The recent crypto market crisis has not only hurt investors, but also notable entrepreneurs, erasing billions of dollars from their fortunes. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, is one example.
In 2014, the 28-year-old founded Ethereum, a leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Buterin revealed on social media on Friday that he is no longer a billionaire. After hitting a high of over $4,800 in November of last year, the digital currency has lost 60 percent of its value. ETH is currently trading at $1,972, as reported by Coinmarketcap.com.
What happened to "talking directly to the people" being a virtue?
(btw I particularly appreciate that Elon and Jeff actually respond to people, and don't just shout their own stuff)
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 20, 2022
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In response to a tweet about other billionaires — Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who are at the top of the list of the richest individuals — he admitted this.
In 2014, Vitalik and a number of other engineers, notably Charles Hoskinson (creator of Cardano) and Joseph Lubin, established the Ethereum platform. Vitalik possesses a digital wallet whose ETH contents were valued approximately $1.5 billion in November.
Youngest Crypto Billionaire
In 2021, as the price of Ethereum surpassed $3,000, Buterin became the youngest crypto billionaire.
However, this trend has since reversed, and ETH is currently straining against the tide. Despite this, it is the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market valuation of about $300 billion.
Friday in another tweet, Buterin stated:
Correcting a mistake in your beliefs requires accepting that a prior version of yourself brought detrimental value to the world (particularly if you are in politics, but also in some other sectors).
Due to a precipitous decline in digital currency prices and the turbulence surrounding the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its LUNA token, crypto holdings have taken a severe beating.
ETH total market cap at $238 billion on the weekend chart | Source: TradingView.com
Other Billionaires Suffer As Well
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Changpeng Zhao, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has seen more than $80 billion, or 84% of his wealth, evaporate this year.
Similarly, Bitcoin plummeted to approximately $29,483 today (May 22), a decrease of 2.5 percent in the past week, falling alongside stocks due to fears of high inflation and rising interest rates.
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The largest cryptocurrency in the world has lost around one-fifth of its value so far this month, as the stunning collapse of TerraUSD, a so-called stablecoin, has roiled crypto markets that were already plunging due to widespread selling of risky bets.
The Canadian programmer and author of Russian ancestry is an outspoken advocate of the blockchain and is pushing its transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) architecture later this year.
Featured image from Coin News, chart from TradingView.com