Who Is Vitalik Buterin?

If you read crypto blogs, there is no way you have missed the name of Vitalik Buterin, but who is Vitalik Buterin really?

In this article, we find out about this genius boy who took the crypto world by storm with his innovations and has become a bit of a legend since.

Within the crypto industry, Buterin, at his young age of 24, commands a great deal of respect. Almost every comment he makes, every prediction that comes from him, makes headlines across crypto media outlets.

Who is he? What is his background? Bet you never tried to find out before. Today, we tell you all about him.

An Introduction to Vitalik Buterin

If you are looking for a quick idea of who Buterin is, then it suffices to tell you that he is a genius programmer of Russian descent, hailing from Canada, who struck gold with his role as the co-founder of Ethereum.

For the uninitiated, Ethereum blockchain is considered to be the gold standard when it comes to enterprise use cases.

Its crypto token ETH holds the third position in terms of the market out of all crypto coins. At the time of writing, as per Coinmarketcap, its market cap is valued at $12.26 billion.

Vitalik Buterin As A Student

From a very early age, Buterin was recognized for his brilliance with numbers and an uncanny genius. This led to a bit of social isolation for the archetypal geek.

Reportedly, he often regretted not being an ordinary student with an average 75% score and wished he would be gawked at for his genius a little less.

The four years he spent at Toronto’s Abelard School, a private high school, is widely reported to be the part of his entire education he enjoyed the most.

Although he was not the biggest fan of the traditional educational structure, he enjoyed the approach that this particular school had to studies.

About his time at this school, he commented:

“I noticed my attitude and my results almost immediately and drastically change. Education is ultimately much more than simply memorizing individual facts, or even learning individual concepts. [What] matters most: learning how to think, learning how to reason and learning how to learn.”

By the time he got to college and enrolled in the University of Waterloo with 5 advanced courses, he was already caught up in the interesting world of Bitcoin, blockchain and beyond. In 2013, he dropped out.

Brush With Bitcoin

As is widely reported, Buterin first heard about Bitcoin from his father and eventually started spending more and more time on Reddit firms discussing Bitcoin, other possible cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology.

He soon started writing articles, and was paid in Bitcoins for the same. He became the co-founder and main author for a new online publication, the Bitcoin Magazine.

In 2013, when he represented the publication in a San José conference, he first came across a community of crypto enthusiasts, which fuelled his own enthusiasm.

Co-founding Ethereum

Around the same time as when he attended the San José conference, Buterin began wondering how Bitcoin’s scripting language could be modified to allow for development of applications.

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When his suggestions did not get too much traction, he thought of starting out with a different blockchain altogether.

In his whitepaper for Ethereum in the later part of 2013, Buterin explained his idea for a new decentralized network that would not just support a cryptocurrency but would also provide an ecosystem in which to develop ecosystems.

With the founding of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) in 2017, the existing Ethereum Network was consolidated into a blockchain network that companies could fall back on for enterprise usage.

You May Also Read: 5 Popular Use Cases of Ethereum Smart Contracts

Other Contributions

Given that Buterin is only 24, we are sure he has many more innovations ahead of him. Besides his role as the co-founder of Ethereum he has contributed to projects such as the Dark Wallet, Bitcoin Python, Kryptokit, Cody Wilson.

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