Getting To Know Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Founder (ETH) Who Drop Out Of Campus

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. (Photo; Doc. Tech Crunch)

JAKARTA Ethereum (ETH) has become the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin (BTC). However, not many know an important figure behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, a man of Russian-Canadian blood born in 1994.

Ethereum's position has not been overtaken by other cryptocurrencies in recent years even though the crypto market has experienced a significant decline. ETH still maintains its second position.

According to Coinmarketcap data, at the time of writing ETH has a market capitalization of around IDR 2.2 quadrillion. While cryptocurrency number one, Bitcoin, has a market capitalization of around IDR 5 quadrillion.

Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood in 2015. However, a few years later Wood left Ethereum and developed the cryptocurrency Polkadot (DOT).

Vitalik Buterin's Childhood

Born on January 31, 1994 in the ancient city of Colomba, Russia, little Vitalik Buterin lived there until he was 6 years old. His parents migrated to Canada. At the age of 7, Buterin showed his intelligence about complicated concepts.

His father, Dmitry Buterin, an IT expert, told me that little Buterin had made complex documents detailing a world full of rabbits but was governed by a rigorous formula. This document is called the▁pentingstrator of rabbits, and Buterin's father said the document had complex math, chart, and computations.

Buterin doesn't just show off his intelligence at home. He also did it at school, and when he went up to grade 3, he was put in a class for talented students.

High school observer at Abelard School, Toronto, Buterin decided to study at the University oftensuance, Ontario, Canada, a leading public research university. At home, Buterin was appointed as an assistant researcher for cryptographer Ian Goldberg, who created an off-the-record message. This is a cryptographic protocol that makes encryption for instant messaging conversations.

Prior to studying at home, Buterin had studied Bitcoin from his father. According to a DailyCoin report, it may be that interest in Bitcoin has led Buterin to become Goldberg's research assistant - we may never know. All we know is that in 2011 Buterin started talking to other people about Bitcoin and started getting involved in the community.

Working as a Writer in Bitcoin Weekly

With his knowledge and mastery of cryptography, Buterin decided to work in Bitcoin's leading magazine Bitcoin Weekly, for a fee in Bitcoin. At that time, he was paid five Bitcoins per article. At that time Bitcoin was still trading at 3.50 US dollars per BTC.

Bitcoin Weekly quickly became very popular in the community, and Buterin began to become famous. His writing caught the attention of Mihai Alisie, a Bitcoin fan in Romania, and she began discussions with him. However, soon the magazine had to go out of business due to a lack of funding.

This condition directed Buterin to set up his own crypto magazine. Together with Mihai Alisie, he decided to set up a new magazine called Bitcoin Magazine. At the same time, he is still carrying out his responsibilities as Goldberg's assistant while undergoing a course at the University of ability. In 2012, Buterin won a silver medal at the international Olympics in the field of informatics or International Olympiad in Information held in Italy.

At this point, Buterin realized one thing that Bitcoin and Blockchain are the future. He is also aware of the weaknesses of centralized or centralized systems. Some time later, he traveled to San Jose, California, to attend the Bitcoin Conference as a representative of Bitcoin Magazine. At that point, he realized the importance of blockchain ecosystems and decentralization.

Vitalik Buterin Drop Out of Campus

At the end of the school year, Buterin expressed his intention to his father to quit college. Dmitry Buterin understood Vitalik's wishes and agreed. However, Vitalik Buterin did not leave the college without the money.

Before deciding to DO from his campus, Buterin met billionaire Peter Thiel. The figure provided Buterin with $ 100,000 in cash. The funds are intended to support Vitalik Buterin in realizing his dreams.

Buterin spent the following year traveling and writing about blockchain. He visited places like Tel Aviv, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas. He meets dedicated people just like himself to innovate in the blockchain community.

By the time Buterin returned to Toronto, an idea kernel had already built into his mind. Blockchain, he reasoned, should not only be a ledger for currency. This could be a ledger for stocks, deed, images and whatever else it can have.

At first, Buterin argued that the Bitcoin network should be developed to have this capability. However, the network needed scripting language for this. When he failed to get approval for drastic changes to this network, he decided the only way to go forward was to develop his own platform according to his plan. The new platform was later called Ethereum.

The birth of Ethereum

In November 2013, Vitalik Buterin wrote the Ethereum whitepaper and gave it to some people for reading. This small group gave it to others to spread it further. Not long after, 30 people contacted Buterin to talk about the project. The white book was very popular, Buterin began forming a team to build blockchain.

Over the next month or so, Buterin put his team together and they started intensely developing the Ethereum network. They rented a house in Miami, bought a plane ticket, and packed their laptop. It's time to build.

The core team consists of Anthony Di Lorio, a Bitcoin community organizer in Toronto; Mihai Alisie, who co-founded Bitcoin Magazine with Buterin, Amirferit, who had worked with him in Israel on the Bitcoin project; and Charles Hoskinson, an American mathematician. A few years later Hoskinson decided to develop Cardano (ADA).

At the end of January, the project is nearing completion, and Buterin has something real that he can present. So that's what he did. At North America's Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Buterin took the podium and spoke for 25 minutes explaining what Ethereum was. After speaking, he got a loud applause, and people started asking about the project. And who can blame them? If successful, Ethereum could expand blockchain limits. It could build a new internet.

In the months following the conference, Ethereum founders began raising funds to launch the project. They did this through the sale of Ether, the network's original tokens, and netted 31,000 Bitcoins from fundraising. The founders used the money to set up the Ethereum Foundation and assigned it to oversee the development of Ethereum's open-source software. The foundation was founded in Switzerland because developers believe that that is the only country that is more regulatory-friendly. This will keep them away from the views of the FBI and the SEC.

In the following days, the number of co-founders also increased. Gavin Wood, a programmer from England, Joseph Kubin, and Jeff Wilcke, a developer, all joined the team as reported by DailyCoin.

It doesn't stop there, on August 31, 2022 Buterin launched his 10-year essay collection book in the crypto industry. The book is titled Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains. It also marks the Ethereum shift from Proof-of-Work (PoW) model to better environmentally friendly Proof-of-Stake (PoS). At the time of writing, Ether is trading at a price of IDR 18 million per ETH. On November 10, 2021, ETH had penetrated ATH at a price of IDR 69,531,233 based on Coinecko data.