Arkham Assesses Vitalik Buterin’s Wealth

The digital assets owned by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin are valued at over $857.5 million, according to estimates from Arkham.

At the beginning of the year, this figure stood at $552.9 million.

The majority of Buterin’s wealth is attributed to the initial distribution of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization (246,730 ETH). Besides Ethereum, he has also invested in projects like StarkNet.

Currently, Buterin ranks among the top 20 largest holders of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Vitalik began his journey in the industry in 2011 at the age of 17, becoming a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. Dissatisfied with Bitcoin’s limitations, he introduced the Ethereum white paper two years later, proposing it as a solution to the shortcomings of digital gold.

In 2014, along with a team of co-founders, he established the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the network’s development.

“In the summer of that year, presale participants exchanged BTC for ETH, leading to an initial offering of over 72 million tokens, 16.53% of which were distributed among the founders,” Arkham noted.

The official launch of Ethereum took place on July 30, 2015. Buterin is the only co-founder still actively working on the network and overseeing its development, including The Merge in 2022.

Despite the possibility of undisclosed wallets, the known assets associated with him likely constitute the majority of his wealth, experts indicated.

In 2018, Buterin tweeted that he never held more than 0.9% of the total ETH supply.

I never personally held more than ~0.9% of all ETH, and my net worth never came close to $1b. Also, I’m pretty sure there are no criminal laws against pre-mining.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 10, 2018

Arkham confirmed the accuracy of his statement, finding that Buterin’s share never exceeded 0.9% (it momentarily reached 0.91% in 2015).

Buterin’s portfolio also includes other assets like KNC and WETH. He holds TORN tokens from Tornado Cash worth $1,290 and 6.345 million Shiba Inu (SHIB) valued at $60.65. Collectively, other cryptocurrencies in his portfolio account for less than 1%.

In 2020, Buterin received 50% of the SHIB supply, temporarily boosting his net assets to $10 billion. He later burned 410 trillion SHIB worth $6 billion, donating the remainder to CryptoRelief India.

Experts highlighted the non-linear growth of Buterin’s wealth. In 2015, the net value of his cryptocurrencies increased from $596,760 to $551.2 million.

The largest annual growth occurred during the 2017 bull market, rising from $4.23 million to $278.4 million.

In 2021, Buterin became a billionaire at 27 with a net worth of $2.09 billion when Ethereum’s price was $4,891.

The subsequent bear market slashed Ethereum’s price and its co-founder’s net assets by 75% — from $1.2 billion in December 2021 to $300.6 million in December 2022. Since then, the figure has risen to $551.22 million with ETH priced at $3,300.

Buterin occasionally sells coins, stating that such transactions are intended for donations rather than personal gain. He last sold ether to fund his own expenses in 2018.

In June, Buterin outlined ways to apply cryptocurrencies in everyday life.

Earlier, the Ethereum co-founder criticized celebrities’ experiments with meme coins, urging a focus on projects that benefit the public rather than enriching insiders.