‘The Goal Of Crypto Is Not To Play Games With Million Dollar Pictures Of Monkeys’: Ethereum Founder

Non-fungible tokens have risen in interest and value over the last year, with Bored Ape Yacht Club among the most popular and valuable collections. Here’s what one of the Ethereum co-founders had to say about the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The rise of NFTs has led to a rise in Ethereum’s price and use cases. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was interviewed by TIME in a cover story, labeling him the “Prince of Crypto.” In the interview, Buterin said there are increasing dangers with cryptocurrencies, including overeager investors and soaring transaction fees. “Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong,” Buterin said. The Ethereum co-founder went on to take an apparent shot at Bored Ape Yacht Club, an NFT collection that was minted on the Ethereum blockchain in April 2021.

“The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys, and it becomes a different kind of gambling.” Buterin said a lot of people are buying yachts and lambos, but he hopes that in the future crypto is used for fair voting systems, urban planning and universal basic income. “If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable.” Buterin, who has openly supported Ukraine during the invasion of the country by neighbor Russia, highlighted the amount of money raised for the country through crypto, while once again mentioning Bored Apes. “One silver lining of the situation in the last three weeks is that is 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 in an email to TIME on Mar. 14, 2022.