Crypto Stories: Vitalik Buterin talks creating Ethereum in previously unreleased 2014 interview

Part of Cointelegraph’s Crypto Stories on YouTube, the series highlights the power of crypto to change the lives of people all over the world.

The latest episode of Cointelegraph’s Crypto Stories featured never-before-heard audio from an exclusive interview with Vitalik Buterin, recorded at a conference in Hong Kong in 2014. In this animated short, viewers can learn about the origin story of Ethereum (ETH), the world’d second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, straight from the founder himself.

Back in 2011, while Buterin was a student at the University of Waterloo, he first heard about Bitcoin from his tech entrepreneur father. However, he didn’t take the decentralized currency seriously until began participating in Bitcoin forums created by Satoshi Nakamoto. 

In Buterin’s own search to learn about Bitcoin, he became a writer for the now defunct Bitcoin Weekly website where he got paid 5 BTC per article, or $4 at the time, said Buterin.

Related: Finance Redefined: Vitalik bearish on cross-chain, dYdX decentralizing, Jan. 7–14

Next he took his newfound journalism skills to join Mihai Alisie in co-founding Bitcoin Magazine. Their 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 19 years old to pursue working on blockchain-related projects full-time while traveling around the world. Throughout this time, he realized that cryptocurrency could be used for “more than just money” and should allow for more “freedom.”

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 crypto exchange | Crypto Stories Ep. 1

To read more about Ethereum, check out Cointelegraph’s Ethereum 101 guides and an in-depth profile on Buterin.