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'The Goal Of Crypto Is Not To Play Games With Million Dollar Pictures Of Monkeys': Ethereum Founder (benzinga.com) 139

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Non-fungible tokens have risen in interest and value over the last year, with Bored Ape Yacht Club among the most popular and valuable collections. Here's what one of the Ethereum co-founders had to say about the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The rise of NFTs has led to a rise in Ethereum's price and use cases. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was interviewed by TIME in a cover story, labeling him the "Prince of Crypto." In the interview, Buterin said there are increasing dangers with cryptocurrencies, including overeager investors and soaring transaction fees. "Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong," Buterin said. The Ethereum co-founder went on to take an apparent shot at Bored Ape Yacht Club, an NFT collection that was minted on the Ethereum blockchain in April 2021.

"The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys, and it becomes a different kind of gambling." Buterin said a lot of people are buying yachts and lambos, but he hopes that in the future crypto is used for fair voting systems, urban planning and universal basic income. "If we don't exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable." Buterin, who has openly supported Ukraine during the invasion of the country by neighbor Russia, highlighted the amount of money raised for the country through crypto, while once again mentioning Bored Apes. "One silver lining of the situation in the last three weeks is that is 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 in an email to TIME on Mar. 14, 2022.
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'The Goal Of Crypto Is Not To Play Games With Million Dollar Pictures Of Monkeys': Ethereum Founder More

'The Goal Of Crypto Is Not To Play Games With Million Dollar Pictures Of Monkeys': Ethereum Founder

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  • Oh boy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @02:04PM (#62380765)

    You're in for a big surprise then!

    • I wonder if you could have crafted a funnier joke with less time pressure to FP...

      Then again, the entire NFT thing is just a sad-side joke. No way Slashdot can grant enough Funny mods to moderate it adequately.

      • Wasn't even gunning for either - that was my legit first reaction.

        I mean, what could i joke about here? It'd be like trying to make fun of a clown for wearing oversized shoes and a bright red nose.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Sadly good point then, but it could still be funnier.

          Then again, it is a bit of an exaggeration. there are various "goals" of cryptocurrency. But it's more like all of the dominating goals are bad. Mostly even worse ideas than NFT games.

          How about this angle: NFTs are a fool's gold rush built smack dab on top of another fool's gold rush?

    • "The goal is to pump up the price, and dump it on unsuspecting suckers," he clarified.

  • People using tools have purposes, which the tool they are using may be well or poorly suited to.

  • "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." --Upton Sinclair.

    The quote is in regard to his most famous work, The Jungle, which he desired to make people vote Socialist among other things; but everybody remembers it as an expose on the meat-packing industry. The book was instrumental in getting food inspection laws passed.

    • Seems like his initial goals were intrinsically stupid. Good thing his aim was off.

      • It was a forgivable goal in 1906, and may have had different implications at the time. His vision for it may have been more like what we have in Sweden. AFAIK, no country had tried yet and the Russian Revolution was 11 years away. I have a lot less patience with people who are calling for public ownership of everything *now*, after so much history.

        • Isn't even hardcore communism about public ownership of the "means of production"? Since NFTs produce nothing, then it doesn't fall under the iron curtain rule.

          • The main idea of the thread was about creators not being able to control how their content is used, not to compare anything on the blockchain to socialism or communism; but I'll bite.

            The blockchains are public, but in theory they aren't really owned and perhaps ironically anarcho-socialist given their roots in libertarian ideology. However, the idea that they don't produce anything, and in fact are heavy consumers of energy is a point well taken. Because of that, Marx might have critiqued NFTs as a decade

        • But you must consider, men like that in the early 20th century ultimately became the progenitors of so much pain, loss, and death. Forgiveness for ignorance can only go so far.

  • And the goal of television is to educate, and the goal of the world wide web is to exchange documents containing facts. Certainly not to entertain or sell stuff. That's for the unwashed masses. You know, I think this has historically been a unintended consequence, so much so that calling it "unintended" is just naive.
  • If you haven't read Moxie Marlinspike's [moxie.org] essay on the broken crypto ecosystem, you should.
  • It is hypocritical to say cryptos are virtual and don't need to be tied to any fundamental value, then come around and say some other instrument has to somehow justify its value. The fact is once you let the cat out of the bag, anything goes until it blows up.

  • I don't think you can implement it right (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @02:36PM (#62380891)
    the "goal of crypto" was (supposed to be) decentralization.

    The problem is markets naturally tend to centralize. Wins compound on wins and businesses start to merge or go tits up.

    Proof of Work becomes a big problem here. You end up with large, centralized pools of miners who can do 51% attacks. Normally they'd have no reason to... but you end up with big, centralized exchanges those miners depend on to move their mined currency. This means the exchanges can pressure the miners, and if there's one central body that can trigger a 51% attack that in turn means a gov't or other large organization (think Goldman Sachs or the larger banking system) can do it, just by putting pressure on.

    Proof of Stake is not better, since those same market consolidation forces apply. People who's crypto businesses fail will sell off their stakes to the ones that succeed over time... and you're right back to where you started only more so.

