At the age of 19, he created the world's second largest virtual currency, with a market value of over 100 billion US dollars. A young man born in the 1990s said: My father is really not Jack Ma~

If you ask what is the most popular investment product at the beginning of 2018, I believe many people will think of virtual currency.

So what is the most popular virtual currency?

Ethereum!!!!

From $722.5 on January 1 to the current $1,179, it has risen by 65% ​​in 12 days.

Especially in recent times, Bitcoin and Litecoin have both fallen by more than 20%, and Ripple, which had been rising against the trend, has been cut in half recently. Ethereum is the only exception. Since 2018, not only has the trading volume grown significantly, but the market value has also exceeded 100 billion US dollars, regaining the second place.

Behind this carnival of wealth, there is a post-90s person who must be mentioned, and that is Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin

A post-90s genius who looks like Jack Ma

I believe everyone knows Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin. This big man has always been very mysterious. In comparison, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, who is only 23 years old, is much more high-profile.

This young man born in the 1990s not only looks like Jack Ma, but also, like Jack Ma, he is calm and arrogant every time he appears.

Buterin is a Russian. His parents divorced when he was 5 years old. He then immigrated to Toronto, Canada from Moscow with his father. During those lonely days, Buterin spent a lot of time on his first laptop in his life. It was also from then on that Buterin's computer talent gradually emerged.

As for Buterin’s first contact with Bitcoin, it started when he was 17 years old.

At that time, his father told Buterin about Bitcoin as a fun story, but in the eyes of the young Buterin, Bitcoin was actually not attractive. But soon after, Buterin began to wonder if he could really earn a few Bitcoins for fun?

As his interest grew, he began to write articles for Bitcoin Weekly, discussing the development and potential of Bitcoin technology, and later even founded Bitcoin Magazine.

After graduating from high school, Buterin successfully entered the University of Waterloo in Canada, but he dropped out after only 8 months.

He then visited Bitcoin developer communities in the United States, Spain, Italy, Israel and other countries to participate in research on Bitcoin's applications beyond cryptocurrencies.

Buterin has always vowed to use blockchain to subvert the real economic system and create a new blockchain platform. However, he also found that Bitcoin has limitations that cannot be broken through in its inherent design. From then on, he began to hope to develop a universal platform for all developers to build their own blockchain extension applications on it. This is the predecessor of "Ethereum smart contracts".

In 2013, at the age of 19, Buterin published the first version of the Ethereum White Paper and began to recruit developers. He then established the non-profit Ethereum Foundation, which raised 31,000 bitcoins, equivalent to about 18.4 million U.S. dollars, in July of that year.

In 2014, Buterin proposed the concept of smart contracts, which further promoted the development of the Bitcoin 2.0 era. Buterin surpassed Facebook founder Zuckerberg and won the 2014 World Technology Award.

Ethereum ignites global enthusiasm

Starting from July 24, 2014, Ethereum launched a 42-day pre-sale of ether, and the price began to rise gradually. As Ethereum's technology gained market recognition, a large number of people and institutions other than developers, including investors and research institutes, also entered the Ethereum world.

So, what exactly is this Ethereum that has sparked global enthusiasm?

We know that both Ethereum and Bitcoin use blockchain technology. If Bitcoin is the 1.0 application of blockchain technology, then Ethereum is its 2.0 version.

The modular structure of Ethereum is actually not fundamentally different from that of Bitcoin. It is still the same objects, such as blockchain ledger, consensus mechanism, core nodes, P2P network, programmable logic, etc.

The difference is that Ethereum has an additional smart contract system, supports a new contract programming language, and adds an Ethereum virtual machine to run contracts.

Ether is mainly used to pay fees incurred by users (developers) in the Ethereum network.

Simply put, Ethereum = blockchain + smart contract. From a platform perspective, Ethereum is similar to Apple's App Store; from a technical perspective, Ethereum is similar to a blockchain operating system.

Therefore, Ethereum combines digital currency (Ether) and programming language (EtherScript), and it is the combination of these two that makes Ethereum very special.

Let's look at a specific example.

Suppose you have created a website, and then Zhang San wants to buy the website for 5,000 yuan, and Zhang San promises to pay in March.

According to the traditional transaction process, first, you will sign a contract with Zhang San, which stipulates that Zhang San will pay you in March. After the contract is signed, you will transfer the control of the website to Zhang San and wait for Zhang San to pay you in March.

By March, according to your understanding of the contract, Zhang San should have paid. But at this time, Zhang San said that he thought the March in the contract refers to March of next year, not March of this year. At this time, you should be prepared to spend money to hire a lawyer to go to court to discuss what year and month the "March" in the contract actually refers to.

If it is based on Ethereum, you can use Ethereum script to define a "smart contract" as shown below, which can be read by both humans and computers:

Essentially, this “Ethereum smart contract” is a contract that cannot be breached and is very powerful.

Considering that most contracts involve the exchange of economic value or have some economic consequences, we can use code to implement various laws and contracts in human society on Ethereum. Contracts implemented in code can have strict and clear definitions and can be automatically executed.

Relying on the smart contract system, Ethereum can save expensive service fees such as lawyers and notaries in a transparent and decentralized manner, and instead ensure the validity of the contract by executing the digital terms of the smart contract.

This is also Ethereum’s important contribution to the rapidly expanding field of digital currency and blockchain technology, and of course it explains why the market is so eager to adopt this technology.

With a market value of over 100 billion yuan, is it a beautiful bubble or real money?

In fact, the price of Ethereum has been sluggish in the first two years. Before 2015, the market value of Ethereum never exceeded $1. However, starting from March 2017, the price of Ethereum suddenly skyrocketed.

Of course, some people have raised concerns about digital currency because of the sharp rise and fall of Ethereum. In this regard, experts from the Viking Research Institute said that as an advanced technical concept or solution, the rapid development of blockchain is inevitable. The sharp rise or fall of digital currency is only one aspect of the rapid development trend.

Moreover, as more and more companies, institutions and different industries begin to participate in this trend, and the country is gradually promoting its development, the issue we need to consider should be how to efficiently use the new technology of blockchain. The appreciation of Ethereum can actually be seen as a positive signal.

From the perspective of market development, digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have achieved extraordinary development speed. The rapid growth of Ethereum's market value is making more people believe that Bitcoin or Ethereum, as well as more digital currencies that may appear in the future, may become unprecedented investment opportunities.

In fact, the value foundation of Bitcoin and Ethereum is blockchain technology.

At present, the areas where blockchain technology is being rapidly explored include capital markets, financial services, payments and remittances, derivatives trading, credit management, government governance, sharing economy, supply chain, auditing, stock trading, the Internet of Things and many other aspects.

For example, on January 10, Kodak, a long-established American photographic equipment manufacturer, announced that it would cooperate with Wenn Digital to launch Kodakcoin.

KodakCoin is a photo-centric cryptocurrency designed to allow photographers to be paid instantly when copyrighted works are sold. Both professional and amateur photographers can sell their works anonymously on a secure blockchain platform.

In order to launch Kodakcoin, Kodak also equipped KodakOne, a photo ownership management platform supported by blockchain technology. Kodak said that the main purpose of building this photo ownership management platform is to provide photographers with a digital ledger of ownership of new and old photos.