Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin is one of the best-known names in the world of cryptocurrency. Buterin is the creator of Ethereum, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency network behind Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization. He has been actively involved in the Bitcoin community as a writer and developer since 2011, and as co-founder of the popular Bitcoin Magazine (first issue in May 2012) along with Mihai Alisie. Vitalik Buterin first wrote about Ethereum in November 2013 and described it as “cryptocurrency 2.0″ – in short, since it presented the idea of using “the Bitcoin blockchain for more than just money”.

Vitalik Buterin was born in 1994 in Russia and moved to Canada at the age of 6. He discovered bitcoin in 2011 and started writing about it and eventually co-founded  Bitcoin Magazine with Mihai Alisie. In 2012, he entered the University of Waterloo in Canada but as he got more and more absorbed in cryptocurrencies, he dropped out in 2013. He writes, “I went around the world, explored many crypto projects, and finally realized that they were all too concerned about specific applications and not being sufficiently general - hence the birth of Ethereum, which has been taking up my life ever since.”

During 2014, Ethereum’s pre-sale for ether received an overwhelming response. According to Ethereum, it can be used to “codify, decentralize, secure and trade just about anything.” Vitalik is now primarily engaged with the creation of next-gen smart and decentralized application platform. He has co-authored the books, The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology (William Mougayar, Vitalik Buterin) and THE BITCOIN: How Bitcoin Overturning the Global Economic (Charlie Lee, Vitalik Buterin). His interests include math, algorithms, cryptography, mechanism design, economics, social science, politics, and rationalist philosophy.