Who is Vitalik Buterin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we start our little mini series about popular blockchain people you should know about… and the first one is: Vitalik Buterin.

So who is he and why is he an interesting person?

Vitalik Buterin is best-known as the co-founder of Ethereum and, with the exception of the mysterious Bitcoin founder Sotoshi Nakamoto, is probably the best known person in the entire crypto community.

Buterin grew up in Russia as the son of computer scientists, and his family emigrated to Canada when he was six. He ended up being placed in classes for gifted children, because he was exceptional at math, and started enjoying programming and economics.

But he also liked gaming, and spent countless hours playing World of Warcraft. Coincidentally that put him on the path to create Ethereum, because the game publisher took away his character’s main abilities in a single software update. At that very moment, Vitalik Buterin realized that centralized services have a lot of power over their users.

This eventually motivated him to start working in Ethereum, which he first described in a paper in 2013. At the time, he was the publisher of Bitcoin Magazine, and liked the idea of Bitcoin, but wanted it to be more flexible than just do payments. Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, took notice and convinced Buterin to take a $100,000 investment to drop out of school.

And the rest is history. Obviously, Ethereum has become the most important blockchain for anything related to decentralized apps and finance, and Buterin is at the helm of its foundation.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.