For years, the world relied on fiat currencies; however, there has been an accumulation in the usage of Crypto-currencies in recent years. At the moment, there are several types of cryptocurrencies available in the market, holding $2.22 trillion worth of market capitalization; the crypto market is flourishing. A crypto-currency is a digital/binary medium of exchange and can be used just like any other fiat currency. Here is the topic- Who Owns Ethereum?
What is Ethereum
Bitcoin, the first digital/binary medium of exchange, was launched in 2009 and was founded by Satoshi Nakamoto. After Bitcoin, the crypto market started to see more diversity as more crypto-currencies were developed. Ether, more commonly known as Ethereum, is the second cryptocurrency after Bitcoin launched in 2015.
Crypto-currencies, unlike fiat currencies, do not have a physical existence and can also be described as virtual currencies. However, crypto-currencies can be used for trading and all other transactions, just like fiat currencies. Based on market capitalization, Ethereum after Bitcoin is the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world. Invented in 2013, it then used crowd-funding to finance further development in 2014 and was finally launched in 2015.
Who owns Ethereum
Though Vitalik Buterin is the one who invented Ethereum, there are several people on the founding list. Vitalik and his four other companions Charles Hoskinson, Amir Chetrit, Anthony Di Iorio, and Mihai Alise, were the founders during the first year. Later in 2014, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke joined the founder’s team.
Vitalik Buterin
Vitaly Dmitriyevich is also known as Vitalik Buterin, is a Programmer who created the crypto-currency ether. Born January 31, 1994, Vitalik is a Russian-Canadian billionaire. According to Forbes, at just 27 years old, Vitalik has become the world’s youngest crypto-currency billionaire. Forbes estimated Vitalik’s net worth at $1.1billion due to his 333,500 ethers holding and each ether worth $3,286.37.
Growing up, Vitalik was considered an extraordinary/gifted child. His inclination to programming, mathematics, and economics drew him to attended a public research university in Ontario, Canada, “The University of Waterloo.” He worked there as a cryptography research assistant. He had already heard of Bitcoin from his father. He was most probably interested in the idea as he later decided to develop his crypto.
In 2013 he started to work on developing his own crypto-currency “Ethereum.” In 2014 he decided to work full time on his project. He dropped his education, as he used his scholarship fund of $100,000 and some other crowd-funding to develop his project. In 2015 he finally launched ethereuem, the second cryptocurrency in the market.
Charles Hoskinson
Charles is an American programmer, founder of a public blockchain platform (Cardano), co-founder of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum and a crypto- billionaire. His other fields of interest include entrepreneurship, mathematics, and technology. Hopkins worked on Ethereum during the first year(2013) and left in 2014 due to some contention with Vitalik.
Amir Chetrit
Amir Ben Chetrit is an experienced professional in e-commerce project management. In 2013 Amir was in Israel working on color coins when he met Vitalik. The two then worked on color coins together for a while. And Vitalik liked Amir’s work ethic. Later that year, Vitalik invited Amir to work on his crypto-currency development project, and Amir gladly joined the team. Amir now lives in Israel, working as an E-commerce project manager at, Konimbo the leading E-commerce platform in the country.
Anthony Di Iorio
Anthony is a Canadian investor, website developer, billionaire, CEO, and the founder of Jaxx Wallet and the company Decentral. Jaxx wallet is a virtual wallet used to hold, trade, manage and make transactions of various crypto-currencies. Anthony liked the idea of virtual currencies and started to invest in Bitcoin in 2012 when he first heard about it. Anthony had his group of crypto enthusiasts, and Vitalik, one of them, reached out to Anthony to develop Ethereum. Anthony was impressed by the idea and joined the team.
Mihai Alise
Apart from co-founding Ethereum, Mihai is the founder of blockchain and collective intelligence social media network Akasha Project. Mihai was Vitalik’s friend before he joined Vitalik for the Ethereum venture. Vitalik being a crypto enthusiast was working on the Bitcoin magazine at that time. Mihai liked the idea and wanted to join Vitalik in his publication project. Later, when Vitalik wrote his white paper for Ethereum, he invited Mihai, and he was glad to join.
Late Co-Founders
Later in 2014, three more people were added to the founder’s list they are:
Gavin Wood
Gavin was the fifth one to join the co-founder’s list. He is a British engineer, a research scientist, a Ph.D. holder, co-founder of Polkadots, a competitor of Ethereum, and a millionaire. Gavin is the one who developed the programming language solidity used by Ethereum. He served Ethereum as the Chief Technology Officer and was the author of the yellow papers.
