There is a $500 billion blockchain because a 15-year-old boy cried himself to sleep over a World of Warcraft update.

In 2010, Blizzard nerfed Vitalik Buterin's favorite Warlock spell in World of Warcraft.
His own words: "I cried myself to sleep, and that day I realized the horrors that centralized services can bring."
He quit the game. A year later, his father introduced him to Bitcoin.
He couldn't mine it and couldn't afford to buy it.
So he started writing articles for a cryptocurrency blog for 5 BTC each, which at the time were worth about $3.50.
Those 5 BTC are worth $335,000 today per article.
He co-founded the Bitcoin magazine at age 17.
Applied for a job at Ripple.
They accepted but couldn't sponsor his visa.
At 19, he proposed major changes to Bitcoin.
The community said no.
So he wrote his own technical report. He called it Ethereum.
30 developers contacted us within weeks.
I dropped out of college. I received a Thiel Scholarship of $100,000. I sold ETH at $0.31 during the ICO and raised $18 million.
One person spent $310,000 on 1 million ETH in that sale, which peaked at around $4.3 billion.
Another invested $263 and received 850 ETH, now worth over $1.7 million.
Ethereum launched when Vitalik was 21. Maximum market cap: over $500 billion.
All because Blizzard nerfed a Warlock spell.