Arkham Intelligence’s new deep-dive, shared via X on September 6, pegs Vitalik Buterin’s wealth at “at least $1.05 billion”—a lower-bound tally built from identified on-chain assets and known private holdings. The report situates the estimate as of August 2025 and emphasizes that it fluctuates intraday with Ether’s price.
Historically, Arkham reconstructs a precise balance-history curve. On December 31, 2015, Buterin’s known crypto wealth stood at $596,760; by December 31, 2016 it was $4.23 million, then $278.37 million a year later—his largest year-over-year jump in the 2017 bull run.
He first crossed the on-chain billionaire mark at age 27 during 2021 as ETH traded above $3,000, and briefly peaked at $2.09 billion on November 18, 2021 with ETH near its cycle high. The subsequent bear market slashed the mark-to-market value by roughly 75%, from $1.2 billion (Dec 31, 2021) to $300.58 million (Dec 31, 2022), before recovering to $1.05 billion in the 2024–2025 rebound.
The Ethereum co-founder’s own disclosures anchor the percentages. In October 2018 he wrote: “I never had 900k ETH. When I had 0.9% of all ETH, the supply was ~75 million.” That statement frames Arkham’s finding that his share never materially exceeded ~0.9% and has trended down over time as he sold or donated and as supply evolved.
Buterin has publicly explained some of the flows that complicate “sales” tallies. In August 2022 he stated, “I’ll out myself as someone who has used [Tornado Cash] to donate to this exact cause,” referring to donations to Ukraine; he has also said that exchange-bound transfers from his wallets since 2018 have been for donations, not personal profit-taking.
Off-chain, Arkham highlights early equity in zero-knowledge firm StarkWare, which reached an $8 billion valuation in its 2022 Series D—an illiquid but potentially meaningful additive to the on-chain floor. Precise sizing of these stakes is not disclosed, so Arkham treats the $1.05 billion as a conservative baseline rather than a cap.
At press time, Ethereum traded at $4,298.
