(vitalik buterin-inventor of ethereum)
When vitalik buterin was six years old, his family adopted canada as its home. Buterin attended primary and secondary school in Toronto, Canada and then attended the math and science focussed University of Waterloo in Canada.
In 2013 he authored the white paper proposing Ethereum. In 2014 he dropped out of the University of Waterloo to focus on Ethereum full-time.
Ethereum's current market cap is approximately 20 billion dollars. That's Billion with a B.
While home-grown billion dollar companies may be more routine in the united states, they are certainly not the norm in canada.
One of Canada's most celebrated tech start-ups, blackberry, had 1.7 billion in annual revenue last year.
So you would have expected ticker tape parades, governments bending over backwards to shape legislation and regulation to support this industry and foster growth. Nothing of the sort was done and buterin now primarily lives in the far east.
But surely the government must have reached out to its wildly successful canadian start-up? No. In fact, it was Vladimir Putin, leader of Russia, that asked for a private meeting with vitalik and has essentially claimed him as a great russian mind. Most people do not even know that vitalik is canadian-which is another lost opportunity for canada to gain reputation in the industry.
20 billion dollar industries do not come around every day and the Canadian government's failure to capitalize on this opportunity is shameful. The opportunity to foster high tech industry would have been a very good fit for canada, with its proximity to the us and the far east, highly educated workforce and tolerant and safe communities.
While Canada has done nothing to foster growth of the industry, other locales such as zug in switzerland (known as crypto-valley) and places around the world seek to accomodate the new industry. Perhaps the Prime Minister of Canada might consider making a phone-call to its $20 billion dollar Canadian.
If he did, perhaps Canada could become "etherum island" , instead of the african island of mauritius:
https://cryptoinsider.com/mauritius-become-blockchain-paradise-ethereum-island/
