Can anyone converse about cryptocurrencies without making reference to Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest coins so far? I don’t think so! Today, we will learn about an instrumental figure in the establishment of the second-biggest cryptocurrency, Ethereum. Vitalik Buterin is the inventor and co-founder of ETH, and this invention, along with several other ventures, has set him high among the world’s richest individuals.
Vitalik Buterin’s net worth, which owes a great deal to his exploits as the co-founder of Ethereum, is a sight to behold. It gets better when you discover that the Russian-Canadian programmer was only a young adult when he founded the Ethereum Blockchain and became a multimillionaire. Despite its numerous fluctuations, Vitalik Buterin’s net worth is currently scraping the $1 billion mark, although some sources project it to be as low as $800 or even higher than $2 billion.
Are you a youth with wild dreams looking for a successful youth in the crypto space to become your mentor? Vitalik Buterin may just become your guy at the end of this post! Follow through as we explore the background, career, 2024 net worth, and crypto holdings of the young Russian whiz kid, Vitalik Buterin.
Vitalik Buterin’s Early Life and Education
The crypto whiz kid, Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin), was born on January 31, 1994, in Kolomna, Russia. At age six, Buterin and his family migrated to Canada, where he spent the majority of his childhood. He attended a private school in Toronto (the Abelard School), where he developed a stern interest in mathematics and computer science. Once before, there were [clearly untrue] claims that he had an IQ of 257! One certain thing, however, was that Vitalik Buterin had a clever brain that proved crucial to him accruing millions later on.
Today, Vitalik Buterin is renowned as one of the most important persons in the crypto community. His Blockchain, Ethereum, which allows you to create smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), is the second largest crypto in the world. Also, Buterin has the power to influence the price movements of cryptocurrencies in the market today! His speeches, for example, can move market prices up or down, reflecting how prominent he has become in the crypto space.
How Did Vitalik Buterin Establish The Ethereum Blockchain?
Vitalik Buterin’s co-founding of Ethereum is no surprise for some who closely followed his development trajectory. Buterin’s love for math and programming created numerous opportunities for him, so it was only a matter of time before he joined the crypto world. In 2011, however, Vitalik Buterin learned about Bitcoin and immediately got the hint that crypto trading may just be the next best thing. So, he co-founded a Bitcoin-focused publication which he called the Bitcoin Magazine.
Soon, he came up with an idea to create his own blockchain—an idea that swiftly made him a millionaire. In 2013, Buterin published a whitepaper – A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – describing his dreams about Ethereum. Still, in that year, he dropped out of the University of Waterloo to focus on his Blockchain dreams. Luckily for Buterin, however, he was awarded $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship grant in 2014, supporting his chances of actualizing his dreams.
After honing his programming skills, hosting a crowdfunding campaign, and delivering a pacifying speech at the North American Bitcoin Conference, Vitalik’s Blockchain was eventually launched in 2015. The Ethereum Blockchain featured several non-existent perks in the foremost cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Firstly, Ethereum provided greater transparency and security by allowing users to build and deploy dApps on its blockchain. The blockchain was also highly versatile, featuring self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code. Ethereum also allows you to create other cryptocurrencies through its versatile ERC-20 standard.
In creating the Ethereum blockchain, Vitalik Buterin needed to cooperate with seven other clever tech gurus who shared co-founder status with him. The other guys were Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, Jeffery Wilcke, Antonio Di Lorio, Joseph Lubin, and Amir Chetrit.
Before Ethereum’s official launch in 2014, the co-founders conducted a pre-sale where people bought its native token, Ether, and paid in Bitcoin. The coin’s initial allocation reached about 72 million tokens, with 16.54% allotted to the co-founders. These allocations and several private Investments are what contribute to Vitalik Buterin’s net worth in 2024.
Ethereum
Ethereum is one of the world’s foremost cryptocurrencies with numerous uniqueness. It is an open-source software and a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Also, Ether (ETH) is Ethereum’s native token, having the second largest value per token, behind our good old BTC. In other words, Ether is the cryptocurrency generated in accordance with the Ethereum protocol as a reward to validators in a proof-of-stake system for adding blocks to the blockchain.
The blockchain maintains a database containing the storage values of all Ethereum accounts and processes state-altering transactions. After every 12 seconds, a batch of new transactions, known as a block, is processed by the network. This reveals how quickly the blockchain operates, ensuring transparency, security, and unhinged customer experience on the blockchain.
