Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin: Millions Of People Have Crypto Wallets To Trade Monkey Pictures

Ethereum ETH/USD creator Vitalik Buterin has once again taken a dig at NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and its community of followers.

What Happened: Speaking at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto, Buterin commented on how the current use cases for private keys on a blockchain had seemingly deviated from their intended purpose.

Buterin said that the 1990s spurred an idealistic effort for people to have their own cryptographic keys for privacy and security without relying on centralized intermediaries. However, the network effects hadn’t really panned out.

“Fast forward to today, we have millions of people with crypto wallets and we have millions of people with private keys inside their own browsers… because they want to trade monkey pictures.”

The Bored Ape NFT collection is one of the highest valued in the space today. Celebrities like Justin Bieber, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Maddona are spending millions to acquire their own piece. 

Still, Buterin isn’t convinced by the projects underlying utility and the role of Bored Apes in the overall crypto movement — something he first made known in an interview with Time Magazine earlier this year.

“The problem with crypto space is that it has great incentives, but at the same time, it has incentives to go into very weird directions sometimes,” he said.

See Also: Ethereum Hits $1,900 As Final Merge Testnet Goes Live

Price Action: As per data from Benzinga Pro, ETH surged to a two-month high of $1,927 on Thursday. At press time, the crypto asset was trading at $1,867, up 0.72% over 24 hours. ApeCoin APE/USD, the native token of the Bored Ape ecosystem was trading at $6.93, down 2.98% over the same period.
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