Buterin Admits Drop In His Net Worth; 'Not A Billionaire Anymore'

Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, has dropped a clue about his actual net worth, admitting that it has shrunk since last year.

Buterin is the youngest crypto billionaire who, at the age of 21, launched Ethereum, which is now a $250 billion empire and serves as the foundation of many cryptocurrency projects, including the rising industry, Non-Fungible Token (NFT). Last year, Forbes estimated that the total wealth of the Russian-born Canadian computer whiz was around $1.46 billion. But it looks like this is no longer the case.

Buterin coyly admitted that he is no longer a billionaire, tweeting, "btw btw I'm not a billionaire anymore." The subject came up while the Ethereum co-founder praised tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and their propensity to respond to regular people asking them on the social media platform Twitter.

Buterin entered the billionaires' club in the early part of May 2021 after ETH crossed the $3,000 threshold. But, eventually lost the billionaire status when Ether, alongside the crypto market, plummeted to as low as $1,725.19 after Chinese regulators heightened cryptocurrency crackdown on mining and trading, and after Musk's announcement that Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin as payment due to environmental concerns.

In November 2021, however, Ethereum's price surged and hit an all-time high of $4,644.01. Buterin, at the time, owned an Ethereum wallet with 325,104 ETH, which is approximately worth $1.46 billion.

But the recent crypto crash shrunk Buterin's fortune, which is expected following the historic collapse of Terra's token LUNA and its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST). "The people who are deep into crypto, especially building things, a lot of them welcome a bear market," the Ethereum co-founder told Bloomberg in February.

Buterin is also very generous with his crypto fortune and has recently donated $1 million worth of ETH to the Dogecoin Foundation a few weeks ago after joining its board as an advisor in August 2021. Aside from that, he donated 5 percent of Shiba Inu's total circulating supply to the India COVID-Crypto Relief Fund, worth around $1.14 billion.

ETH was trading up 3.32 percent at $2,036.47 with a 24-hour volume of $11,800,577,309 as of 2:00 a.m. ET on Monday based on the data from CoinMarketCap.