Who Is V God? The Legendary Journey of Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin
In June 2017, a rumor that “Vitalik died in a car accident” spread wildly across the global cryptocurrency market, leading to a 30% drop in Ether prices. Hours after the news broke, a tall, thin young man quietly posted a photo on Twitter with a blockchain hash value—using the unique humor of tech people to declare that he was still alive. This young man who calmed the storm with a line of code is none other than Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, who is respectfully referred to as “V” by the global blockchain community. As of June 2025, he remains one of the most influential thought leaders and technical evangelists in the blockchain world.
The Prodigy’s Starting Point: Programming at 4, Awakening at 13
Born in Russia in 1994, Vitalik received an old computer from his father at the age of 4. While his peers were engrossed in games, he was already writing automated calculation programs in Excel, showcasing his extraordinary talent. After immigrating to Canada at the age of 6, he focused even more on the digital world:
- 3rd Grade: Completed three-digit mental arithmetic at double speed, selected for the gifted class
- 12 Years Old: Developed a medieval-themed strategy game for fun using C++
- 13 Years Old: Became obsessed with World of Warcraft, but cried all night when Blizzard nerfed his character’s abilities—this experience made him realize the vulnerability of centralized services for the first time.
The label of a mathematical genius once troubled him: “Why can’t I be like 75% of ordinary people?” But computers became the language for him to understand the world.
Bitcoin’s Journey: From Writer to Disruptor
At 17, his father introduced him to Bitcoin. At first, he scoffed: “This thing is worthless!” But after hearing about it repeatedly, he decided to dive deeper.
- Writing for “Coin”: Contributed to Bitcoin Magazine, earning 5 Bitcoins per article (then valued at $3.5)
- Co-founding: In 2011, founded Bitcoin Magazine with online friends, writing hundreds of technical analyses
- Global Journey: Dropped out of the University of Waterloo at 19, traveled the world exploring the blockchain community with his Bitcoin savings.
In Israel, he witnessed developers trying to expand Bitcoin’s functionality but being limited by the technical framework, which gave birth to a disruptive idea: to create a universal blockchain platform that allows developers to freely build applications.
Birth of Ethereum: A Billion-Dollar Ecosystem Created at Age 19
At the end of 2013, 19-year-old Vitalik completed the “Ethereum White Paper” in one month, proposing the concept of “smart contracts” for the first time. To raise funds:
- He received a $100,000 startup scholarship from PayPal founder Peter Thiel.
- ICO launched in July 2014: raising 31,000 bitcoins (approximately $18.4 million) at a rate of 1 bitcoin for 2,000 ethers over 42 days.
- In July 2015: Ethereum mainnet “Frontier” went live, marking the beginning of the blockchain 2.0 era.
This crowdfunding has shocked the financial world, with The Wall Street Journal calling it the “digital currency revolution.”
Crisis and Belief: From Hard Fork to Technological Revolution
In 2016, Ethereum faced its largest hack in history: The DAO incident resulted in the theft of 50 million dollars worth of Ether. In the face of the crisis, 22-year-old Vitalik Buterin made a controversial decision:
- Implement a hard fork: Roll back transactions to recover funds, violating the blockchain’s “immutability” principle.
- Community split: Opponents insisted on the original chain, leading to the establishment of “Ethereum Classic” (ETC).
2023 - 2025 Key Developments:
- 2024 Dencun Upgrade: Successful implementation of Proto-Danksharding, reducing Layer 2 transaction costs by 90% (e.g., Arbitrum single transaction from $0.5 to $0.03)
- 2025 Verkle Trees Testing: Paving the way for stateless clients, promoting lightweight Ethereum nodes
- Quantum Resistance Research: Leading Lattice-based cryptography solutions to defend against future quantum attacks
Billionaire Wealth and Technology for Good
In June 2025, Ethereum’s market value surpassed 300 billion USD, and Vitalik Buterin’s net worth stabilized around 15 billion USD (Forbes data). This billionaire continues to practice minimalism:
- Donated over 500 million USD: Added 100 million USD to Balvi Science Foundation for pandemic research in 2023
- Refused commercial endorsements: Politely declined offers from multiple companies. Web3 Project Paid Platform Invitation
- 2024 TIME Interview: Candidly stating “AI + Blockchain is the key infrastructure for solving human collaboration trust”
At the Davos Forum in 2025, he presented a shocking viewpoint: “The greatest application in the next decade will not be DeFi or NFT, but decentralized social credentials (DeSoc) - it will reshape citizenship and data sovereignty.”
From Game Boy to Future Architect
At the forefront of blockchain technology, 31-year-old Vitalik Buterin is still driving three major changes:
- Privacy Evolution: Leading the implementation of ZK-SNARKs technology, launching a privacy trading wallet prototype in 2024.
- Anti-centralization: Establish POS staking limit protocols to prevent exchanges from monopolizing node power.
- Cross-chain Integration: Proposing the “Sovereign Rollup” framework to connect Bitcoin and the Cosmos ecosystem.
Looking back on the growth trajectory: the boy who cried when his skill was deleted in World of Warcraft is now building a new cornerstone for human collaboration with code. From old computers in Moscow to encrypted servers in Switzerland, he has always believed that technology should not serve monopolies, but should be the engine of a transparent world.
When global developers create financial, gaming, and social applications based on Ethereum, this 31-year-old “old prodigy” is still coding for more than ten hours every day. For him, Ethereum is not the destination, but a ticket to the “absolutely fair and verifiable internet”—and the dream of being the helmsman still burns as fiercely as in his youth.
