The Butterfly Effect: Here's The Crazy Story Of How World Of Warcraft Led To The Creation Of Ethereum

Many are familiar with the butterfly effect thanks to a movie by the same name. The butterfly effect is an idea that small events can have non-linear impacts on a complex level. A small change made in a popular video game led to the creation of one of the most valuable and most popular cryptocurrencies of all time.

What Happened: A small change to a character in World of Warcraft, the popular game from Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), had a big impact on cryptocurrency and the creation of non-fungible tokens. 

Changes made by World of Warcraft over a spell used by the Warlock character made it less effective by changing the rules. This is known as nerf in the gaming world.

“I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell,” Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin says on his official blog. “I cried myself to sleep and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”

Related Link: 5 Things You Might Not Know About Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin

Why It’s Important: After he stopped playing World of Warcraft, Buterin became heavily interested in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC). Buterin wrote for several Bitcoin focused media outlets and became a voice in the cryptocurrency sector.

Buterin wrote for Bitcoin Weekly and later co-founded Bitcoin Magazine. He dropped out of university to focus on cryptocurrency after obtaining a $100,000 grant from the popular Thiel Foundation, created by Peter Thiel.

“I went around the world, explored many crypto projects and finally realized that they were all too concerned about specific applications and not being sufficiently general – hence the birth of Ethereum, which has been taking up my life ever since.”

Buterin created the idea for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) in 2013 and the cryptocurrency was launched on July 30, 2015. Buterin currently holds 333,500 ETH in his primary wallet, worth over $500 million.

Ethereum is one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of over $188 billion, according to Coinmarketcap. 

It’s pretty unreal to think that a simple change in World of Warcraft led to Buterin getting so heavily involved in the world of cryptocurrency.

Without the change made by Blizzard, there might not be Ethereum or non-fungible tokens in the world today.