Vitalik Buterin's net worth is estimated to be at least $830 million, and the following information comes from Arkham data archives.
This article will explore Vitalik Buterin’s (Ethereum founder) net worth and how it has fluctuated over time. We’ll examine the Ethereum co-founder’s known cryptocurrency holdings and compare them to those of other top Ethereum holders, as well as those of other Ethereum co-founders. Additionally, other possible sources of Buterin's wealth will be examined and context on the size of these wealth will be provided.
How did Vitalik Buterin get rich?
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has amassed most of the known wealth in his role. In 2011, 17-year-old Buterin began to enter the cryptocurrency industry and co-founded "Bitcoin Magazine" with Mihai Alisie (who later became one of the co-founders of Ethereum). While launching Bitcoin Magazine, Buterin and Alisie were also developing Egora, a decentralized eBay for Bitcoin. He was dissatisfied with Bitcoin’s limitations, such as a limited scripting language, which limited its ability to run more complex smart contracts and decentralized applications. Subsequently, Buterin released the Ethereum white paper in November 2013 (when he was only 19 years old), proposing Ethereum as a solution for Bitcoin upgrades.
Buterin met his co-founders in the months after the white paper was released. He first worked with Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie and Amir Chetrit. Later, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke joined, and together they founded the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit 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, where he was attending, to focus on the development of Ethereum.
In the summer of 2014, Ethereum held a presale in which participants used Bitcoin to purchase Ethereum. The initial supply of Ethereum at the time was over 72 million, of which 16.53% was allocated to founders, with the initial allocation of Ethereum constituting the majority of Buterin’s net worth.
Ethereum was officially launched on July 30, 2015. Buterin is the only founder still working on the network; the others have left to work on other projects. He has overseen the development of the network, including the transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) in 2022.
Most of Buterin's known cryptocurrency holdings come from ether allocations received when Ethereum launched, and he briefly became a billionaire when the price of ether topped $3,000 in 2021. Additionally, Buterin has invested in some crypto companies such as Starknet ($STRK), which also contributes to his total wealth.
Buterin was born on January 31, 1994 in Kolomna, Russia. His family moved to Canada when he was six, and he later graduated from Abelard School in Toronto, a private high school. Buterin has been gifted since childhood, and there are unconfirmed and unfounded rumors online that he has an IQ of 257. While this would be nearly impossible on any reasonable IQ test, there is no doubt that he was extremely talented and had a high IQ, which helped him achieve his extraordinary wealth.
How rich is Vitalik Buterin? Net Worth Overview
Vitalik Buterin’s known net worth is estimated to be approximately $552.86 million (currently $830 million). His actual net worth is likely higher because it includes his known cryptocurrency holdings, any unknown cryptocurrency holdings, and his non-cryptocurrency holdings, such as his equity stakes in some investments.
In this section, we will explore his cryptocurrency holdings, both Ethereum and non-Ethereum holdings, as well as any non-cryptocurrency holdings he may have.
How much cryptocurrency does Vitalik Buterin own?
Currently, Vitalik Buterin’s known cryptocurrency holdings are $552.86 million. Most of this comes from his Ethereum holdings, which is approximately 246,730 coins. Buterin’s cryptocurrency holdings can be estimated by looking at his known Ethereum wallet addresses. While this doesn't rule out the existence of any undisclosed wallets, given the size of Buterin's holdings in known wallets, it's possible these holdings make up the majority of his net worth.
We can see these holdings and their changes over time on Buterin's personal page at Arkham:
Source: Arkham
Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum Holdings
According to a 2018 post, Buterin claimed that he had never held more than approximately 0.9% of the total supply of ether.
Source: X
To verify Buterin’s claims, we can examine the proportion of the total Ethereum supply he holds by looking at his Ethereum holdings in known wallets from 2015 to the present. We can see how much Ethereum he has held over the years in the Portfolio Profile section of Arkham’s profile.
Source: Arkham
Using this information, we can estimate his annual holdings as a percentage of the total Ethereum supply. The table below shows his holdings on December 31 of each year as a baseline for Ethereum holdings for the corresponding year. His holdings on December 8, 2023 are also included, representing his most recent known Ethereum holdings.
Image source: TechFlow
As we can see, Buterin seems to be right. His known Ethereum holdings have never significantly exceeded 0.9%, with 2015 being the year he held the highest total Ethereum supply at 0.91%. In fact, his ether holdings are decreasing every year due to apparent token sales and network inflation designed to increase the total supply of ether every year.
Buterin’s ranking of Ethereum holders
To assess the significance of Buterin’s Ethereum holdings, we compare it to the holdings of other top Ethereum holders. The entities holding the most Ethereum tokens can be easily identified by looking at the Top Holders section of Ethereum's profile on Arkham.
Source: Arkham
Who is the largest holder of Ethereum?
The table below shows the top 20 Ethereum holders ranked by entity as of this writing:
Image source: TechFlow
The ETH2 deposit smart contract tops the list with 34,259,215.29 tokens held, as validators must deposit their Ethereum tokens into the contract to participate in the verification process.
Coinbase and Binance rank second and third respectively, and most of the entities ranked ahead of Buterin appear to be exchanges like Kraken and Robinhood, as well as institutional managers like Grayscale, both of which are famous for their operations. Requires holding a large amount of Ethereum. The exchange holds a large amount of Ethereum to facilitate users’ withdrawals and token exchanges. On the other hand, Grayscale’s Ethereum holdings reflect its investment in Ethereum tokens.
