Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum co-founder asset analysis

Vitalik Buterin's net worth is estimated to be at least $830 million, and 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 will examine the Ethereum co-founder's known cryptocurrency holdings and compare them to other top ETH holders and other Ethereum co-founders. In addition, we will examine Buterin's possible other sources of wealth and provide context for the size of these wealth.

How did Vitalik Buterin get rich?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has accumulated most of his known wealth in his capacity as a coin owner. In 2011, at the age of 17, Buterin began to enter 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 unhappy with Bitcoin's limitations, such as its limited scripting language, which limited its ability to run more complex smart contracts and decentralized applications. Buterin then published the Ethereum white paper in November 2013 (when he was only 19 years old), proposing Ethereum as a solution for Bitcoin upgrades. In the months following the release of the white paper, Buterin met his co-founders. He first worked with Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, and Amir Chetrit. Later, he was joined by Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke, and together they founded 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, enabling 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 purchased ETH with BTC. At the time, the initial supply of ETH exceeded 72 million, of which 16.53% was allocated to the founders, and the ETH allocated by the founders constituted 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, and 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 the ETH allocation he received when Ethereum was launched, and he became a billionaire when the price of ETH broke through $3,000 in 2021. In addition, Buterin has invested in a few crypto companies like 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 6 years old, and he later graduated from Abelard School (a private high school) in Toronto. Buterin was very talented from a young age, and there are unconfirmed and unfounded rumors online that he has an IQ of 257. While this is almost impossible in any reasonable IQ test, there is no doubt that he is very talented and has a high IQ, which has helped him achieve extraordinary wealth.

How Rich is Vitalik Buterin? Net Worth Overview

Vitalik Buterin's known net worth is estimated to be approximately $552.86 million ($830 million now). His actual net worth is likely higher, as it includes his known cryptocurrency holdings, any unknown cryptocurrency holdings, and his non-cryptocurrency holdings, such as his equity in some investments.

In this section, we will explore his cryptocurrency holdings, both ETH and non-ETH holdings, as well as any non-cryptocurrency holdings he may have.

How Much Crypto Does Vitalik Buterin Own?

Currently, Vitalik Buterin's known cryptocurrency holdings are $552.86 million. The majority 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, these holdings likely make up the majority of his net worth.

We can see these holdings and how they have changed over time on Buterin’s personal page on Arkham:

Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum Holdings

According to a 2018 tweet, Buterin claimed that he had never held more than approximately 0.9% of the total ETH supply.

To verify Buterin's claim, we can check what percentage of the total ETH supply he holds by looking at his ETH holdings in known wallets from 2015 to the present. We can see the amount of ETH he has held over the years by looking in the Portfolio Profile section of his Arkham profile.

With this information, we can estimate his annual holdings as a percentage of the total ETH supply. The following table shows his holdings on December 31st of each year as a benchmark for ETH holdings in 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 claim appears to be correct. His known ETH holdings have never significantly exceeded 0.9%, with 2015 being the year he owned the most of the total ETH supply at 0.91%.In fact, his ETH holdings have been decreasing every year due to the apparent token sales and the network inflation design that increases the total ETH supply every year.

Buterin's ETH Holder Ranking

To assess the significance of Buterin's ETH holdings, we compared 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.

Who are the largest Ethereum holders? The table below shows the top 20 ETH holders by entity as of the time of writing: The ETH2 deposit smart contract tops the list with 34,259,215.29 tokens, as validators must deposit their ETH tokens in the contract to participate in the validation 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, which all need to hold large amounts of ETH for their operations. Exchanges hold large amounts of ETH to facilitate withdrawals and token swaps for users, while Grayscale's ETH holdings, on the other hand, reflect its investment in ETH tokens.

Buterin appears to be the main individual ETH holder with access to his tokens. While Rain Lohmus owns about 250,000 ETH, for which he paid $75,000 in the ETH presale, these tokens are inaccessible because he forgot his private key.

Vitalik Buterin's cryptocurrency net worth over time

By looking at Buterin's portfolio profile in 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 benchmark for the corresponding year's holdings. The table also includes his estimated cryptocurrency net worth as of 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 the present, Buterin’s net worth has increased more than 900-fold, 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, right during the 2017 bull run.

Buterin's known crypto net worth is heavily influenced by ETH price fluctuations, as ETH accounts for more than 99% of his portfolio. Therefore, whenever ETH prices rise, Buterin's net worth also rises. Whenever ETH prices fall, his net worth also falls from its all-time high.

In 2021, when ETH prices broke through $3,000, Buterin became a billionaire at the age of 27, with his known crypto net worth exceeding $1 billion. At the peak of the bull run on November 18, 2021, Buterin's net worth briefly touched $2.09 billion, as ETH prices reached an all-time high of $4,891.

However, the crypto bear market struck again, and ETH prices fell. Before December 31, 2021, Buterin held $1.2 billion in ETH, and by December 31, 2022, his account was only worth $300.58 million. Since then, his known cryptocurrency net worth has rebounded, reaching $550 million as of this writing, when the ETH price was $2,234 (now the price is 3395, about $8.375 in total assets).

Another factor affecting the change in his known cryptocurrency net worth is that his known ETH holdings seem to be decreasing every year, and Buterin has been known to sell his ETH holdings several times. For example, in May 2023, Buterin sent 200 ETH to a cryptocurrency exchange, and then the Ethereum Foundation sold 15,000 ETH. It is worth noting that Buterin claimed that he had not sold ETH for personal gain since 2018. He further clarified that when he sent ETH to the exchange, the ETH was used for donations rather than sales.

Non-ETH Cryptocurrency Holdings

According to data from Arkham's portfolio archive, we can see Buterin's non-ETH holdings. As of the time of 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, valued at approximately $436,920

101 million THE tokens, valued at approximately $127,950.

Although not Buterin’s main non-ETH holdings, the following tokens are also worth noting:

1. $1,290 worth of Tornado.Cash’s TORN tokens. This is related to Vitalik’s use of the infamous coin mixer. His Arkham profile shows multiple fund transfers using Tornado Cash, which he said included donations to Ukraine.

2. 6345,000 Shiba Inu coins ($SHIB), worth $6.065 billion. In 2020, Vitalik received 50% of the token supply directly from its developers at the time of the token's launch, which briefly surged his known crypto net worth to around $10 billion. The move was intended to create huge hype for the token through its association with one of the most famous figures in the cryptocurrency space. Buterin then destroyed 410 trillion $SHIB tokens, which accounted for more than 90% of the total amount of tokens he received, which were worth about $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 CryptoRelief in India.

Non-cryptocurrency holdings

Buterin participated in the seed round of StarkWare, a zero-knowledge proof technology developer that has been 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 his investment in StarkWare, the value of that investment would 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 ETH holdings. In this section, we compare Buterin's estimated net worth to the net worth of other Ethereum co-founders. For this section, we consider his known cryptocurrency holdings of $552.86 million (as of June 30, 2024, now worth $800 million) as all or most of his net worth, as we have no way of knowing the specific size of his non-cryptocurrency holdings.

Here is a table of the publicly estimated net worth of the other co-founders (note: since 2023 net worth estimates for some co-founders are not necessarily available, some of the data is from the last known available point and may mark the peak of their net worth, or be significantly lower than the current situation):

Conclusion

In summary, we have estimated the composition of Vitalik Buterin's net worth and its fluctuations over time. Most of his wealth of more than $500 million (now $830 million due to price increases) comes from his holdings of Ethereum (ETH), which fluctuates with the fluctuations in the price of Ethereum. Stay tuned to his profile for updates on Buterin's wealth.