Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin warns about Bored Ape NFTs and massive displays of wealth in crypto: 'It becomes a different kind of gambling'

• Vitalik Buterin told TIme that cryptocurrency isn't meant to be about massive displays of wealth.
• "The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling," he said.

Vitalik Buterin isn't impressed with expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which were built on the ethereum blockchain that he cofounded.

In an interview with Time magazine published on Friday, he shared his concerns about the massive displays of wealth — 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 of the virtual status symbols.

Celebrities like Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon, and Paris Hilton have bought Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The 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 crypto, cofounded ethereum in 2015 as a way to leverage blockchain technology. 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 this year. Sales have dipped as a crypto sell-off has crept into the NFT market.

In the interview, Buterin also alluded to how crypto had been used since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

"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.