- Vitalik Buterin has become the youngest self-made billionaire in the crypto space after Ethereum crossed $3,000.
- The second-largest cryptocurrency has further boosted its strength with dominance now above 15 percent.
Humble in his own way, the creator of Ethereum has been rewarded massively for his creation. He has joined an elite club of billionaires in the last 24 hours. This was as ETH crossed the $3,000 position to mark a new all-time high. Its newly found bullish streak is built upon the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. Set up in phases, so far, every upgrade has been successful. The next one is London Upgrade scheduled for July.
On top of this, the project has in the last few months seen an explosion of its DeFi space. As we reported, in Q1, the project saw this market grow by around 200%. More than $48 billion is now locked on the network. At the same time, it managed to settle $1.5 trillion in transactions. Its dominance in DeFi remains above 50 percent despite steep competition from new generation networks like Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Polkadot. Additionally, the ETH exchange balance has been plummeting with institutional interest tipped to be the main driver.
Ethereum price change
At the time of press, ETH is trading for $3,180 after a 10 percent price gain in the last 24 hours. Its market cap has surpassed $350 billion. With money moving from the stagnated BTC and into ETH, its market dominance is creeping towards 16 percent as BTC’s slips further below 50 percent.
ETH’s performance in the last 24 hours has led some market observers to suggest that it could end up flipping BTC in the future. Although it has outperformed BTC for most of 2021, the second-largest cryptocurrency is still short of nearly $700 million off of BTC’s market cap. However, with the recent surge, the token has flipped the market cap of established institutions such as the Bank of America and PayPal.
Vitalik becomes a billionaire
At the age of 27, Vitalik Buterin has celebrated becoming the youngest crypto billionaire. According to his ETH wallet, his stash is at the time of press worth more than $1 billion. Born in Russia, the 27-year-old was introduced to Bitcoin in 2011. Like most, it was hard to understand cryptos but writing for Bitcoin Weekly for $1.5 per hour, he soon grasped the concept. With Mihai Alisie, he would co-found Bitcoin Magazine to help others understand cryptocurrencies.
In 2012 he went back to school before dropping out to pursue crypto projects. After exploring many of them he recognized an opportunity for a blockchain that was not specific to one application but was sufficiently general. Working with notable names such as Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin and Charles Hoskinson, in 2014 Ethereum was announced.
Less than a decade later, Vitalik has seen his project widely adopted, give rise to hundreds of other projects and garner billions in value. Even with ‘Ethereum killers’ threatening the project for years, it has stood the test of time. His win has widely been celebrated in the crypto community with most regarding it as a win for all who believe in the industry.
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