On Saturday, July 6, nearly two hundred students gathered for an ask-me-anything event with Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of the Ethereum blockchain and a former University of Waterloo student.
Buterin studied computer science at Waterloo and worked as a research assistant for cryptographer and computer science professor Ian Goldberg. In 2013 he wrote a white paper proposing Ethereum. Buterin was awarded a $100,000 USD grant from the Thiel Fellowship in 2014 and subsequently left Waterloo to work on Ethereum full-time. Today, Ethereum is second only to Bitcoin in market value.
In his talk, Buterin discussed the math behind the blockchain, areas for innovation and the future of cryptocurrency. “Will crypto become the Esperanto of finance, the Linux of finance or the Internet of finance?” he asked rhetorically.
Read the full story from Waterloo News to learn more.