MICHAEL CIAGLO—GETTY IMAGES
Ethereum Cofounder Vitalik Buterin is not impressed with Bored Ape Yacht Club’s expensive NFTs built on the Ethereum blockchain that he co-founded.
In an interview with Time Magazine published on Friday, he shared his concerns about massive displays of wealth, such as flaunting of pricey Bored Apes’ NFTs, which become inseparable from people’s perception of cryptocurrencies.
“The peril is that you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” he told Time of the virtual status symbols.
Celebrities such as Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon & Paris Hilton have bought NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The floor price is around $280,000 and some have traded for millions of dollars. The Bored Ape Yacht Club continues to be the best selling NFT collection on OpenSea.
Buterin, one of the most influential figures in crypto, co-founded Ethereum in 2015 to take advantage of blockchain technology. His creation has become a trillion-dollar decentralized landscape, driven in part by the NFT boom on the Ethereum blockchain.
The total sales volume of NFT reached $23 billion in 2021, although the sizzling market has cooled down this year. Sales fell as a cryptocurrency sell off crept into NFT market.
In the interview, Buterin also alluded to how cryptocurrencies have been used since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
“A positive aspect of the situation over the past three weeks is that it has reminded many people in the crypto space that the ultimate goal of crypto is not to play with million-dollar monkeys pictures, It’s about doing things that have a significant impact in the real world,” Buterin said.
