Vitalik Buterin is the founder of Ethereum and has become a celebrity in the cryptocurrency space. In 2014, he was a recipient of billionaire Peter Thiel's prestigious fellowship.
Vitalik Buterin is a Russian programmer and writer primarily known as a co-founder of Ethereum and as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine.
Buterin met a person on a bitcoin chat forum trying to start a bitcoin blog. The owner offered five bitcoin (about $3.50) to anyone who would write an article for him. Buterin wrote for the site until its website shut down soon thereafter due to Bitcoin's lack of mainstream attention.
In September 2011, another person reached out to Buterin about a new publication called Bitcoin Magazine, a position which Buterin would accept as the first co-founder, and contribute as a leading writer.
In addition Buterin wrote about bitcoin-related topics for other publications, including Bitcoin Weekly.
Bitcoin Magazine in 2012 later began publishing a print edition and has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin Magazine was then purchased by BTC Media, where Buterin continued to write until mid-2014.
In addition, he held a position on the editorial board of Ledger, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes full-length original research articles on the subjects of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
He is a co-creator and inventor of Ethereum, described as a “decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one” that facilitates the creation of new cryptocurrencies and programs that share a single blockchain (a cryptographic transaction ledger).
Vitalik has contributed as a developer to other open source software projects.
Some early examples are: Kryptokit, pybitcointools, multisig.info, and btckeysplit. He also contributed to DarkWallet by Cody Wilson, Bitcoin Python libraries, and the cryptocurrency marketplace site Egora.
On June 25, 2017, Buterin was the subject of a death hoax that caused the price of Ethereum to crash.