    I don't know of any way to counter act the natural tendency of markets to consolidate into "winners" and "losers" besides gov't backed anti-trust law, but that would again defeat the purpose.

    This is before we talk about currency manipulation, short selling, and all the other nastiness touched on by the article, or what gov't regulation would do to the money laundering that forms the "floor" of crypto...

    In short, crypto is a failed experiment. It wasn't the worst idea (still not as bad as leaded gasoline), but it's going to be one of those things that either dies young or lives long enough to become what it hates.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      > I don't know of any way to counter act the natural tendency of markets to consolidate into "winners" and "losers" besides gov't backed anti-trust law, but that would again defeat the purpose.

      This is unavoidable. The solution (or mitigation) as you suggest is governance. Crypto will fail/succeed as every other market has done.

      > In short, crypto is a failed experiment

      Only true if governance efforts fail; and there are plenty of projects that have governance to mitigate stake concentration as an explic

      • don't you lose the freedom aspect that's supposed to be the main feature?

        Or if you don't mean the actual government, what do you mean by "governance"?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nyet ( 19118 )

          Participatory, democratic/representative, on chain governance.

          Even outside of governance there are stake concentration disincentives baked into many different protocols. Have you participated in any of their communities or designs?

          • Or rather some people have a lot more votes. You can't really have a democracy where people with more money get more votes.

            I haven't participated in any communities because, well, their Ponzi schemes. If you don't get in early the risk is way too high and picking one of the many many of these schemes that isn't going to implode or rug pull it's way too much risk for me. If I had that kind of money other than gambling it on cryptocurrencies I would invested in the stock market.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nyet ( 19118 )

              Then you could participate in the developer communities and in tools building out DAOs, if you really cared that the technology wouldn't be misused. You don't have to invest a dime in a single token.

    • DeFi would disagree with you. There's a lot going on away from the centralized exchanges.

      • Not the big ones anyway, and those are the ones you have to worry about doing a 51% attack on command from a government or large corporation. The problem is those big operations need reliable places to sell their currency at reliable prices and without the high risk of fraud that comes with decentralization.

        Using smart contracts and other software applications opens you up to a whole world of potential fraud that just doesn't exist with the centralized exchanges. Yes you probably won't constantly be def

        • Why not? You honestly think the DeFi contracts can't scale to meet their needs? People use centralized exchanges because they choose to do so. And because of fees, at least in the case of DeFi happening on Ethereum. You've got to have pretty big bags to make things like UniSwap worth your time.

      • Rsilvergun is an idiot and he doesn't know there's a difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin.

        • Sometimes it's worth it to point out why someone is wrong rather than just insulting them and walking away. Even if all they deserve is an insult.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Which, really, the booster knew that markets tend to centralize and were hoping that crypto would produce a new set of centralized markets that they would be leaders of, without having to bother creating something that actually does something.
  • It horrifies me that some of the brightest of minds are using their talents to do nothing more interesting than simply get rich. What kind of a legacy are these boring rich kids going to leave, apart from worthless 0's and 1's and a shitload of carbon dioxide?

    • Not only that, but some of the chip shortage is caused by fabs making mining chips instead of chips that can do something useful.

    • To me we its because we have run out of useful things to do in society, its just trying to entertain ourselves and do things that transfer as much wealth to ourselves as possible. Western society doesn't seem to have a real goal, apart from entertaining ourselves. So we sell dumb images for millions and convince ourselves its progress.

      • I truly believe that Western society has lost its purpose. It's like Rome in the final days - it wasn't taken over or wiped out, it just imploded. Our political class are mostly in it for themselves, our media stars and heroes are mostly moronic mouthbreathers and now all we have is the prospect of selling each other stupid crypto nonsense to fund our pensions!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      Only some. Most are working on the real goal: decentralized, distributed ledger consensus algorithms.

  • No matter what your endeavor, the second you feel you should begin to make a list of "don't do the following" applications, understand that 100% of the time the thing you're making will be used for the things on that list. Especially if it's really good at that thing. Just ask the synthesizer of prussic acid.

  • is to repeatedly stress that you don't intend to destroy the world.

  • ... million dollar monkeys. But I repeat myself.

  • There's multiple cryptocurrencies just as there are multiple cryptosystems. They were invented for multiple purposes because they were invented by multiple people. Some people created one or the other of these things because they hoped to change the world for (in their opinion) the better, some didn't. It's ludicrous to imagine that everyone doing the same thing has the same motivation.

    Further, what the creator's goal was is irrelevant. It is whatever it is, not what it was imagined to become.

  • I want a million dollar monkey hanging above my million dollar Tamagotchi collection.

  • Read between the lines. They're laundering money. Crypto has been used by criminals since it's inception. Now it's being used as a hedge against government currency devaluation, which is just another way of avoiding being controlled by the government. You'd have to be thick in the head not to see that.

  • "he hopes that in the future crypto is used for fair voting systems, urban planning and universal basic income"

    Except that it doesn't actually do any of that and never will. Hence the monkey pictures.

    I hope in the future I hit the lottery, learn Mandarin, and date Scarlett Johansen.

