Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer, writer, and co-founder of Ethereum. He was born in Kolomna, Russia in 1994, and his father was a computer scientist. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. In 2013, he wrote a white paper that laid the foundations of Ethereum, a blockchain platform for decentralized applications. Buterin deployed the Ethereum blockchain in 2014 with a team of co-founders. He is known for his work on digital contracts, digital currencies, and game theory.