Interview with Dmitry Buterin at an Ethereum conference where he reflects on the community's growth and diversity, the conference's rapid expansion (sold out and reportedly twice as large as the prior year), his personal transition from running a software company for 11 years (recently sold) to focusing on blockchain, daily habits (early rising, meditation, family dinner), and pride in his son Vitalik Buterin’s role in founding and leading the Ethereum community (early computing interest, first computer around age 3).
Questions this video answers
December 5, 2017.
Approximately 11 years.
He said the conference was twice as big as last year.
Sold out six months before the event.
Around 3 years old (Dmitry: "when he was like 3 years old").
Hi, I'm here with Dmitry Buterin. Oh, my God, you're so lucky to take an interview with you.
You know, every time I'm at the Ethereum conference, it gives me so much confidence in where the community is going because it's such a diverse community with so much stuff going on. Because, you know, in the daily life, you look at this, there's this problem, there's this scammy, ico, whatever. But when you're at the conference, you talk to all these people, they're all around the world, they moving this forward. Right. And that's kind of. It's basically. They build a decentralized technology in a decentralized way so that some people in Taipei, building a protocol, people in Berlin, whatever. So, yeah, it's always really. It feels really good. Gives me a lot of confidence. Right. And the conference is twice as big as last year. Wow. And they. And it could have been easily like 5,000 people because they just capped it at this. They didn't want to make.
Sold out six months ago, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, my lifestyle is changing because for the last 11 years, I've been running a software company and I recently sold it. So that's kind of transition out of that to focus primarily on the blockchain crypto space. But in general, I like to get up early. Big believer in having the morning for focused time. And, you know, I usually get up, meditate, you know, do some other stuff. Yeah. And then early in the office, doing some stuff. And I always try to be home at night, you know, for dinner with kids. And like, big believer in balance. Right. Because I feel that when we always run between different things, we're not as effective when we can focus on one thing. So right now I'm just doing this, and right now I'm doing something else and maybe not doing anything. Lots of good speakers. Vitalik was a good speaker. I'm biased, obviously, but great guys like Jack Patterson did a good presentation today about some of their things to build in the ecosystem. I like all the panels, so really, it's hard to pick. Yeah. And a lot of really dense content. Right. So like Bloods and Fear was doing a presentation, and it's like you have to watch it at, like, water speed to really follow what he's talking about because there's so much information. So, yeah, it's a lot of good learning. And, you know, as you can see, many people are spending time outside of the conference hall because there are so many meetings happening and people are talking about business deals. ICOs projects, you know, exchanging experience. Yeah, it feels awesome. I'm really proud of him. And, you know, I'm most proud of. He's obviously extremely smart, but the reason that he's a leader of this community is because people believe his intentions. Right. So I know that he's a good person, and that's kind of. I'm most proud of that. You know, he has that. Because when you have that and you can achieve so much versus, like, you can be a very ambitious person. But if you're acting out of fear and you're kind of trying to get it all for yourself. Right.
He's changing the world, basically.
Yeah, he is. And it's. Well, not by himself, but, you know, he started with this idea, right. And then again, he put it out in the open and the people gathered around him and this huge community now exists. They all moving this forward, and he's a really important part of this community. Yeah, no, it was pretty clear from very early age. I can show you a picture, actually, after this, when his first computer, I think we got him when he was like 3 years old or something. And he loved playing with Excel, like doing some basic calculations and stuff like that. And we were just. I think that all the kids, they have so much potential. Right. If you just feed them the right material that, you know, maintain their curiosity and give them away, which is also fun. Right. Because when you kind of try to push it too much. But, you know, for example, when he was studying programming, and one of their places so we sent him was called Real Programming for Kids. So the way they teach kids programming, it's not like this dry lecture, but it's like, okay, now let's build a game. Right? And he was excited about that because building a game is cool. And, you know, you learn so much by actually doing stuff. Yeah. So kind of watching. That was amazing. Yeah.
We are very proud of your family. Thank you so much.
