Vitalik Buterin: From Genius at 17 to Billions in Ethereum

You know that Vitalik created Ethereum, but do you know the story behind it? This guy was born in 1994 in Russia, immigrated to Canada at age 6, and at just 17 discovered Bitcoin through his father—it was love at first sight with blockchain.

Here’s what’s different: while Satoshi created Bitcoin just to transfer value, Vitalik thought bigger. He saw that blockchain could do much more—that’s where the idea of smart contracts and decentralized applications was born. In 2013, he released the Ethereum white paper as a “decentralized internet.” Boom.

Before Ethereum, he was already a veteran: co-founded Bitcoin Magazine at 18, wrote deep technical analyses, contributed to open source projects. Basically, he spent years studying Bitcoin’s problems to solve them better.

Ethereum launched in 2015 and changed everything. Today there are thousands of tokens running on the network, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs—all built on top of this guy’s vision. It’s no exaggeration to say he redefined what blockchain could do.

As for his fortune? Uncertain. Some say R$ 4.5 billion, but Vitalik himself stated in 2022 that he was no longer a billionaire. Fun fact: in 2021, he donated over $1 billion in Shiba Inu to fight Covid in India. In other words, a strong social vision.

Currently, he’s focused on scalability, privacy, and true decentralization—he doesn’t want Ethereum to become just speculation. Proto-Danksharding, Proof of Stake, distributed governance… the guy keeps evolving the network.

The truth? Vitalik proved that a person with clear vision and technical knowledge can literally redesign a market. And Ethereum remains the home of crypto innovation.