A Field Guide to Crypto Culture

The 1,000-plus different digital currencies, carrying a total value of more than $400 billion, and the people who follow them, sometimes obsessively, comprise a world unto themselves. Here's a quick rundown on famous mavens and slang terms that define the phenomenon.

Vitalik Buterin: At 19 years old, Buterin wrote the first draft of Ethereum, a new blockchain meant to be the foundation on which developers can build smart contracts and applications. He and a group of technologists went on to build what in five years has become the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether. It’s been the spark for much of the innovation that exploded last year in the form of initial coin offerings and tokens built on the network. Buterin, whose llamas and rainbows T-shirts have become iconic, is revered, and the often critical opinions about the cryptocurrency market he voices on Twitter are followed closely.