Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Etherium and one of the most popular people in the entire cryptosphere, is on the cover of the recent issue of the world famous Time magazine. On this occasion, Buterin gave an exclusive interview in which he talked about his vision of the future of cryptocurrencies and the negative aspects associated with them. Some of Vitalik’s quotes about NFT-tokens particularly caught the attention of the community, so a little later he explained his position in more detail. We tell you more about the situation.
We should note that there are more than enough problems in the NFT arena. An example of this is the NeoNexus project. Its founders attracted several million dollars from investors, but after a few months they reported a lack of funding. At the same time, the founder of the project also posed with supercars, which became a reason for doubts in the cryptocurrency community.
What are the advantages of NFT-tokens
We are talking about the following quote by Vitalik from the interview, in which the developer touched on the topic of non-interchangeable tokens.
The danger is that you have these $3 million monkeys, and it becomes another kind of gambling.
It makes sense that it quickly caught the attention of so many crypto-enthusiasts, as unique tokens have become a major industry trend of the past year. The volume of transactions with NFT during this period passed the mark of $25 billion, which means that the trend was incredibly strong. That said, it seemed to some in the blockchain community that Buterin was openly speaking against the trend in his words.
Moreover, according to the news outlet Decrypt, Vitalik was suspected of criticizing the famous NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). However he doesn’t think so himself: the day before Vitalik published the following message on his Twitter.
I don’t hate “monkeys,” I just want them to help develop public goods.
Public goods in the cryptosphere should be understood as open-source technologies and infrastructure that can potentially benefit anyone. Buterin has discussed this topic at length before – he believes that the Ethereum ecosystem should support initiatives that help promote the project ecosystem and help people at the same time.
To achieve this goal, Vitalik co-created the concept of so-called quadratic funding. Its essence is that projects with a large number of supporters get a larger share of available funds for their own development. This model is used in Gitcoin, the leading public goods project in the Ethereum ecosystem. To date, Gitcoin has helped raise more than $55 million for various initiatives in development.
In addition, Vitalik himself is known for his lack of desire to make money. First, he was already becoming a billionaire amid the rise of coins in the spring and fall of 2021. Secondly, he is often sent serious amounts of money, which the developer ends up donating or even burning. For example, last year he got rid of billions of dollars worth of SHIB tokens by first transferring their share to donations. Read more about this story in a separate piece.
Regarding Bored Ape Yacht Club and NFT in general, another line from Vitalik’s interview is worth mentioning.
Ultimately, the goal of cryptocurrencies is not to play million-dollar monkey picture games, but to do things that have a significant impact on the real world.
To recap, Bored Ape Yacht Club is a series of 10,000 unique images of virtual monkeys that are linked to their NFTs. Token holders get access to the closed BAYC club, as well as additional privileges in the form of various virtual events or even coin giveaways. The most recent was the ApeCoin token airdrop, which amounts to tens of thousands of dollars for each BAYC holder.
The cheapest available instance of the collection on the OpenSea trading platform is valued at 101 ETH, or about $304,000 at today’s exchange rate. The volume of resales of BAYC tokens is also noteworthy, because on the eve of it exceeded the mark of 3 billion dollars. That said, the NFT collection isn’t all that “useless” when it comes to impacting the real world: the Bored Ape Yacht Club community recently donated a million dollars in humanitarian aid to Ukraine amid a terrible situation inside the state.
We believe that NFT is an important tool in promoting Etherium as a basis for unique tokens, and by this fact alone, the trend deserves recognition by crypto-enthusiasts. However, Vitalik’s point of view is also quite logical. Investors should not get “too” involved in unique tokens, turning an entire aspect of the cryptosphere into a bubble. Investing in risky assets – which is how most coins can be characterized – should only be something that investors are able to lose without any problems.
What do you think about this? Share your opinion.