sometimes made an earnest effort to care about “the good” and adjusted their behavior to better serve it. He also remarked that two billion years from then, if the Earth or any part of the universe still bore the beauty of earthly life, it would be human artifices like space travel and geoengineering that would have made it happen.
Major Recognitions And Awards
- World Technology Award in the IT Software category, 2014
- Thiel Fellowship Award, 2014
- Fortune 40 under 40 list, 2014
- Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2016
- Fortune the ledger 40 under 40 list, 2018
- University of Basel Honorary Doctorate, 2018
The Bottom Line
Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin is an influential figure in the cryptocurrency arena and modern technology. He was a man who found out the possibilities of the crypto landscape and implemented projects like Ethereum at an early age. He managed to address the inherent limitations of existing platforms and gain a deeper understanding of crypto, and blockchain technology at his younger age. Buterin can be an ideal figure for those who are interested in cryptocurrencies and trying to contribute anything to the particular sphere. Buterin has managed to balance the image of a socially responsible individual apart from a visionary programmer and developer.
