Select what genuinely interests you. Your picks feed directly into our editorial planning. Vitalik Buterin is the programmer and writer who drafted the concept for Ethereum at the age of 19 and still shapes the network's direction today. He was born on January 31, 1994, in Kolomna, Russia, grew up in Toronto and is the best-known co-founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency. He has never taken a chief executive role: Buterin works as a researcher, blogger and board member of the Ethereum Foundation, and his essays set the course the protocol will take over the coming years.