  • Wasting enough energy to power all of Brazil while we are actively trying to reduce our carbon footprint objectively has a meaningful effect on the world. So ... yeah there's that.

  • ...believe high-value NFTs are anything but forms of payment for human trafficking?

  • Please do feel free to take your ball and run home.

    When you make a thing, you don't get to dictate how people interact with it.

    Sorry the Internet hurt your feelings - that's kind of the way it goes.

  • Meta-verse "real estate," NFTs, cybercurrency - it's all the same thing: nothing.
    A bunch of 1s and 0s in computer storage somewhere.
    These Ponzi schemes are devouring *huge* amounts of energy, right in the middle of fuel crises.

    • It seems to me that the fundamental principle of NFTs is that you have a limited number of what amount to digital certificates of authenticity that you buy because you believe that someone else will pay more for them in the future... and they would be buying them from you with the belief that they, in turn, will be able to sell them for more than they paid for it... and the subsequent buyer likewise... until it reaches a point where no one is interested in buying these digital certificates, leaving the last

  • NFT: Not F***ing Thinking (Score:3)

    by He Who Has No Name ( 768306 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @06:11PM (#62381569)

    I've laughed myself hoarse talking to NFTbros when they try and legitimize their cult.

    "It's proof of ownership!"

    Okay, so you have ownership of an image. Actually, the legal ownership and a link to an image. Whatever. It's yours. Is it inherently scarce? Are you the only one with it?

    "No, it's -"

    So no. Anybody can get an exact perfect copy of it and make more exact perfect copies. Is it an inherently useful commodity? Can I eat it or turn it into energy?

    "You're missing the point, I have ownership of it and that means -"

    It means you technically own something that is neither scarce nor inherently useful as a commodity.

    "It's just like art sales, those have value and -"

    Because there's a limited number of originals that can't be perfectly duplicated.

    "THE VALUE IS THE HAAAASH, BRO"

    Your hash has no value. Bitcoin has exchange value because I can't right-click-save-as somebody's Bitcoin and copy it to my memes folder ten times. Oil and wheat have value because they are useful and demand exceeds supply. A Picasso is valuable because there is exactly one and everybody else can only have lesser copies. All of those have scarcity or inherent commodity value, usually both. Your haaaash has neither. You have ownership of something that anybody can get an exact duplicate of and make more exact duplicates of. Your NFT is literally worth less than an inflationary coin like Dogecoin because even those have velocity limits on their inflation.

    "But bro-"

    Enjoy your monkey fetish.

    • The January 31 PvP Online comic [pvponline.com] sums it up pretty well, to my mind.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by J-1000 ( 869558 )

      Whatever. It's yours. Is it inherently scarce? Are you the only one with it?

      Full disclosure: I think NFTs are pretty silly, but the answer to this question is *yes*. But the thing is, you need to define "it". If by "it" you mean the pixels that make up an image, no. But if you mean a digital certificate issued by a "reputable" source (which is what an NFT is), then yes.

      I liken it to copyrights. There's no tangible item to claim ownership of, it's all intellectual. And it's certified by the U.S. Copyright Office. The degree of ownership is only as good as the respect shown to the of

    • I've laughed myself hoarse talking to NFTbros when they try and legitimize their cult.

      It could be worse. They could try to convince you that crypto can lead society to a better world...

      Problem is, crypto can lead us to a place we don't want to go. This technology has the potential to change the old Roman law on which the legality of our Western societies is based, and replace it with code. Basically swapping lawyers and legislators for programmers and smart contracts, erasing the use cases from centuries of debugging legal problems and starting from scratch.

      In other words, the new foundatio

  • 'The Goal Of Crypto Is Not To Play Games With Million Dollar Pictures Of Monkeys'

    and yet, here we are

  • Today I plotted a route to a store on Google maps. Google maps made sure to show me there was a Crypto ATM along my route.

  • Just asking on behalf of a friend.

  • I think it went wrong much earlier. The purpose of video cards were to play video games.

  • Rule #1 (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )

    Rule #1 of capitalism: If it can be exploited for financial gain, it will.

    Lots of us techies don't understand that when we're in idealism mode.
     

  • Hopelessly naive Tech inventor/investor of disruptive tech complains that their ideas are being 'used wrong'.

    News at 11.

  • The Ethereum founders premined 61.000.000 eth for themselves, early contributors and the ethereum foundation.That's about 272.000.000.000 USD worth (at nov 2021 values).

    Bored Apes are peanuts compared to that.

    Bitcoin has no such questionable legacy. Everybody had the chance to mine when it came out. No-one got early access.

    • Life's not fair, bro, and I feel for you. I imagine it's rough going through life as a baby-dicked crybaby douchebag.

  • Opinion (Score:3)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @10:39AM (#62383121)

    The goal of Ethereum should be to drive consumption of that blockchain as a platform for other services in a service agnostic way. If people want to use it to claim ownership of monkey pics, so be it.

    That's an easy point to miss about Ethereum. It is 1% a cryptocurrency and 99% a platform for public blockchain contract execution.

  • Why does crypto need a goal?

    Does life have a goal?

    According to who ?

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