Who is Vitalik Buterin?

The Coin Shark collected all the most interesting information about significant figures in the virtual money market. The first, about whom we will tell, is familiar and interesting to the entire cryptocurrency world.

Vitalik Buterin is a Canadian-Russian programmer, co founder of Ethereum decentralized blockchain platform. He was born in the ancient city of Kolomna near Moscow, but his family moved to Canada when he was six years old.

As a child, Vitalik was already very interested in computers and was remarkably drawn to math, programming and economics. In Canada he entered private Abelard School and studied in a class for gifted kids. It seems that the motto of this school – Sapere aude (don`t be afraid to think, be brave to use your mind) – became the personal motto of the future programmer. He claims that the most important part of education is to learn how to think, reason and, basically, how to learn.

In 2011 Vitalik heard about Bitcoin and got interested in the idea behind virtual currencies. He started writing articles for a reward of 5 BTC (approximately $3 back then) and, having saved up several dozens of Bitcoin, bought a T-shirt. However, the website where he posted his articles had to shut down due to lack of funds. Then the 17-year-old schoolboy received an offer to become a co founder of Bitcoin Magazine, where Vitalik worked up till 2014. He graduated from school in 2012 and entered the University of Waterloo in province Ontario. Among its alumni there is a Dutch-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf, who created PHP – one of the world`s most popular programming languages.

Unlike his college, Vitalik Buterin didn’t finish the university. He dropped out after the first year and engaged in blockchain. By that time he already had a clear understanding of the distributed ledger technology, its prospective, advantages and weak points of Bitcoin and a possibility to change the world economy with the help of blockchain and digital currencies.

In 2013 Vitalik traveled a lot, met many developers and finally published a white paper of a blockchain platform for the creation of decentralized online services that he called Ethereum. A group of developers gathered around Vitalik hold one of the biggest ICOs to implement the project. Vitalik also received a grant of Thiel Fellowship – 100 thousand dollars from Peter Thiel`s fund. The grant is given to “young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom”. The organization also helps young entrepreneurs connect with investors, partners and potential clients. In 2014 Vitalik won World Technology Award in IT and software. In 2015 Ethereum platform was launched, having to a large extent inspired the recent crypto-boom.

In 2016 Vitalik came to Russia for the first time since his family emigrated to Canada and met representatives of Russian Central Bank and country’s government. In 2017 Vitalik visited the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum where he met Vladimir Putin.

Ethereum is used as a software environment to create and operate many financial instruments. Their transparency and security is guaranteed by blockchain. However the potential of that platform goes far beyond the financial area – this is a new form of economic, commercial relations and online interaction between users, and 24-year-old guy Vitalik Buterin is one of its leading creators.

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