- Vitalik Buterin said cryptocurrency isn't meant to be about massive displays of wealth, in reference to Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
- "The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling," he told Time in an interview.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club continues to be the top-selling NFT collection on OpenSea.
Vitalik Buterin isn't impressed with expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which were built on the ethereum blockchain that he cofounded.
He recently shared his concerns about the massive displays of wealth in the crypto world — like the flaunting of pricey Bored Ape NFTs — that have become inseparable from people's perceptions of cryptocurrencies.
"The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling," he told Time when discussing the virtual status symbols.
Celebrities like Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon, and Paris Hilton have bought Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The current floor price is about $280,000, and some have traded for millions of dollars. Bored Ape Yacht Club continues to be the top-selling NFT collection on OpenSea.
Buterin, one of the most influential figures in the crypto space, cofounded ethereum in 2015 as a way to leverage the blockchain in a new way. Now, his creation has become a trillion-dollar, decentralized landscape, led in part by the boom in NFTs on the ethereum blockchain.
Total sales volume for NFTs hit $23 billion in 2021, though the sizzling market has cooled to start the new year. Sales have dipped as the ongoing crypto sell-off has crept into the NFT market.
Despite lamenting what is happening in the crypto space, Buterin also alluded to how crypto has been used since Russia invaded Ukraine.
"One silver lining of the situation in the last three weeks is that it has reminded a lot of people in the crypto space that ultimately the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it's to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the real world," Buterin said.
