Who is Vitalik Buterin?

Token Takeaways ✍

✨ Vitalik Buterin is best known for creating Ethereum, the world’s leading smart contract platform.

✨ Buterin has been heavily involved in the token space since entering through Bitcoin, building particularly strong ties with Ethereum projects.

✨ He’s regarded as one of the token community's most influential figures.

Vitalik Buterin is arguably the most influential figure in the token universe. As the inventor of Ethereum, Buterin laid the foundations for DeFi, NFTs, and millions of tokens to emerge. Ethereum famously pioneered smart contract technology, giving rise to a wave of powerful decentralised applications catering to a variety of different use cases. Since launching in 2015, Ethereum has grown to become the world’s most used blockchain, and Buterin has remained at the forefront of the ecosystem. As one of the most recognised figures in the blockchain space, any time Buterin mentions a project it’s generally worth paying attention. That’s why we dedicated a Collection entirely to some of the projects he’s actively used, endorsed, and engaged with in the past. While Buterin has not directly recommended investing in the tokens featured in the Collection, our selection gives an overview of some of the key projects he follows in the fast-growing token economy (and yes, Ethereum is one of them). Read on to learn more. 

Introducing Vitalik Buterin 🤝

Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and token visionary best known for creating the Ethereum blockchain.

Vitalik Buterin at ETHDenver 2022 (Photo: Benjamin Rasmussen for TIME)

Demonstrating that he was extraordinarily talented at an early age, Buterin was placed in a class for gifted children and showed an early aptitude for mathematics and programming. He first learned about blockchain technology when his father Dmitry Buterin introduced him to Bitcoin at the age of 17. 

Buterin enrolled at the University of Waterloo and famously co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. Earning Bitcoin as payment for writing articles on the possibilities of digital blockchain-based currencies, Buterin became increasingly involved in the crypto space during his studies. 

A young Vitalik Buterin on his IBM computer (Photo courtesy of Dmitry Buterin via TIME)

After discovering the possibilities of blockchain technology via Bitcoin, Buterin imagined a world in which decentralisation could enable more than the exchange of value. His findings led to him conceptualising a decentralised version of the Internet that would host a wide range of applications. His idea formed the basis for Ethereum, a Turing-complete blockchain with its own in-built programming language. Buterin published the whitepaper for Ethereum in 2014 and dropped out of university a year later after receiving a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship program. 

Ethereum launched in 2015 and was an early success. Expanding on the vision of a decentralised “peer-to-peer cash system” that Satoshi Nakamoto had presented with Bitcoin, Ethereum hosted early decentralised applications such as MakerDAO and Uniswap. It gained adoption in the decentralised finance (or “DeFi”) space and later became a hub for NFTs, non-fungible blockchain-based assets that can take the form of digital art, music, and any other form of content. 

Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza #313, one of the most popular Ethereum NFT collections (Photo: Tyler Hobbs/Fidenza)

Since launching with an initial coin offering sale, Ethereum has held a place as the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin. Ethereum and its surrounding ecosystem sit at the heart of the token universe, and while Buterin has made a conscious move to step back as a leader in order to champion the network’s decentralised values, he remains its most prominent figure. 

Vitalik Buterin’s role in the token ecosystem 💪

As the person responsible for creating the world’s biggest blockchain ecosystem, Buterin holds a crucial role in the token ecosystem. Many of the applications that have launched on Ethereum feature their own tokens, and Buterin has remained an active participant in the space. Beyond Ethereum itself, Buterin has used and been involved with many of the blockchain ecosystem’s key protocols. 

Moreover, Buterin is widely known for his strong ethics and belief in decentralised values. This is something that’s evidenced in both Ethereum’s roadmap, which embraces technologies like Layer 2 and sharding with decentralisation at its core, and Buterin’s personal activities. 

Vitalik Buterin donates 50 trillion SHIB tokens to India’s Crypto Covid Relief Fund (Photo: Etherscan)

Buterin has repeatedly expressed interest in using the power of blockchain technology to achieve good for the world, promoting potential use cases such as banking the unbanked. In 2021, Buterin caused a stir when he donated over $1 billion worth of SHIB and other dog-themed meme coins to India’s Crypto Covid Relief Fund. Buterin has also been recognised in University of Basel’s list of honorary doctorates and featured in TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

Throughout Ethereum’s lifetime, Buterin has demonstrated that he has a decades-long vision for the token economy and how it could expand as blockchains hit mass adoption.

His ideas have often suggested that he thinks Ethereum will remain an important part of the decentralised future, and he has consistently shown that he has a prescient view on the space with early predictions on how DeFi, NFTs, and decentralised social media could evolve. 

With Ethereum continuing to grow at a rapid pace, Buterin is still one of the space’s most important visionaries. 

The Caught by Vitalik Collection 💫

The Caught by Vitalik Collection features a host of the blockchain-based tokens Buterin has used, endorsed, or engaged with in the past. Though Buterin has always avoided offering recommendations on token investments, our Collection has been curated to feature some of the top tokens on his radar. 

The Collection features Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency and the technology that sparked his interest in tokens. Unsurprisingly, it also includes Ethereum, which remains the core asset within Buterin’s vision of a free, open version of the Internet. 

The Collection also focuses on some of the core projects in the Ethereum ecosystem that Buterin has actively used and discussed such as Uniswap and Ethereum Name Service. It also highlights OMG Network and Polygon, two other key Ethereum scaling solutions. 

Buterin has spoken at length about how Layer 2 technologies like Optimistic Rollups and ZK-Rollups will be key to helping Ethereum hit mass adoption, and our Collection features four leading Layer 2 projects in the Ethereum ecosystem: Optimism, Immutable X, Loopring, and StarkNet. 

Caught by Vitalik even features some of the ecosystem’s top meme coins. As Buterin has worked with the Dogecoin Foundation, Dogecoin features in the Collection. Shiba Inu is also included thanks to Buterin’s memorable donation to India’s Crypto Covid Relief Fund.

Caught by Vitalik also features The Graph and Chainlink, two projects that launched on Ethereum and have become critical blockchain infrastructure powering DeFi and much more.

Finally, the Collection features Gitcoin, the Ethereum-based funding platform for Web3 projects aiming to make a positive impact on the world. Buterin has been a huge supporter of Gitcoin in the past, donating to many projects in its ecosystem.

Discover more 👀

Now that you’ve read our guide to the Caught by Vitalik Collection, you’ll understand why Buterin is seen as such a key figure in the token universe. With Ethereum holding the second rank among thousands of tokens and a rapidly evolving ecosystem, Buterin is undoubtedly one of the most important names in the space today. 

To learn more about what Buterin and his world-changing creation is about, why not go explore the Caught by Vitalik Collection? Get to grips with Ethereum and some of the key projects on the network, learn about the plans for scaling, and much more. Head to token.com to discover the Caught by Vitalik Collection today.  

Learn more about token.com here

Please note: Investing in cryptoassets is risky. Due to the volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors run the risk of losing their funds when they make an investment. Returns from cryptoasset investing are not guaranteed, therefore users should always be aware of the risks.