Also, the blockchain has a wide variety of applications. Vitalik Buterin’s model of the blockchain allows users to create fungible (ERC-20) and non-fungible tokens (ERC-721). These tokens have a variety of properties, including crowdfunding, decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized exchanges, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), gambling, etc. Indeed, Buterin’s whitepaper, along with the combination of equally bright minds, like Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin, have created a highly intensive Blockchain for us all!
What is Vitalik Buterin’s Net Worth in 2024?
As mentioned earlier, Vitalik Buterin’s net worth is volatile and fluctuates as much as the crypto market does. This is because most of his wealth comes from his crypto holdings, especially the Ether token. At the end of the first quarter of 2024, Buterin held 278,524 ETH and 256 WETH, their current prices at $3,572.33 and $3,547.50, respectively.
Altogether, Vitalik Buterin’s net worth is surely above $1 billion. This is because our analysis does not include his private investments and holdings, which he has kept a secret from our prying eyes.
Statistically, Buterin holds 0.23% of all ETH tokens ever to exist, making him one of the largest Ethereum bulls ever. Indeed, he’s a young man with the eyes – and pocket – of a grownup! Besides ETH, Vitalik Buterin has holdings in other crypto assets, including USDC and KNCL, of which he owns $21.7 million and $782K respectively.
Clearly, Ethereum’s value had a meteoric rise from 2014 till date, so Vitalik Buterin’s net worth witnessed massive pumps. If it continues this way, nothing will stop Buterin from hitting double-digits in his billion-dollar net worth within the next decade.
Other Crypto Assets Owned by Vitalik Buterin
Besides Ethereum and the crypto assets mentioned earlier, Buterin has a wide variety of crypto tokens in his wallet, some of which hold a ridiculously low value. Specifically, in March 2024, Vitalik Buterin’s crypto account had about 773 different crypto assets, although the majority of them, in terms of value and quantity, were his ETH tokens.
Some of Vitalik Buterin’s tiny tokens include:
- 25 YFM ($31,632)
- 210,050 0xBTC ($30,648)
- 21,691,200 WOJAK ($10,209)
- $1290 worth of TORN token
- 100,000 JET token ($238)
- 6.345 million $SHIB ($60.65)
You might be wondering why someone as influential and rich as Buterin would bother holding some of these tokens with very low value. But the reality is that he doesn’t even have any control over how they appear in his wallet! Buterin’s wallet is filled with these tokens because random crypto founders and holders keep sending small portions of their coins to his publicly known wallet.
They do this hoping that it will boost their token’s credibility and attract more investors. This explains why he has extremely low holdings on certain coins, like less than one penny on Constitution DAO or a couple of dollars on Meta Doge, for instance.
Vitalik Buterin’s Non Crypto Holdings
Without any doubt, Buterin has other endorsements outside the walls of cryptocurrency, however, the bull of such a venture remains a mystery. Buterin’s net worth is difficult to estimate due to this sole purpose, which is caused by his secrecy in not revealing his private investments and ventures openly. But hey! Everyone has the right to own private properties, don’t we? However, we can’t help but assume that a wealthy young man like Buterin must have several non-crypto holdings, such as real estate, cash, and private equity investments.
Also, it is important to note that Vitalik Buterin participated in the seed round of StarkWare. StarkWare is an Israeli zero-knowledge-proof technology development company that, as of 2022, had a market cap of over $8 billion.
Vitalik Buterin’s Crypto Activity and Philanthropy
Aside from being one of the world’s youngest billionaires, Vitalik Buterin also has a big heart and uses his crypto influence to propagate this attribute. For instance, Buterin is the largest donor to the CryptoRelief India Fund, set up during the peak of the just-ended COVID-19 pandemic.
His assistance helped India tackle the outbreak and prevent what might’ve been a wipeout of older populations in the country. To the CryptoRelief India Fund, Vitalik Buterin sent 50.69 trillion SHIB tokens with a value of over $931 million. He also transferred 600 ETH ($2.1 million) and 100 MKR ($406,000) to support the course.
Taking a look at his cryptocurrency portfolio in 2022, Vitalik Buterin had an initial position of 500 MKR tokens, having a value of about $336,000 at that time. However, before the end of September 2023, his MKR tokens’ value grew to over $570,000. He immediately swapped a significant part of the tokens to ETH and DAI, leaving the rest for future multiplications and urgent philanthropic activities.
Conclusion
Several times before, Buterin has transferred some of his funds over to Coinbase and other related exchanges to make it easier for him to support philanthropic activities, and also trade his crypto assets seamlessly. Even with the volatility of cryptocurrency, Vitalik Buterin’s net worth has always ranged at nothing less than $1 billion.
