A 15 year old boy quit his favorite video game after one update ruined his character. Years later, he built Ethereum, a blockchain worth hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars. > In 2010, Vitalik Buterin was obsessed with World of Warcraft. > Then Blizzard changed one of his favorite Warlock spells, removing its damage effect. > Vitalik was so upset that he cried himself to sleep. He later said the incident made him realize the dangers of centralized services. > He quit the game. > The following year, his father introduced him to Bitcoin. > At first, Vitalik wasn't convinced. He couldn't mine Bitcoin and didn't have the money to buy any. > So he started writing articles about it instead. A website called Bitcoin Weekly paid him 5 $BTC per article. At the time, that was worth roughly $4. > In 2012, at just 17, he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and began writing about where cryptocurrency could go next. > But the more he learned about Bitcoin, the more he saw its limitations. > He believed blockchain technology could do much more than transfer money. > In 2013, he wrote a whitepaper proposing Ethereum, a blockchain that developers could use to build applications of their own. > He was only 19. > The idea attracted developers, and Vitalik eventually dropped out of university to work on it full-time. > In 2014, Ethereum raised around $18 MILLION in its public crowdsale. > The network launched in July 2015. > Years later, Ethereum's market capitalization would climb above $500 BILLION. A teenager quit a game because a company changed one spell. That experience helped shape how he thought about centralized control, and eventually became part of the story behind one of crypto's most important blockchains. Imagine if he'd simply started playing another game.