Jeffrey Wilcke
Jeff, before joining Ethereum’s co-founder’s list, was working on master coins. He had joined the team in 2014, just around the time Gavin did. He is a programmer and was very interested in crypto-currencies. So when he heard about Ethereum, he got very excited and developed his version of implementation “go Ethereum” on Google’s go languages. He made major programming contributions to the project and later decided to drop out due to the massive workload. Jeff later founded grid games and now works on it full-time.
Joseph Lubin
Joseph is a Canadian American, distributed data entrepreneur, co-founder of Ethereum, founder of ConsenSys, and a crypto billionaire. He is the oldest in the group and was also a member of the crypto enthusiast group led by Anthony. Like many other Bitcoin enthusiasts, Joseph went to Anthony’s Bitcoin club regularly, where he had an encounter with Vitalik. The two build an acquaintance, and one year after Vitalik had already started working on his Ethereum project, he invited Joseph to be the last co-founder.
Inspiration
Vitalik took inspiration from Bitcoin. Before he created Ethereum, he had reached out to Bitcoin developers and tried to convince them to use a better programming language for further development and even suggested ideas for developments, but he was rejected. He later went on to develop his currency in 2013.
Vitalik revealed that he had searched through multiple science fiction sources to find an appropriate name and thought the word” Ethereum” was the best. As Bitcoin had rejected his development idea, he added them to his project. Apart from being a mining network, he had also added the feature of software development that would aid in the creation of more cryptos and would all operate on the same blockchain.
Ethereum 2.0
At the end of 2020, the new upgrade of Ethereum to Ethereum 2.0 was launched. The goal of the upgrade was to drastically increase the transactions per second. Ethereum, at the moment, carries out 15 to at most 45 transactions per second, and the upgrade would help carry out thousands of transactions per second. The plan would be carried out in 3 phases; Phase one had started in December 2020.
The idea is to shard the data, divide the data into multiple blockchains, all of which have a common base. It would make Ethereum more decentralized by allowing owners to operate it from their own devices such as their mobile phones. These upgrades will help increase security and sustainability. Since there is a substantial volume of data stored on nodes (devices connected to blockchains), this has led to crowding on the network. This upgrade would decrease the load on the nodes and help carry out more transactions per second.
The plan is to create about 64 new chains which would have a common base. This would lower the burden on each node significantly and help carry out even more transactions every second with much ease. One of the best features of this update is that it would drastically increase the system’s security. As the network would be even more decentralized and complex, it would be almost impossible for hackers to do their job.
Price over the years/Future
Ethereum has a total market capitalization of $384.86 billion at the moment. As of August 8, 2021, Ethereum has reached $3,151.22 per ether. Though there have been some fluctuations in price over the years, most of the time, the price goes back up again. For example, according to a 30-day average from July 16, 2021, to August 16, 2021, the price at its highest was $3,334.22 and at its lowest was $1,720.70, with an average price of 2,560.56, it has had a 70% change in price throughout the month.
The first-ever ether was traded at $2.77 per ether. When launched, there were only 60 million ethers available and were traded at a rate of 2000 ether per Bitcoin for the first two weeks. However, the price has since increased to a staggering 1203% and is estimated to go even higher. According to Forbes, experts have claimed that when the Ethereum2.0 project succeeds, the price may soar up to $20,000 per ether or even higher.
Countries that trade in crypto
It may come to you as a surprise. Still, the top countries that trade crypto-currencies are not the United States or its neighbors but are countries across different continents. So let’s take a look at the top crypto trading countries in the world:
- A recent survey showed that about 32% of the Nigerian (Nigeria, a country in Africa) population owned or had owned some type of crypto-currency.
- Coming in at number 2, we have Vietnam, whose 21% population trades, owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- Though the Philippines is considered a poor country, it is surprising that 20% of the population trades, owns, or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- About 16% of Turkey’s population trades owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- About 16% of Peru’s (country in South America) population trades owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- 11% of Switzerland’s population trades, owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- India, known as one of the poorest countries in the world, about 9% of the population trades, owns, or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- China, the most advanced third world country, about 7% of the population trades, owns, or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- Only 7% of the American population trades owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- 5% of Germany’s population trades owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
- 4% of Japan’s population trades owns or has owned some type of crypto-currency.
