Vitalik Buterin

Vitaly Dmitriyevich “Vitalik” Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer primarily known as a co-founder of Ethereum and as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine.

Buterin was born in Kolomna, Moscow Oblast, Russia. He lived in the area until the age of six when his parents emigrated to Canada. Buterin attended the Abelard School, a private high school in Toronto, for four years. 

Buterin learned about Bitcoin, from his father, at age 17. In 2012, he obtained a bronze medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics. In 2013, he visited developers in other countries who shared his enthusiasm for code. He returned to Toronto later that year and published a white paper proposing Ethereum. He attended the University of Waterloo but dropped out in 2014, when he received the Thiel Fellowship in the amount of $100,000, and went to work on Ethereum full-time.

Buterin is a co-creator and inventor of Ethereum, firstly describing it in a white paper in late 2013.