Many know the butterfly effect from the film of the same name. The butterfly effect is an idea that small events can have non-linear effects on a complex level. A small change made in a popular video game led to this creation one of the most valuable and popular cryptocurrencies of all time.

What happened: A small change to a character in World of Warcraft, the popular game from Activision Blizzard ATVIhad a major impact on cryptocurrency and the creation of non-fungible tokens.

Changes made by World of Warcraft to a spell used by the warlock character made it less effective by changing the rules. This is called a nerf in the gaming world.

“I loved playing World of Warcraft between 2007 and 2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s life steal spell,” co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin says on his official blog. “I cried myself to sleep and that day I realized the horrors of centralized services. I decided to quit soon.”

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

Why it matters: After retiring from World of Warcraft, Buterin became deeply interested in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin BTC/USD. Buterin has written for several bitcoin-focused media outlets and has become a voice in the cryptocurrency space.

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

“I’ve traveled the world exploring many crypto projects and finally found that they were overly concerned with specific applications and not general enough – hence the birth of Ethereum, which has occupied my life ever since.”

Buterin created the idea for ether ETH/USD in 2013 and the cryptocurrency was launched on July 30, 2015. Buterin currently holds 333,500 ETH in his primary wallet, worth over…