Vitalik Buterin Net Worth: How Rich Is Ethereum Founder?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has an estimated net worth of more than $400 million, which takes into account one of his publicly known crypto wallets. However, Vitalik Buterin’s net worth could be much higher, as his investments and other crypto holdings are not publicly known. 

Who is Vitalik Buterin?

Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer best known as a co-founder of the Ethereum network. Image source: Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

Vitalik Buterin is a co-founder of Ethereum and one of the leading figures in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. He was born in 1994 in Russia, but spent most of his early life in Canada. Buterin developed an interest in Bitcoin at a young age and became involved in the cryptocurrency community while still in high school. In 2011 he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, which has often been referred to as the first serious crypto publication.

In the 2013 whitepaper – called A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – he proposed the creation of Ethereum, a decentralized platform that would allow for the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).

Buterin’s vision for the Ethereum blockchain was to create a decentralized platform that would allow developers to build and deploy dApps on top of it. He believed that this would allow for greater transparency and security, as well as the ability to build applications that were not controlled by any single entity. The Ethereum team raised 31,500 BTC in their ICO, and the mainnet officially launched in 2015. It has since become one of the leading blockchain platforms in the world, with a market capitalization of roughly $150 billion as of December 2022.

Buterin is a highly influential figure in the cryptocurrency and blockchain community and is frequently sought out for his insights and opinions on the industry. He has received numerous awards and accolades for his work, including the World Technology Award for Information Technology in 2014 and the Peter Thiel Fellowship in 2014. Buterin has also been recognized as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. 

What is Vitalik Buterin’s net worth in 2023? Examining the Ethereum founder’s crypto wallet

Vitalik Buterin’s crypto wallet. 

Vitalik Buterin has a crypto wallet that holds $440,259,570 in different types of coins and assets, as of May 17, 2023. There are also 4,163 NFTs in the wallet, although their exact value is unknown. 

ETH is the only significant crypto holding in Vitalik Buterin’s wallet.

In total, Buterin’s wallet has 682 different types of coins and tokens. The vast majority of the wallet’s total funds is in Ethereum (ETH), with over $440 million.

The reason for the vast number of different types of digital currencies lies in the fact that random crypto holders are sending crypto funds to Buterin’s publicly known wallet address. This explains extremely low holdings for certain tokens, like less than one penny of Constitution DAO, or a couple of dollars of Meta Doge, for instance.

As mentioned earlier, pinpointing Vitalik Buterin’s net worth is virtually impossible due to the nature of private investments. However, an interesting exchange that happened on social media in November seems to suggest that Buterin’s crypto wallet holdings and real fortune seem to be aligned.

$1b is still much more than I have

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 9, 2022

In the immediate collapse of FTX, a Twitter user pointed out that Sam Bankman-Fried’s networth plunged to $1 billion, to which Buterin responded: “$1b is still much more than I have.” 

How much Ethereum (ETH) does Vitalik have?

Buterin has 244,001 ETH in his wallet as of May 17, 2022, worth over $440 million. The highest number of Ethereum in Buterin’s wallet was 325,001 and was recorded in July 2021, per Etherscan data.

Vitalik Buterin held as much as $1.5 billion worth of ETH in his wallet last November.

The recent crypto downturn has had a notably negative impact on Vitalik’s net worth. At Ethereum’s peak value last November, Buterin had more than $1.5 billion worth of ETH in his cryptocurrency wallet.

Vitalik’s crypto ventures

In addition to Ethereum itself, Vitalik has been involved in a number of blockchain projects. Some of these include the L4 research group, which focuses on the scalability of blockchain technology, and the Plasma Group, which is working on ways to improve the scalability and security of Ethereum. 

Buterin is also involved in other projects and initiatives, such as the Ethereum Foundation, which supports the development of Ethereum, and the Zcash Foundation, which supports the development of the Zcash (ZEC) privacy-focused cryptocurrency. On the whole, Buterin is a major contributor to the blockchain industry and is an advocate of decentralization, smart contracts, and open-source code. 

Final thoughts: Vitalik Buterin controls the 31st-largest ETH address

Buterin is a well-known figure in the crypto space and is respected for his technical and philosophical contributions to the industry. He is widely regarded as one of the leading voices in the industry and his direct and deep involvement with Ethereum has made him one of the richest individuals in crypto.

According to Etherscan’s list of the largest Ethereum account balances, Buterin is placed number 31st and accounts for roughly 0.203% of all ETH in circulation. This makes him one of the largest individual ETH owners, at least in terms of the amount of funds deposited into a single account.

Buterin’s crypto wallet holdings closely edge out the net worth of Justin Sun, another prominent crypto figure and the founder of the TRON cryptocurrency.

On a related note, give our article on Elon Musk’s net worth a read if you want to find out how he became the first person in history to lose $200 billion.