Youngest Crypto Billionaire Created Ethereum After World of Warcraft Took His Favorite Spell
Steve Jennings/Getty Images
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin became the world’s youngest billionaire this week as the price of his cryptocurrency soared past $3,000 per unit.
The price of Ethereum broke $3,300 on Monday, a 10 percent increase compared to Sunday, when it broke the $3,000 barrier for the first time since its 2015 creation. The total price of investments in Ethereum reached about $380 billion, the second-largest valuation of any cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, which sat at about $1.1 trillion on Monday afternoon. The figure exceeded the total market capitalization of Bank of America, at $350 billion, and more than doubled Wells Fargo’s market capitalization, which stood at a little less than $190 billion.
Ethereum’s value has risen more than fourfold since January 1, when it stood at just $730.
Buterin, a 27-year-old Russian-Canadian programmer, disclosed that he was inspired to travel down the road that led to Ethereum when software-developer Blizzard removed a component of his favorite spell on World of Warcraft, an online multiplayer game. “I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring,” Buterin wrote. He said he “soon decided to quit.”
To be fair, 17 :)
14 is when I was playing world of warcraft.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 29, 2017
He said he found Bitcoin in 2011, when he would have been 17, after “searching for a new purpose in life.”
Ethereum serves as a foundation for hundreds of additional digital currencies. Buterin’s public wallet for Ethereum held a little more than $1.1 billion of the product at Monday’s prices. Many observers expect it to triple in price in the years ahead, though some grouse that it is presently overvalued.
