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Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, issues a warning regarding Bored Ape NFTs and massive displays of wealth in cryptocurrency: 'It turns into an other type of gambling.'

• Cryptocurrency, according to Vitalik Buterin of Time, isn't designed to be about flashy displays of riches.
• "The danger is that you have these $3 million monkeys, and it turns into a different form of gambling," he explained.
• On OpenSea, the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection remains the most popular.

The costly Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which were developed on the ethereum blockchain that Buterin cofounded, haven't impressed Vitalik Buterin.

He expressed his concerns about the huge shows of riches — such as the parading of costly Bored Ape NFTs — that have been inextricably linked to people's conceptions of cryptocurrency in an interview with Time magazine published on Friday.

"The danger is that you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different type of gambling," he said of the virtual status symbols in an interview with Time.

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have been purchased by celebrities such as Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon, and Paris Hilton. The starting price is around $280,000, and some have gone for millions. On the OpenSea marketplace, the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection is still the best-selling NFT collection.

Buterin, one of crypto's most powerful characters, cofounded ethereum in 2015 as a means to use blockchain technology. His idea has grown into a trillion-dollar decentralised landscape, fueled in part by the ethereum blockchain's growth in non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

NFT sales volume topped $23 billion in 2021, though the hot market has slowed this year. As a crypto sell-off has seeped into the NFT market, sales have fallen.

Buterin also mentioned how crypto has been used since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February in the interview.

"One silver lining of the situation in the last three weeks is that it has reminded a lot of individuals in the crypto field that the aim of crypto is to do things that produce substantial consequences in the real world, not to play games with million-dollar photographs of monkeys," Buterin added.