According to Arkham’s analysis, Vitalik Buterin’s net worth is estimated to be $860 million USD. This article examines his asset situation, including his cryptocurrency holdings and total net worth estimate, comparing it with other Ethereum whales. The article is sourced from the ARKHAM Research Team, compiled and organized by Block unicorn.
(Previous context:
Vitalik Buterin, also invested! The new public chain MegaETH has raised €20 million: aiming for 100,000 TPS, mainnet to launch by year-end
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(Background supplement:
Vitalik Buterin most frequently promotes “shilling” projects: who has performed most outstandingly?
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Table of Contents
How did Vitalik Buterin get rich?
How wealthy is Vitalik Buterin? Overview of net assets
How much cryptocurrency does Vitalik Buterin own?
Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum holdings
Buterin’s ETH holder ranking
Vitalik’s cryptocurrency net asset changes over time
Non-ETH cryptocurrency holdings
Non-cryptocurrency holdings
Other Ethereum co-founders
Conclusion
This article explores Vitalik Buterin’s (co-founder of Ethereum) net assets and their fluctuations over time. We will investigate his known cryptocurrency holdings, including Ethereum, and compare them with other top ETH holders and fellow Ethereum co-founders’ holdings.
Furthermore, we will examine other potential sources of wealth for Buterin and provide context for the scale of these fortunes.
As a co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has accumulated the majority of his known wealth. In 2011, at the age of 17, Buterin entered the cryptocurrency field and co-founded “Bitcoin Magazine” with Mihai Alisie (who later became one of Ethereum’s co-founders). Alongside “Bitcoin Magazine,” Buterin and Alisie also developed Egora, a decentralized Bitcoin eBay.
He was dissatisfied with Bitcoin’s limitations (such as its limited scripting language), which restricted Bitcoin from executing more complex smart contracts and decentralized applications. Subsequently, in November 2013, at the age of just 19, Buterin released the Ethereum whitepaper, proposing Ethereum as an upgrade solution to Bitcoin.
In the months following the release of the whitepaper, Buterin met his co-founders. He first collaborated with Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, and Amir Chetrit.
Later, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke joined, collectively establishing the Ethereum Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of the Ethereum network. In June 2014, Buterin received a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Foundation, allowing him to drop out of the University of Waterloo and focus on Ethereum’s development.
In the summer of 2014, Ethereum conducted a presale where participants purchased ETH with BTC. At that time, the initial supply of ETH exceeded 72 million tokens, with 16.53% allocated to the founders. This allocation of ETH formed the majority of Buterin’s net assets.
Ethereum officially launched on July 30, 2015. Buterin remains the only founding member still actively involved, as others have moved on to other projects. He has overseen the network’s development, including its transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) in 2022.
Most of Buterin’s known cryptocurrency holdings come from the ETH distribution he received during Ethereum’s release. When the price of ETH surpassed $3,000 in 2021, he briefly became a billionaire. Additionally, Buterin has invested in some cryptocurrency companies like StarkNet (STRK), contributing to his total wealth.
Buterin was born on January 31, 1994, in Kolomna, Russia. At the age of 6, his family moved to Canada, where he later graduated from the private high school Abelard in Toronto. Buterin has been rumored online, though unconfirmed and unsubstantiated, to have an IQ of 257.
While this is nearly impossible in any reasonable IQ test, there is no doubt he is extremely talented and highly intelligent, which has helped him achieve extraordinary wealth.
Vitalik Buterin’s net worth, according to Arkham’s analysis data, is estimated to be approximately $860 million USD. His actual net worth may be higher as it includes his known cryptocurrency holdings, any undisclosed cryptocurrency holdings, and his non-cryptocurrency holdings such as equity in some investments.
Currently, Vitalik Buterin’s assets are primarily derived from his ETH holdings, approximately 245,278 tokens. Buterin’s cryptocurrency holdings can be estimated by reviewing his known Ethereum wallet addresses. While this does not rule out the existence of undisclosed wallets, given the scale of holdings in known wallets, these holdings likely constitute the majority of his net assets.
We can see these holdings and their fluctuations over time on Buterin’s personal page on Arkham:
According to a tweet from 2018, Buterin claimed he never held more than approximately 0.9% of the total ETH supply.
To verify Buterin’s claim, we can examine his ETH holdings in known wallets from 2015 to the present to check the proportion of ETH total supply he holds. We can view his holdings over the years as part of his investment portfolio in the Arkham profile section.
With this information, we can estimate the percentage of total ETH supply his holdings represent each year. The table below shows his holdings as of December 31 each year as a benchmark for the corresponding year’s ETH holdings. His holdings on December 8, 2023, are also included, representing his most recent known ETH holdings.
It appears Buterin’s claim is accurate. His known ETH holdings have never significantly exceeded 0.9%, with the highest year being 0.91% in 2015 when he held the most ETH total supply. In fact, due to significant token sales and network inflation design increasing ETH total supply each year, his ETH holdings decrease annually.
To assess the significance of Buterin’s ETH holdings, we compare them with holdings of other top ETH holders. The entities holding the most ETH tokens can be easily identified by examining the top holders section of Ethereum in Arkham’s profile.
Who are the largest holders of Ethereum?
The table below shows the top 20 ETH holders ranked by entity as of the time of writing:
The ETH 2 deposit contract holds the most tokens at 34,259,215.29, as validators must deposit their ETH tokens into the contract to participate in the validation process.
Coinbase and Binance rank second and third, with most entities ranking ahead of Buterin appearing to be exchanges such as Kraken and Robinhood, as well as institutional managers like Grayscale, which hold large amounts of ETH for operational purposes. Exchanges hold large amounts of ETH to facilitate user withdrawals and token exchanges. On the other hand, Grayscale’s ETH holdings reflect its investments in ETH tokens.
In fact, one person holds more ETH than Buterin currently, Rain Lohmus (founder of LHV Bank). He paid $75,000 in the ETH presale and owns 250,000 ETH; however, these tokens are reportedly inaccessible because he forgot the private key.
Further reading:
ICO Whale loses 250,000 ETH private key, “4.7 billion MEUR evaporates”! Urgent need for decipherers can divide half
By reviewing Buterin’s investment portfolio file in Arkham’s profile, we can clearly see the fluctuations in his known cryptocurrency holdings over the years.
The table records his known cryptocurrency holdings as of December 31 each year as a benchmark for the corresponding year’s holdings. The table also includes his estimated cryptocurrency net assets on November 18, 2021, when ETH briefly reached a peak price of $4,891 — representing the peak of Buterin’s known net assets.