Vitalik is not like the creator of Bitcoin: he does want people to know that he created Ethereum.

The city of Kolomna is located at the confluence of the Moscow Oblast and Oka rivers. A small city with little more than 140,000 inhabitants that until 1994 was a closed city. One of those populations in the former Soviet Union where the military industry secretly produced and travel and residence were restricted. The secret had to be kept safe.

In 1960 the astronaut Mikhail Tiurin, who lived and worked at the International Space Station during the third long stay, was born there. In 1968 the mathematician and writer Edward Frenkel, one of the greatest communicators of mathematics. In 1985 Olympic medallist and speed skater Yekaterina Lobysheva, bronze in Turin 2006 and Sochi 2014. And 23 years ago, just in the year of the city's opening, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum. One of the most popular digital coins and a promising platform.

A disruption with a face

It is no coincidence that this genius, the creator of one of the best known cryptodivisas, can be called by real name and surname.

It is also no coincidence that we know where he was born and raised. At the age of six she moved with her parents to Toronto, Canada, where they were looking for better job opportunities. That while he was in third grade in elementary school, having noticed his remarkable intellectual abilities, he was relocated to a class for gifted children. He later attended a secondary school, The Abelard School, based on the Socratic method.

Or that he even surprised his classmates, being able to mentally add three-digit numbers to the double the speed they were capable of. Mathematics, programming and economics were topics that interested him naturally.

These details collected here and there are public because Buterin doesn't care much about being known. He doesn't hide, give lectures and appear at events. She is a public figure who is not afraid to talk about herself or use Twitter frequently. He travels around the world causing admiration, surprising those who didn't put up a face with his adolescent look and his daring costumes in the form of prints with unicorns, rainbows or cats. It shows as it is.

The creator of Ethereum has real name and surname, has face, attends events…

That is the main and essential difference from Satoshi Nakamoto-san, the mysterious pseudonym used to identify himself as the creator (s) of Bitcoin. Another cryptomoneda, the most popular of all there are and the one that keeps accumulating records, with a protocol and a P2P network of the same name. Ethereum could be described as a relative of this, more or less close, who one day decided to evolve by going one step further.

As a further step, he wanted to be his architect with respect to his closest referent. The one he imagines as a man between the ages of 30 and 50 who, perhaps, could be really Japanese. "Although it would be cool if I were a woman,"the Russian programmer and writer said in a tweet in April 2015.

Beyond personal exposure: developing a different concept

Bitcoin certainly opened the way. He pointed it out. He took the first steps. It was created collectively and left free, open to the market. In 2009, one year after the global economic crash that we still drag. Blockchain, the technology behind this electronic currency, that database or book of accounts distributed and in the possession of all the participants, is a rough diamond that gradually acquires brilliance in the most unimaginable areas.

Although for more than a year no one trusted the coin. After another twelve months, it reached the value of 1 US dollar. Did it stop? Was it abandoned? Did he end up disappearing? We know you don't. That was only a tiny beginning.

Until the publication of this article, bitcoin has had a record high of $11,000. A spectacular evolution that some attribute to the beginning of a revolution, one that aims to turn the world economy upside down through a decentralized and alternative system; and others to a gigantic bubble, a wild speculation that will one day explode through the air. The debate is long, complex and full of edges. It will continue as long as bitcoins remain more a speculative product than a means of payment or exchange.

Ethereum, intelligent contracts and zero sum of power

As they explain on their website,"Ethereum is a decentralized platform that executes intelligent contracts: applications that work exactly as they are programmed without the possibility of inactivity, censorship, fraud or interference from third parties. The so-called dapps are executed in a chain of blocks built according to the needs of the project, as mentioned above. "A hugely powerful global shared infrastructure that can move value and represent ownership of property,"that distributed, unrestricted software running on multiple computers.

This makes it possible to "create markets, store debt or pledge records, move funds according to instructions given in the past (such as a will or futures contract) and many other things that have not yet been invented, all without the risk of an intermediary or counterparty". It's Ethereum's true potential.