Crypto Giggle
Vitalik Buterin, the wunderkind co-founder of Ethereum has been busy lately. He’s actively working away at the Ethereum 2.0 solution, recently donated a billion dollars worth of Shiba Inu tokens to the India Covid Relief Fund and is still giving talks remotely on topics like scaling.
You may know some of the popular facts about the Russian-Canadian crypto legend; like how is the co-founder and face of Ethereum, which he co-founded at the young of 21, but you may be surprised to learn some of these lesser known facts about Vitalik.
Contents
- 1 #1 Vitalik Buterin Founded Bitcoin Magazine
- 2 #2 Vitalik Buterin Etherium founder calls Craig Wright a FRAUD
- 3 #3 Vitalik Buterin dropped out of college.
- 4 #4 Google once tried to hire Vitalik, well sort of..
- 5 #5 Vitalik Buterin is not dead!
- 6 #6 Vitalik Buterin’s net worth jumped thanks to Ethereum and Shiba
#1 Vitalik Buterin Founded Bitcoin Magazine
One of the first mass-published cryptocurrency related print mediums was Bitcoin Magazine. The first issue was published in 2012, but the company was co-founded by Vitalik when he was just 17 years old.
At the time, Vitalik was still in college when he took up the role of head writer of the magazine. I don't know about you, but when I was that age (and especially in college), the last thing I was doing was founding ground-breaking businesses.
Although currently print editions seem to limited to special editions, in its early days Vitalik stated he was spending 10-20 hours a week on the periodical that was widely available at Barnes And Noble.
You can check out the digital articles from Bitcoin Magazine at their website BitcoinMagazine.com
(Image courtesy of the CC BY-SA 2.0 license and Zach Copley on Flickr)
#2 Vitalik Buterin Etherium founder calls Craig Wright a FRAUD
Vitalik apparently isn't too found of Craig Wright and his claims that he (Craig) is the real identity of the famed Satoshi Nakamoto and that Bitcoin Cash is the "real" Bitcoin.
Back in 2018 at the Deconomy conference, Vitalik requested the microphone and asked the panel and the audience "why this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?". (Click the YouTube video above to see the full interaction.)
Additionally, Vitalik has penned a few Tweets on the subject. One notable tweet simply stated, "Bitcoin Cash is not Bitcoin".
Regardless of where you stand on the, "Is Craig Wright Satoshi" argument, you have to put some serious weight behind Vitalik's thoughts on the issue.
#3 Vitalik Buterin dropped out of college.
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs and now Vitalik Buterin?
At age 20, Vitalik was studying away at the University Of Waterloo, taking as much as five advanced courses at once. It was around this time that Vitalik received the notable Theil Fellowship grant for 100k.
The Theil Fellowship grants students sums of seed money to work on their projects with the catch that they must drop out of college to receive it. Yes, you read that correctly, the grant is contingent on the recipient dropping out of college! That's exactly what Vitalik did in 2014 when dropped out to work on Ethereum full time.
Not long after, Vitalik and team successfully crowdfunded 18 million dollars to establish the Ethereum foundation which is tasked with overseeing the development of Ethereum.
#4 Google once tried to hire Vitalik, well sort of..
In May of 2018, rumor were swirling that Vitalik had been offered a job at Google and many thought it was to work on a top secret Google crypto project.
He thumbed out this (now deleted) satirical tweet and poll asking if he should drop Ethereum and go work for Google. Surprisingly the results were a little more mixed than we would have thought.
According to Buterin, it turns out that Google sent the email possibly automatically and that it wasn't for a high-profile position.
Vitalik further clarified in an interview:
“I hope we all realize that this was a joke. Some random HR person from Google emailed me, most likely because some machine learning algorithm analyzed my GitHub and saw that I had some high score in the international Olympiad..[]..Apparently, I fit the blueprints as a great candidate to hire at an intern salary."
Who knows, maybe Google is secretly assembling an Avengers-style team for some super-duper clandestine crypto project and Vitalik is just covering. Either way, we are glad he stayed where he is.
#5 Vitalik Buterin is not dead!
Vitalik Buterin dead! Killed in a car accident!
Or so the headline proclaimed in 2017...
A rumor was spreading its way through the internet like The Mad King's wildfire that Vitalik had been killed. The source of the rumor was reported to have originated on the 4chan message boards. The purpose? Possibly to crash the price of Ethereum (perhaps to allow the rumor-spreaders to buy more?).
And while it didn't necessarily "crash" the coin, it did cause a four billion drop in market cap for Ether, which back then was quite impactful.
Vitalik used the blockchain to prove that he was in fact alive and well. Phew!
#6 Vitalik Buterin’s net worth jumped thanks to Ethereum and Shiba
Bonus Entry
We don't talk much about price around here because there as so much more interesting things to talk about in crypto. Plus coin prices tend to fluctuate at the drop of a hat; the same is to be said about an individual's net worth.
But at the time of this writing Vitalik's net worth is at a pretty remarkable level. CelebrityNetWorth.com reports that his net worth is close to 10 billion...for now.
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