LONDON: Vilatik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum — one of the most popular cryptocurrencies — has accepted an invitation to visit Pakistan in the future.
Bilal Bin Saqib, the only Pakistani speaker to attend the biggest NFT conferences this year, including NFT NYC and ETH Barcelona, has invited Buterin to visit Pakistan for an Ethereum conference. Saqib is working on such a conference to be held in the future.
Speaking with Geo News, Saqib said that he also attended the Ethereum Community Conference last week, where he met Buterin, who graciously accepted his invitation and expressed interest in visiting Pakistan for the conference in future.
“I explained to Buterin about our plans to host a conference in Pakistan soon, and he accepted the invitation, showing keen interest in the Pakistani market. The Web3 domain in Pakistan is a new phenomenon, and it provides education and opportunities to the youth of Pakistan,” Saqib said.
Both Bilal and Vitalic have been mentioned on the Forbes 30 under 30 lists in 2020 and 2017, respectively. The former was noted for his efforts to ease water accessibility through his social enterprise, which was the first to raise funds through NFTs for water-scarce areas of Pakistan. Their paths crossed at EthCC, the Ethereum Community Conference. Before stepping into the Web3 domain, Bilal had made a name for himself both in Pakistan and internationally.
Bilal was also recently awarded the Points of Light Award by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson for One Million Meals, an initiative he co-founded. In April 2021, he also received a mention in the Pakistani Foreign Minister’s Honours List for his service to the community in the UK. Bilal is the brother of Momin Saqib, a popular influencer and actor.
With a market cap of 187.739B, Ethereum is one of the fastest growing and most popular blockchains after the Bitcoin Network. Ether has increased in price from $0.311 since its launch in 2015, to around $4,800 at its highest this year. Investors have nearly quadrupled their investment every year since the summer of 2014 with an ROI of nearly 300%.
Buterin expects Ethereum to be a fundamental part of the much-hyped Metaverse. Ethereum will be “ruling the Metaverse” in 10 years, he claims. In 2014, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency was awarded the Thiel Fellowship Award to bring his projects to life. He also defeated Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to win the World Technology Network (WTN) prize for IT software in 2014. Buterin is also part of the Fortune 40 under 40 list.