Ethereum’s price surge pushed one of its best-known creators back into the billionaire club this week, based on on-chain valuations. Markets moved fast, and so did headline writers, but the numbers behind the noise are plain.
Those wallets also show smaller stakes in tokens like AETHWETH, White, Moodeng and WETH. This is a price-driven snapshot of holdings that are visible on public ledgers, not a full accounting of any off-chain assets or tax liabilities.
Vitalik first crossed the on-chain billionaire threshold at age 27, in May 2021, when Ether traded above $3,000 and holdings were roughly 333,500 ETH — then worth about $1.029 billion.
That rise came after ETH moved from around $700 at the start of 2021 to much higher levels later that year. What’s different now is that the figure is again a simple product of visible token holdings and a higher ETH price.
In a recent interview, Buterin warned against a heavy reliance on large treasuries and borrowing in the ecosystem. He said that if treasuries ever caused major damage to ETH, it would be because some players turned the market into an over-borrowed setup.
That kind of caution from a founder matters to investors who are weighing long-term structural risks against short-term price moves.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
