Vitalik Buterin, the multi-millionaire founder of Ethereum, says that Google tried to hire him on an intern's salary

Getty/John Phillips

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted out a photo of what appeared to be a job offer from Google earlier this year.
• Many speculated that Google was attempting to hire Buterin for a secret cryptocurrency project.
• Buterin says that a Google representative tried to hire him at an intern's salary, most likely because he matched the company's recruitment profile.

In May, the founder of cryptocurrency project Etherum, Vitalik Buterin, asked on Twitter if he should quit ethereum to work for Google.

The tweet contained what appeared to be a job offer from Google that read: "I hope you are doing well and enjoying the weekend! Google make sense for you now or in the near future."

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Buterin's tweet was followed by increasing speculation that Google might be interested in recruiting the 24-year-old founder for a secret cryptocurrency project.

It turns out, however, that this wasn't exactly the case.

At a recent fireside chat at an event in San Francisco, Forbes reported that Buterin said Google did reach out to him, but that it wasn't for a high-profile position.

"I hope we all realize that this was a joke. Some random HR person from Google emailed me, most likely because some machine learning algorithm analyzed my GitHub and saw that I had some high score in the international Olympiad," Buterin said. "Apparently, I fit the blueprints as a great candidate to hire at an intern salary."

While Google does pay its interns comparatively well, it's unlikely that it would have been a compelling offer for Buterin, whose current net worth is thought to be between $100 million to $200 million.

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