Vitaly Dmitriyevich Buterin, the mastermind behind the Ethereum project and one of the co-founders of the Ethereum platform, is a household name in the crypto ecosystem. Being raised and schooled as a gifted child, this Russian-Canadian programmer and writer succeeded in reaching the top charts of young billionaires in his twenties, thanks to his prodigious mind and crypto zeal.
Born on January 31, 1994, in Moscow, Russia, this ambitious young man initially learned about Bitcoin from his father when he was just 17 years old. Mesmerized by the new technologies and the innovative concept behind the first cryptocurrency project, Buterin soon started writing for Bitcoin Magazine, where he published his views on Bitcoin-related topics.
Soon, he co-founded the magazine and took it to another level. The printed version, which initially appeared in 2012, garnered positive critiques, propelling it into the crypto ecosystem as the first and most important journal devoted to cryptocurrency research.
It didn’t take long before the young cryptocurrency enthusiast came out with his own digital currency project at the age of only 18 – the Ethereum platform. He developed this innovative technological solution as an alternative to Bitcoin and used the unique Smart Contract concept as the basis for the new type of blockchain technology.
Vitalik Buterin’s Crypto Project
While Vitalik was a devoted Bitcoin enthusiast, he found that Bitcoin still left something to be desired in terms of features. As a result, he went on to develop his own decentralized cryptocurrency network. Although Bitcoin allowed for the transmission of money all across the world without the use of banks as intermediaries, Buterin believed that blockchain technology offered far greater promise and possibilities.
Buterin originally articulated his groundbreaking ideas in the Ethereum whitepaper. The 2013 whitepaper expands on Buterin’s predictions for annexing the next-generation Smart Contract platform to a decentralized application platform.
The Ethereum development team was founded by Vitalik Buterin, Anthony Di Lorio, Mihai Alisie, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Charles Hoskinson. In July 2015, the team of Ethereum founders unveiled the initial version of the Ethereum network. It was marketed as a platform that would allow developers to construct decentralized apps (dApps).
How Does the Ethereum Platform Work?
Like other digital currencies, Ethereum relies on a blockchain network to function. This distributed ledger validates and records all transactions. Being created as a decentralized network, Ethereum enables you to utilize the Internet without entrusting your personal information to online applications or sites.
To make this possible, the Ethereum network employs a network of processing units known as nodes. As a result, rather than storing transaction and user data in an internet cloud or on servers, the network’s encrypted database is kept in all of the nodes that comprise the decentralized Blockchain Network.
The transaction data encrypted in blocks is then validated and uploaded to the blockchain by crypto miners using consensus techniques such as the Proof of Stake algorithm.
What Is Ether (ETH)?
Ether and Ethereum are often used interchangeably in cryptocurrency lingo. They do, however, differ significantly from one another. Whenever we refer to Ethereum, we are referring to the whole platform. Naturally, it is necessary to also have a coin that indicates the native currency of the network. Ether (ETH) is the native decentralized finance (DeFi) coin of Ethereum in which miners are compensated for their mining abilities and equipment on the network.
A number of operations are performed on the Ethereum network with the help of its native coin. Namely, Ether is typically used for paying the “Gas” transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain, buying other altcoins based on the Ethereum platform (such as Cardano (ADA), Stellar (XLM), Tezos (XTZ), or Polkadot (DOT)), conducting transactions between the users and businesses on the Ethereum network, or as a miner’s reward.
The Mechanism Behind Smart Contracts and dApps
Created as a more sophisticated technical solution than the Bitcoin blockchain, the Ethereum platform offers several innovative concepts, like Smart Contracts, decentralized applications (dApps), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
Smart Contracts
Smart Contracts are the trademark of the Ethereum platform. They provide automatic execution of terms from agreements signed between two or more parties involved in a platform transaction. This eliminates the need for a middleman in the transaction process, which adds to the transparency, autonomy, and decentralization of the process. At the same time, the use of Smart Contracts results in reduced transaction fees.
Additionally, smart contracts enable developers to create a diverse range of decentralized applications and currencies.
Decentralized Applications (dApps)
Decentralized apps (dApps) are built on top of platforms powered by distributed ledger technology (DLT), like the Ethereum blockchain. One of the primary benefits of developing dApps is that they are not centralized in terms of management, access, or possession.
Ethereum features its own programming language, Solidity, which is used to create decentralized applications on the platform.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are one-of-a-kind cryptographic assets generated on the blockchain containing non-replicable identifying codes and information. Despite their usage as a medium of exchange for business transactions, NFTs cannot be exchanged or swapped at face value like other digital assets. They only facilitate their physical (visual) manifestation.
What’s Buterin’s Net Worth in Ether?
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin became the world’s youngest crypto millionaire at the age of 27 by realizing his own technological vision and ingenuity in the crypto realm.
Currently, there are more than $1.06 billion USD worth of Ether coins in his digital wallet and this is just a slice of the crypto-fortune Buterin holds.
How Much Bitcoin and Altcoins Does Buterin Have?
Apart from his Ethereum assets, Buterin has also invested in Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), OmiseGo (OMG), and Dogecoin (DOGE). His net worth of real money earned by creating and investing in digital money amounts to an astonishing $21 Billion USD.
Why Did Buterin Move $1.3 Billion Worth of Ether?
People who wish to spread the word about their cryptocurrency initiatives frequently make large payments straight to Vitalic’s public wallet address. Their major goal with this ‘act of goodwill’ is to promote their currencies for a higher value on the crypto market. In one such instance, the Shiba Inu token’s creators sent 505 billion SHIB tokens to the Ethereum co-creator’s digital wallet, which represents half of all SHIB digital money.
Unwilling to exercise his substantial influence in the crypto community and boost the value of the currency in this manner, Buterin chose to give $1 billion in SHIB to the India COVID Relief Fund. He also disposed of his SHIB stock of coins.
A Few Words Before You Go…
Despite the fact that it was published in 2013, Buterin’s forecast for the annexation of the smart contract platform to a decentralized application platform is still in the focus of interest of crypto aficionados and developers.
As Buterin stated in his Ethereum whitepaper, smart contracts would be integrated into decentralized application platforms in the future for more convenient, fast, cost-effective, and decentralized transactions, and – that future is now. With Ethereum as the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin can rest assured that he’s already built and secured his future.
At the same time, Ethereum is offering developers eager to enter the crypto ecosystem an equal and substantial chance to develop their ideas using the decentralized Ethereum blockchain – perhaps earning their rightful position on the list of young millionaires like him, too.