Buterin appears to be the primary individual ether holder with access to his tokens. Although Rain Lohmus owns approximately 250,000 Ethereum coins, for which he paid $75,000 in the Ethereum presale, the tokens are inaccessible because he forgot his private key.
Vitalik Buterin’s Cryptocurrency Net Worth Over Time
By looking at Buterin’s portfolio profile on his Arkham profile, we can clearly see the fluctuations in his known cryptocurrency holdings over the years. The table below records his known cryptocurrency holdings as of December 31 of each year as a baseline for the corresponding year’s holdings. The table also includes his estimated cryptocurrency net worth on November 18, 2021, when Ethereum briefly reached a peak price of $4,891 — which would represent the peak of Buterin’s known net worth.
Image source: TechFlow
Buterin’s net worth has increased more than 900-fold from December 31, 2015 to the present, from $596,760 to $55.122 billion. His highest annual percentage growth in net worth was from $4.23 million on December 31, 2016, to $27.837 billion on December 31, 2017, during the 2017 bull market.
Buterin’s known cryptocurrency net worth is significantly affected by Ethereum price fluctuations, as Ethereum makes up over 99% of his portfolio. Therefore, every time the price of ether rises, Buterin’s net worth rises with it. Whenever the price of ether drops, his net worth also falls from its all-time highs.
Buterin became a billionaire at the age of 27 in 2021 when Ethereum topped $3,000, with his known cryptocurrency net worth exceeding $1 billion. At the peak of the bull market on November 18, 2021, Buterin’s net worth briefly touched $2.09 billion as Ethereum reached an all-time high of $4,891.
However, the cryptocurrency bear market has struck again, with Ethereum prices falling. Before December 31, 2021, Buterin held $1.2 billion in ether, and by December 31, 2022, his account was only worth $300.58 million. Since then, his known net worth in cryptocurrencies has rebounded, reaching $550 million as of this writing, when Ethereum was trading at $2,234 (now at $3,395, for about $8.375 in total assets).
Source: X
Another factor affecting the change in his known cryptocurrency net worth is that his known ether holdings appear to be decreasing each year, and Buterin has been known to sell his ether holdings multiple times. For example, in May 2023, Buterin sent 200 ether to a cryptocurrency exchange, and the Ethereum Foundation then sold 15,000 ether. Notably, Buterin claims that he has not sold ether for personal gain since 2018. He further clarified that when he sent ether to the exchange, the ether was for donation and not for sale.
Non-Ethereum Cryptocurrency Holdings
Based on data from Arkham’s portfolio archive, we can see Buterin’s non-Ethereum holdings. As of this writing, some of his major non-Ethereum token holdings include:
869,500 $KNCL (the token of the decentralized liquidity protocol Kyber Network, for which Buterin serves as an advisor), worth approximately $609,780.
196.42 Wrapped Ether ($ETH) tokens, worth approximately $436,920
101 million $THE tokens, worth approximately $127,950.
Although not Buterin’s main non-Ethereum holdings, the following tokens are also worthy of attention:
Tornado.Cash’s TORN tokens worth $1,290. This has to do with Vitalik’s use of the infamous coin mixer. His Arkham profile shows multiple fund transfers using Tornado Cash, which he says included donations to Ukraine.
Image source: TechFlow
6.345 million Shiba Inu coins ($SHIB), worth $6.065 billion. In 2020, Vitalik received 50% of the token's supply directly from its developers upon the coin's launch, briefly causing his known cryptocurrency net worth to surge to approximately $10 billion. This move aims to create huge hype for the coin through its association with one of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency industry. Buterin subsequently destroyed 410 trillion $SHIB tokens, which accounted for more than 90% of the total tokens he received, which were worth approximately $6 billion at the time. He then donated his remaining 50.69 trillion $SHIB tokens, which were worth $1.56 billion at the time, to India-based CryptoRelief.
Image source: TechFlow
Non-cryptocurrency holdings
Buterin participated in a seed round for StarkWare, a developer of zero-knowledge proof technology that was valued at $8 billion as of 2022.
Due to the lack of public data on his non-crypto assets, it is difficult to estimate the value of his non-crypto holdings and their impact on his overall net worth - however, we can speculate that if he still holds an investment in StarkWare, the The value of the investment will increase a portion of his net worth, as well as the value of any other undisclosed investments.
Other Ethereum co-founders
Like Buterin, other Ethereum co-founders have benefited financially from their ether holdings. In this section, we compare Buterin’s estimated net worth to that of other Ethereum co-founders. For this section, we consider his known cryptocurrency holdings of $5.5286 (June 30, 2024, now worth $800) million to be all or most of his net worth, since we have no way of knowing what he is. The specific size of cryptocurrency holdings.
Below is a table of other co-founders' publicly estimated net worths (Note: Because some co-founders' 2023 net worth estimates are not necessarily available, some figures are from the last known point of availability and may be indicative of their net worth the highest point, or significantly lower than the current situation):
Image source: TechFlow
in conclusion
To summarize, we have estimated Vitalik Buterin's net worth composition and how it has fluctuated over time. Most of his fortune of more than $500 million (now $830 million due to price increases) comes from his Ethereum holdings, which move as Ethereum's price fluctuates. Stay tuned to his profile for the latest updates on Buterin’s wealth.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "Deep Wave TechFlow"
Original author: Arkham Research Team
