Tech

Vitalik Buterin

Blizzard nerfed his warlock; he wrote the Ethereum whitepaper at 19.

Born: 1994 · Kolomna, Russia
Roots: Russian; emigrated to Canada at six
Family: Middle class; His computer-scientist father emigrated the family to Toronto; Bitcoin entered the household as a dinner-table topic when Vitalik was 17.
Education: University of Waterloo (left on a Thiel Fellowship)
Started with: A nerfed warlock; Blizzard's change to his World of Warcraft character taught him, he later wrote, 'what horrors centralized services can bring.'
Affiliations & societies: None documented.; Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

2011 · age 17
Bitcoin Magazine
Co-founds it, paid five bitcoins an article at first.
2013 · age 19
The Ethereum whitepaper
A blockchain that runs programs, not just payments; written after a round-the-world tour of crypto projects.
2014 · age 20
Thiel Fellowship$18M raised
Takes the $100K and leaves Waterloo; the Ether crowdsale raises ~$18M.
2015 · age 21
Ethereum launches
Smart contracts, DAOs, NFTs, and DeFi all build on it.
2021 · age 27
Gives away a meme fortune~$1B given
Donates unsolicited SHIB tokens — worth ~$1B at transfer — largely to India's COVID relief fund.
2022 · age 28
The Merge
Ethereum's switch to proof-of-stake cuts its energy use by ~99.9%.

Sources

Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.