What happened
Sunday wasn't exactly a day of rest or pleasure for Ethereum (ETH 0.45%) and ApeCoin (CRYPTO:APE). As of mid-afternoon, over the preceding 24 hours Ethereum dipped by almost 2% and ApeCoin suffered a much steeper fall at nearly 19%. Fresh comments from a big name in the crypto world were the root cause of the drops.
So what
On Friday, Time magazine published a profile of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, in which he delivered some choice quotes about the state of cryptocurrencies in general, and Ethereum specifically.
Image source: Getty Images.
In contrast to the usual optimistic pronouncements most corporate leaders make about their businesses and industries, though, Buterin waxed gloomy at times. "Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong," for example, was one of his pronouncements.
He also notably took a few swipes at the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the hot NFT gallery featuring thousands of pieces of original art depicting, yes, bored apes. In ways that are still not entirely clear, the recently launched ApeCoin appears connected to Yuga Labs, the company behind the Club.
In an article updated Sunday morning, cryptocurrency site Coinbase quoted a statement from Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz saying that her company intends to "adopt ApeCoin as the primary token for all new products and services."
Buterin clearly isn't a fan of the Apeverse. "The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and [crypto] becomes a different kind of gambling," he told Time.
And while discussing the beneficial uses for cryptocurrency to help alleviate the suffering in Ukraine, Buterin said that the situation "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."
Now what
ApeCoin was white-hot when it launched last week, zooming from $1 apiece to nearly $13. Buterin is the first high-profile crypto figure to criticize the Ape ecosystem since the token's debut; no wonder it dived after his comments were digested by investors.
