These billionaires who dream of conquering death

San Francisco, Prague, Cannes, Hong Kong, Singapore… Vitalik Buterin, 31, is a long-haul flight regular. When he travels the world from conference to seminar, the co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform , the originator of the ether cryptocurrency, one of the most widely used after bitcoin, travels light: a laptop, a toiletry bag, a few clothes (mostly bought at Uniqlo, the multimillionaire specifies on his website ), as well as a kit containing “a combination of various life-prolonging medications.” These include vitamins, but also metformin (an antidiabetic) and ashwagandha (a plant native to India), renowned among followers of longevity medicine for their supposed anti-aging properties.

The Russian-Canadian fell into the longevity pot as a teenager, when he read Ending Aging , a 2007 book by controversial British scientist Aubrey de Grey , which claims that by repairing the damage of aging, humans could hope, within a few decades, to live more than a thousand years.

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