Author: ARKHAM Research Team
Compiled by: Block unicorn
Vitalik Buterin’s net worth is estimated to be at least US$830 million. The following information is sourced from the ARKHAM data archive.
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 ETH holders, as well as those of other Ethereum co-founders. Additionally, possible other sources of Buterin's wealth will be examined and context on the size of these wealth will be provided.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has accumulated most of the known wealth through his status. In 2011, 17-year-old Buterin entered the cryptocurrency field and 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 (only 19 years old at the time) in November 2013, proposing Ethereum as a solution for Bitcoin upgrades.
Buterin got to know his co-founder in the months after the white paper was released. He first collaborated 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 studying, to focus on the development of Ethereum.
In the summer of 2014, Ethereum held a presale where participants used BTC to purchase ETH. At that time, the initial supply of ETH exceeded 72 million, of which 16.53% was allocated to the founder. The ETH allocated by the founder constituted the majority of Buterin's net assets.
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 ETH allocations received when Ethereum was launched, and he briefly became a billionaire when the ETH price topped $3,000 in 2021. Additionally, Buterin has invested in some crypto companies such as StarkNet (STRK), which has also contributed 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.
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, including ETH and non-ETH holdings, as well as any non-cryptocurrency holdings he may have.
Currently, Vitalik Buterin’s known cryptocurrency holdings are $552.86 million. Most of this comes from his ETH holdings, which is approximately 246,730 coins. Buterin’s cryptocurrency holdings can be estimated by looking at his known Ethereum wallet addresses. While this does not rule out the existence of any undisclosed wallets, given the size of Buterin’s holdings in known wallets, it is possible that these holdings make up the majority of his net worth.
We can see these holdings and how they change over time on Buterin’s personal page in Arkham:
According to a 2018 tweet, Buterin claimed that he has never held more than approximately 0.9% of the total ETH supply.
To verify Buterin’s claim, we can check the proportion of the total ETH supply he holds by looking at his ETH holdings in known wallets from 2015 to present. We can see how much ETH he has held over the years by going to the Portfolio Profile section of Arkham’s profile.
With this information, we can estimate his annual holdings as a percentage of the total ETH supply. The table below shows his holdings on December 31 of each year as a baseline for ETH holdings for the corresponding year. His holdings on December 8, 2023 are also included, representing his most recent known ETH holdings.
We can see that Buterin’s statement seems to be correct. His known ETH holdings have never significantly exceeded 0.9%, with 2015 being the year he had the highest total ETH supply at 0.91%. In fact, his ETH holdings are decreasing every year due to obvious token sales and network inflation designed to increase the total ETH supply every year.
To assess the significance of Buterin’s ETH holdings, we compare it to the holdings of other top ETH holders. The entities holding the most ETH tokens can be easily identified by looking at the Top Holders section of Ethereum's profile on Arkham.
The table below shows the top 20 ETH holders ranked by entity as of the time of writing:
The ETH 2 deposit smart contract tops the list with 34,259,215.29 tokens held, as validators must be in the contract Deposit their ETH tokens to participate in the verification process.
Coinbase and Binance are in second and third place 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 require holding a large amount of ETH. The exchange holds a large amount of ETH to facilitate users' withdrawals and token exchanges. On the other hand, Grayscale's ETH holdings reflect its investment in ETH tokens.
Buterin appears to be the primary individual ETH holder with access to his token. Although Rain Lohmus owns approximately 250,000 ETH, which he paid $75,000 in the ETH presale, the tokens are inaccessible because he forgot his private key.
By looking at Buterin’s portfolio profile on his Arkham profile, we can clearly see how his known cryptocurrency holdings have fluctuated 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 ETH briefly reached a peak price of $4,891 — which would represent the peak of Buterin’s known net worth.
From December 31, 2015 to now, Buterin’s net worth has increased more than 900 times, from $596,760 to $55.122 billion. His highest annual percentage increase 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 highly affected by ETH price fluctuations, as ETH makes up over 99% of his portfolio. Therefore, every time the price of ETH rises, so does Buterin’s net worth. Whenever the price of ETH drops, so does his net worth from its all-time highs.
In 2021, when ETH prices topped $3,000, Buterin became a billionaire at the age of 27, 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 ETH price reached an all-time high of $4,891.
However, the cryptocurrency bear market strikes again and ETH price falls. Before December 31, 2021, Buterin held $1.2 billion in ETH. 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 ETH was trading at $2,234 (now at $3,395, for about $8,375 in total assets).
Another factor affecting the change in his known cryptocurrency net worth is that his known ETH holdings appear to be decreasing each year, and Buterin has been known to sell his ETH holdings multiple times. For example, in May 2023, Buterin sent 200 ETH to a cryptocurrency exchange, and the Ethereum Foundation then sold 15,000 ETH. Notably, Buterin claimed that he has not sold ETH for personal gain since 2018. He further clarified that when he sent his ETH to the exchange, it was for donation and not for sale.
Based on data from Arkham’s portfolio archive, we can see Buterin’s non-ETH holdings. As of this writing, some of his major non-ETH token holdings include:
1. 869,500 KNCL (the token of the decentralized liquidity protocol Kyber Network, for which Buterin serves as an advisor), worth approximately $609,780 .
2. 196.42 Wrapped Ether ( WETH ) tokens, worth approximately $436,920
101 million THE tokens, worth approximately $127,950.
Although not Buterin’s major non-ETH holdings, the following tokens are worth watching:
1. Tornado . Cash’s TORN token worth $1,290. This has to do with Vitalik’s use of the infamous coin mixer. His Arkham profile shows multiple fund transfers using Tornado Cash, which he says included donations to Ukraine.
2. 6.345 million Shiba Inu coins ($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 famous figures in the cryptocurrency space. Subsequently, Buterin 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 the remaining 50.69 trillion $SHIB tokens, which were worth $1.56 billion at the time, to India-based CryptoRelief.
Non-crypto holdings
Buterin participated in a seed round for StarkWare, a developer of zero-knowledge proof technology that is valued at $8 billion as of 2022.
Due to the lack of public data on his non-crypto holdings, it’s difficult to estimate the value of his non-crypto holdings and their impact on his overall net worth – however, we can speculate if he still holds an investment in StarkWare , the value of that investment would add a portion of his net worth, as well as the value of any other undisclosed investments.
Like Buterin, other Ethereum co-founders have also benefited financially from their ETH 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 5.528 6 (June 30, 2024, now worth $800 million) USD as all or most of his net worth because we have no way of knowing anything about him The specific size of non-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 data is from the last known point available and may mark their net worth The highest point of assets, or significantly lower than the current situation):
To summarize, we have estimated the composition of Vitalik Buterin’s net worth 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 (ETH) holdings, which move as Ethereum's price fluctuates. Stay tuned to his profile for the latest updates on Buterin’s wealth.
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