The market capitalization of the Ethereum network, which has grown along with solutions for decentralized finance (DeFi), currently stands at more than US$ 356 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Its creator, Vitalik Dmitriyevich Buterin, created the network and several opportunities to use blockchain and leverage its technology.
Born in 1994 in Russia, Buterin spent most of his life in Canada. As a child with unique intelligence, he was inserted in a group for young people called ‘gifted’, in which he studied more intensively subjects such as mathematics, programming, and economics.
Buterin created Ethereum at the age of 19
At 17, the young man excelled and was honored with the Bronze Medal at the International Olympiad in Computer Science. In 2013, at the age of 19, Buterin published a white paper proposing the creation of Ethereum. However, his first contact with the crypto universe happened before that, through his father, who introduced him to bitcoin. His first job was writing articles for Bitcoin Magazine, receiving about five bitcoins per text – at the time, BTC was still valued at only US$ 4.
At the same time, Buterin attended the University of Waterloo, which he dropped out of in 2014 when he received the US$ 100,000 Thiel Fellowship. The award motivated him to work at Ethereum full-time. Today, ether (ETH) is the second-largest cryptoasset on the market.
However, one of Ethereum’s biggest problems is the speed of transactions. Buterin stated in his tweet that it may not have been a good idea to implement 256 bits, as it should be “64 bits with an arbitrarily sized BigInt feature”. This would make the network have more processing power, making it faster.
Second crypto generation
Ethereum is considered the second generation of blockchains, starting a new model, uniting transaction services with cryptocurrencies, and a platform that also supports smart contracts and decentralized applications, the famous dApps. Such innovations revolutionized the crypto universe.
Buterin’s initial idea from 2013 became famous after a presentation at a bitcoin conference in Miami, Florida. Months after the event, the team held a crowdfunding event, trading ETH. Those who bought it paid in BTC. Thirty-one thousand bitcoins were raised, an amount that, at the time, was equivalent to about US$ 18 million.
With the goal achieved, they started creating the project and founded the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Switzerland.
Today, Buterin is considered the youngest cryptocurrency billionaire – he is estimated to have raised 333,520 ETH. He currently lives in Singapore, although he defines himself as a “digital nomad”.
