The value of digital assets owned by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin exceeds $857.5 million. Such assessments brought at Arkham.
At the beginning of the year, the figure was $552.9 million.
Most of Buterin’s wealth comes from the initial distribution of the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization (246,730 ETH). In addition to Ethereum, he has also invested in projects like StarkNet.
Buterin is currently among the top 20 largest holders of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Vitalik began his journey in the industry in 2011 at the age of 17, becoming the co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. Dissatisfied with Bitcoin’s limitations, two years later he presented the Ethereum white paper, proposing the asset as a solution to digital gold’s shortcomings.
Together with a team of co-founders, in 2014 he founded the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing the network.
Ethereum officially launched on July 30, 2015. Buterin is the only co-founder still working on the network and overseeing its development, including The Merge in 2022.
Despite the possibility of undisclosed wallets, known assets associated with him likely make up the majority of his wealth, experts said.
In a 2018 tweet, Buterin stated that he had never owned more than 0.9% of the total ETH supply.
I never personally held more than ~0.9% of all ETH, and my net worth never came close to $1b. Also, I’m pretty sure there are no criminal laws against pre-mining.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 10, 2018
Arkham confirmed the correctness of his words, finding out that Buterin’s share did not exceed 0.9% (in 2015 it reached 0.91%).
Buterin’s portfolio also includes other assets such as KNC and WETH. He owns Tornado Cash’s TORN token worth $1,290 and 6.345 million Shiba Inu (SHIB) worth $60.65. In total, the share of other cryptocurrencies in the portfolio does not exceed 1%.
Buterin’s portfolio as of December 6 and 13, 2023. Data: Arkham.
In 2020, Buterin received 50% of the SHIB supply, which briefly increased his net assets to $10 billion. He subsequently burned SHIB 410 trillion for $6 billion, and donated the rest to CryptoRelief India.
Experts emphasized the non-linear nature of the growth of Buterin’s fortune. In 2015, the net worth of cryptocurrencies he owned increased from $596,760 to $551.2 million.
The largest year-over-year increase in the indicator occurred during the 2017 bull market, from $4.23 million to $278.4 million.
In 2021, Buterin became a billionaire at age 27 with a net worth of $2.09 billion with an ether price of $4,891.
The subsequent bear market crashed the price of Ethereum and the net asset value of its co-founder by 75%, from $1.2 billion in December 2021 to $300.6 million in December 2022. Since then, the figure has risen to $551.22 million with an ETH price of $3,300.
Buterin sells coins from time to time. He says these deals are for donations rather than personal gain. He last sold Ether to fund his own expenses in 2018.
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Source: Cryptocurrency
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