Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin lost $29m in six days

Vitalik Buterin — the co-founder of the blockchain that unleashed smart contracts on the world — has seen tens of millions worth of holdings evaporate from his portfolio in mere days.

According to data provided by blockchain analytics service Arkham Intelligence, Buterin’s publicly-known crypto wallets became about $29 million lighter in the six days from Dec. 15 to Dec. 21. This means that the wallets cumulatively lost about 5% of their total value as the price of the assets they held fell from $572 million down to $543 million.

Buterin puts his money where his mouth is

Out of the current $543 million held in the wallets, the near totality is Ethereum (ETH). The two top assets other than ETH are Kyber Network (KNC) with $623,000 and Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) with $431,000.

As a result of this portfolio nearly completely comprised of Ethereum, Buterin is very exposed to the fluctuation in the price of the cryptocurrency that he helped create. On Dec. 15, ETH reached a high of just under $2,300 — which accounts for much of its fall of over 4% towards its current price of just over $2,200.

Who is Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer known primarily for his contribution to the creation of Ethereum. He co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, a widely known Bitcoin-focused online publication that started publishing in 2012.

After observing some of what he perceived as limitations of the Bitcoin network, Buterin published a white paper in 2014 proposing Ethereum — a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that could support smart contract functionality. Ethereum launched in 2015, with Buterin playing a key role as the project’s co-founder.

Since then, Ethereum has become the second-largest cryptocurrency platform, second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization. Buterin continues to contribute to improving and advancing Ethereum’s open-source protocol technology.