Vitalik in His Father's Eyes: A Math Genius in Fifth and Sixth Grade, Initially Dismissive of Bitcoin

Author: Andrew Fenton, Cointelegraph

Original Title: 《The Vitalik I know: Dmitry Buterin》

Translation: Hu Tao, Chain Catcher

Dmitry Buterin recalls a day in 2013 when his son Vitalik showed him the Ethereum white paper at their home in Toronto.

"He said, 'Hey, Dad, I'm working on this thing, do you want to take a look?'" said the Toronto resident, who was born in Chechnya, in his distinctive accent. Vitalik had dropped out of university a year earlier and started traveling the world, and within a month of returning home, he had written the first draft.

Although Dmitry had introduced his son to Bitcoin two years prior, he admitted that many details surprised him. However, he understood the broader vision.

"One of his skills is that he can handle very complex things and explain them well," he said.

"So, even though my knowledge of Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies is just superficial, when I read this document, I was like, 'Wow, this makes a lot of sense to me.' So, I was excited."

Satoshi Nakamoto intentionally limited the complexity of transactions on the Bitcoin network, while Vitalik's great insight was that if he designed Bitcoin's evolution with a Turing-complete programming language, it could provide all possible digital services via blockchain, from stock markets to establishing decentralized cooperatives. Dmitry said the invention of Bitcoin was a "huge leap," and the next leap could only be built on top of it.

"For me, it's really a very simple analogy, right?" he said. "Because I observed the development of the internet, it started with static HTML websites, and it was all very interesting but very limited."

"But then JavaScript came along, and then all the other scripting languages, and things changed. So for me, it was clear that Ethereum represented a change as huge as moving from static simple things to having Turing-complete scripts, and then the sky is the limit."

Vitalik's Struggles as a Public Figure

Despite Vitalik's visionary ideas that turned into a $5 trillion cryptocurrency, explaining the concept and forming a coalition of like-minded people to help develop it forced him to become a public figure—a role that did not come naturally. "It was actually quite difficult for him," Dmitry said.

"I could see that he struggled, especially in the early years, because he has a very kind and sensitive nature. He would sometimes say, 'Oh, now I'm trying to do this, why are all these people building these websites that mock me?'"

However, he added that these challenges helped Vitalik improve his emotional intelligence.

"Through all the public speaking and interactions with so many people, and all the traveling he did, now the world can see more of the Vitalik that my family and I know: this very kind, sensitive, and interesting guy, rather than some smart person with a lot of ideas talking about blockchain and stuff."

Back to the Beginning

Dmitry is now a successful businessman, having semi-retired in 2017 after selling the SaaS business he founded, Wild Apricot. He said he noticed early on that Vitalik had some unique qualities. Vitalik has philosophical tendencies, and he would undoubtedly add that every child has something unique, but Vitalik belongs to his own category.

His birth in 1994 was surprising. At the time, Dmitry was a 21-year-old student living in Kolomna, Russia, with Vitalik's mother, Natalia Amelineas. Although Dmitry himself was a bright child who learned to read at three and a half, he said Vitalik "started reading before that."

However, great gifts also come with their own challenges; Vitalik took longer than usual to adapt to speaking.

"It was clear that he had some very interesting abilities," Dmitry said.

"And every very bright child has various other things, like nervous tics and similar issues. So, there were a lot of things to deal with—his way of communicating was different."

When Vitalik was six, Dmitry, his partner Maia, and ex-wife Natalia moved to Canada in search of a better life.

Moving to the other side of the planet threw young Vitalik into an unfamiliar environment. Before that, Vitalik was mainly raised by Natalia and Dmitry, along with her parents.

"They helped a lot, but they insisted on not sending him to daycare. So, when he arrived in Canada, he had to go to a daycare with a different language, and so on. So, it was a huge and somewhat painful transition for him."

The Fast Track to Success

Vitalik's potential was noticed early on, and by third grade, he was placed in a gifted children's class, where he began to cultivate his interests in mathematics, programming, and economics. Young Vitalik was able to add three-digit numbers in his head "ten times" faster than anyone else. People started calling him a math genius from fifth or sixth grade.

A groundbreaking profile in Wired magazine in 2014 described him as an autistic prodigy who learned to speak fluent Mandarin in just a few months: "That's nonsense," Dmitry pointed out. "It took longer." Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, who later became famous for ConsenSys, described Vitalik at the time as "a genius alien who came to this planet to provide the sacred gift of decentralization."

