The latest episode of Cointelegraph's Crypto Stories featured never-before-heard audio of an exclusive interview with Vitalik Buterin, recorded at a conference in Hong Kong in 2014. In this animated short, viewers can learn the origin story of Ethereum (ETH) , the second largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization, directly from the founder himself.
In 2011, when Buterin was a student at the University of Waterloo, he first heard about Bitcoin from his father, a tech entrepreneur. However, he did not take decentralized currency seriously until he started participating in the Bitcoin forums created by Satoshi Nakamoto.
In Buterin's own quest to learn about Bitcoin, he became a writer for the now-defunct Bitcoin Weekly website, where he was paid 5 BTC per article, or $4 at the time, Buterin said.
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He then took his new journalistic skills to join Mihai Alisie in co-founding Bitcoin Magazine. Its first issue was published in May 2012, according to the publication's website, and the magazine is now owned by BTC Media.
Buterin decided to withdraw from his university studies in 2013 at the age of 19 to continue working on blockchain-related projects full-time while traveling the world. Throughout this time, he realized that cryptocurrency could be used for โmore than just moneyโ and should allow for more โfreedomโ.
Buterin's dream was to develop a blockchain with a built-in programming language and thus Ethereum was born, with the help of Mihai Alisie and others. The project was officially announced in January 2014.
Related: How a Young Rebel Started Thailand's Leading Cryptocurrency Exchange | Crypto Stories Ep. one
To read more about Ethereum, see Cointelegraph Ethereum 101 Guides and a Detailed profile on Buterin.
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