TIME Magazine chose Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for its first-ever NFT issue — and the most influential voice in the crypto space had plenty of two cents to offer.
In the cover story titled “The Prince of Crypto Has Concerns”, Buterin expressed a mix of pride and fear at the creation of the digital currency.
“Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong,” he said.
He had a bone to pick with a few of its recent implementations, namely:
🦍 The Bored Ape Yacht Club ($BAYC.NFT): He didn’t seem impressed with the biggest NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club ($BAYC.NFT), which is built on the Ethereum blockchain network. He is concerned about the massive displays of wealth, such as Bored Ape NFTs, adding that it has a negative impact on public perception of cryptocurrencies.
“The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” he said.
🌎 Environment: The 28-year-old crypto genius said he fully understands the downside of Ethereum, which has made early adopters rich over the years. The chain’s growth has come at the expense of the environment, though. .
💸 Money Laundering & scams: He is worried about a number of trends he has observed in the industry, including tax avoidance, money laundering, and scams. However, that’s to be expected – where there is lots of money, there will be bad people.
On the flip, he did have something positive to say – that perhaps resonates with his broader case about the “correct way” to implement crypto. Namely:
⚔️ The Financial Element of the War in Ukraine: He praised how crypto had been used during the Russia-Ukraine war.
“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.
The Ethereum co-founder’s interview is historic – not just for the high-profile it has provided Buterin, nor the legitimacy or credibility that a major publication is lending to the crypto space. Instead, it’s historic for all the things Buterin reviles about the world he has helped create; it’s a critique of cryptocurrency’s hazards, grift, and waste. Despite that, it’s his hope that Ethereum will do more good than harm to the world. Buterin says he hopes it will become the foundation of sociopolitical development in fair voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, and public works projects.
But in truth, it might be a while before we get there – after all, Ethereum is still stuck at just 14 transactions per second (TPS) and the broader crypto space can’t hold a candle to Ethereum, nor Bitcoin’s, outsized impact in the world of crypto.