Like other highly intelligent individuals, Dmitry said, Vitalik understood the world differently from ordinary people, which affected how they interacted and socialized.

"When you're very smart, your mind is much better at creating all sorts of models and predicting different things," he said. "And that works for a lot of things. But it doesn't work for humans."

"You become overly reliant on your thinking brain rather than your perceiving brain. Your thinking brain, no matter how powerful, can get messy because human emotions are far more complex than any analytical model you can imagine."

Despite facing this challenge, he said Vitalik began to find his footing when he started attending a private high school called Abelard.

"I think he was very successful in high school," he said. "The private school he attended had a significant impact on him, and he really opened up."

But the Vitalik we know today was indeed born online. He may be referred to as a Russian-Canadian on Wikipedia, but he grew up as a product of internet culture.

"He actually learned how to connect and engage with people online and so on," he said. "And that's when he got into the whole cryptocurrency and Bitcoin space."

"He actually built a lot of relationships online with other enthusiasts," Dmitry said. "It's another way we use social skills, just completely different from face-to-face interactions."

Entering Bitcoin

Dmitry is reluctant to take credit for his son's success, but he undoubtedly played a key role by introducing his son to Bitcoin. He initially tried to spark his son's interest in hacking but failed, describing it as "how to deal with a complex system and make it do something it shouldn't do?"

Part of the dynamic of their father-son relationship is that whenever Dmitry is interested in something, he likes to try to pass it on to Vitalik.

"Vitalik also has a very curious mind. So throughout my life, especially as he was growing up, I was always trying to provide him with a lot of interesting things to see what would resonate."

In 2011, after hearing about Bitcoin on a cybersecurity podcast, Dmitry learned to use Bitcoin himself.

He said, "I thought, oh wow, this sounds like a really interesting technology with some potential significant impacts. But I can't say that at the time, I really understood how big the impact of this technology would be."

As a self-proclaimed "technological optimist," Dmitry has always been fascinated by technology and satisfies his various interests through voracious reading—from artificial intelligence and futurism to libertarianism and idealism.

Speaking of hacking, Dmitry explained that he failed to get Vitalik interested in the concept because other things were more appealing. He passed him a copy of the hacker quarterly "2600" and books by the famous 90s convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick, who spent two years on the run from the FBI.

"He wasn't that interested in hacking itself, but cryptography really resonated with him. You know, he read a ton of books about cryptography and the math behind it. So when I told him about Bitcoin, it was a very fertile object for his brain to chew on, if you will."

Although his 17-year-old son initially scoffed at the idea of a currency with no intrinsic value that was destined to fail, he returned to the concept after giving up his obsession with World of Warcraft when he needed something else to pass the time.

As a broke student, he couldn't afford to buy or mine any Bitcoin, so he started writing articles for a blog at 5 BTC each. This led to his role as the chief writer for Bitcoin Magazine while simultaneously working as a research assistant in cryptography while taking five advanced courses at the University of Waterloo.

As a journalist, he reported on a Bitcoin conference in San Jose, California, in May 2013, where the Winklevoss twins and others discussed this new technological revolution, which could be as significant as the birth of the internet. Excited by the potential, he decided to embrace the opportunity wholeheartedly, dropping out at the end of the semester to pursue it full-time.

Dad, I'm dropping out

Dmitry recalls the day Vitalik told him about his plans.

"I do remember the day he came back from university. In fact, his mom was visiting us at our house, so when he walked in, the three of us were here—myself, Maia, and Natalia. Then he mentioned, 'Hey guys, I'm actually considering dropping out,'" he said.

"It was really funny. Our reactions were all very similar; we supported him because we all knew he was a very smart young man, and if he dropped out, he would be just fine."

"So, he dropped out and started traveling the world, getting involved in a lot of things."

Dmitry met Vitalik's stepmother Maia in Russia in "1995 or 1996." The two married in 2004 but separated a few years later. He said she played a significant role in Vitalik's upbringing.

"Maia had a huge impact on Vitalik because he grew up mostly with the two of us, and then whenever his mom could visit Toronto, he would regularly go to see her," he said, adding that she later moved nearby, so they saw each other often.

Dmitry explained that it was basically like Vitalik had three parents.

"I think it was a few years ago during some family dinner when Vitalik was here. He stood up and said he was really grateful to have so many wonderful people in his life, and he said, 'I have my mom, I have you, Maia,' I don't remember the words he used. But, you know, he was very, very sincere."