A new documentary explores Buterin’s life, including his early days building Ethereum in Canada.
Vitalik Buterin, the original creator of the Ethereum blockchain, is one of the most recognizable figures of the cryptocurrency industry. He’s often admired in the ecosystem for being highly technical while also deeply philosophical about technology’s role in society. For those that do not follow crypto closely, Buterin starkly contrasts the stereotypical image of a flashy cryptocurrency billionaire with his minimalism in his personal style as well as his geeky and awkward mannerisms.
The documentary “Vitalik: An Ethereum Story,” which is set for global release April 15, tries to give us a peek into those aspects of Buterin, following his early life and childhood in Russia followed by immigrating with his family to Toronto, Canada, where his love for computers and technology began in his high school years.
At the core of Buterin’s life was the creation of Ethereum, which came after his early involvement in Toronto’s Bitcoin community, where he saw the potential of the asset in giving people some financial freedom. While thinking how he could apply those concepts to other aspects of life, Buterin set out to write a whitepaper on creating the blockchain version of the internet.
Toronto has strong ties to Ethereum’s early days. It was home to some of the first Ethereum developer hackathons and meetups organized by Ethereum’s Canadian co-founders in the city.
This year, CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 takes place in Toronto May 14-16, highlighting Canada’s vibrant crypto community.
The film walks through the various stages of Ethereum’s lifetime, including the start of the network and the struggles Buterin faced in his new leadership role, the boom of the blockchain during the NFT era, the importance of the Merge in reducing Ethereum’s energy consumption, and Buterin’s urge to help Ukraine in its war with Russia by deploying crypto for resources.
CoinDesk sat down with the directors of the documentary, Chris Temple and Zach Ingrasci, to hear about their perspectives on creating the film, ahead of its global release.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CoinDesk: Why did you want to make a documentary about Ethereum?
Zach Ingrasci [ZI]: So Chris and I have been making documentaries together for 15 years now. We make character driven documentaries. So I really love those human stories that give us insight into the emotions and motivations of people in really interesting places.
We aren’t crypto experts. We both studied economics, so we have a bit of understanding of finance. But when we met Vitalik in 2021 I think he immediately clicked something in our brains like: “oh, here’s a story that kind of breaks the stereotypes that mainstream audiences have of this space.”
Quickly after meeting Vitalik, we did an NFT crowdfund for the film on mirror.xyz, peoplepleaser did the NFT. We raised basically the full budget of the film, and it allowed us to create this independent story and approach to follow Vitalik around the world, as, he lives out of a 40 liter backpack
How did you guys decide what parts of Ethereum’s history to include in Vitalik’s story? One noticeable moment I thought was interesting that you left out was not to include the 2016 DAO hack? Why exclude that key moment in Ethereum’s history but leave in…
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-toronto-2025-coverage/2025/04/14/inside-an-ethereum-story-filming-vitalik-buterin-crypto-s-most-reluctant-star
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Inside ‘An Ethereum Story’: Filming Vitalik Buterin, Crypto’s Most Reluctant Star
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