Hall of Famer admits true feelings towards crypto creator

Vitalik Buterin’s latest Time magazine cover drew a lot of attention on Twitter, and the Ethereum co-founder was eventually linked to NFL player Tom Brady.

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, recently spoke with Time magazine about his top concerns about the cryptocurrency business. Buterin responded to tweets that linked his appearance to that of Tom Brady, the NFL player and inventor of the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Autograph, after the interview was published.

Buterin found the negative feedback amusing and even made collages of the “highly recommended” tweets. He admitted that he had no idea who Tom Brady was at first, mistaking him for actor Tom Cruise. That’s when Brady, who was well-versed in Buterin’s background, chimed in to express his admiration and thanks toward the ETH creator.

Brady referred to Buterin as the G.O.A.T., a word that refers to individuals who are the “Greatest Of All Time” in their area. It is frequently used in regard to Brady because he is the only NFL player to have won seven titles. Autograph “wouldn’t have been feasible” without Buterin, according to Brady. Autograph has completed a $170 million fundraising round. The cash would be used to scale the company’s NFT technology and expand its user base, according to company spokespeople at the time.

Time’s first-ever whole issue distributed as an NFT on the blockchain includes Buterin’s cover article. On Wednesday, the decentralized magazine edition will be accessible. The journal is accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, Dogecoin (DOGE), and other cryptocurrencies as payment for digital subscriptions as part of its push for Web3 initiatives. The company’s NFT arm, TIMEPieces, tweeted on Sunday that ApeCoin (APE), the governance and utility token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, will be added to its list of acceptable cryptocurrencies soon.

During the conversation, Buterin mentioned BAYC when publicly criticizing the industry’s penchant to publicly display wealth related to crypto and NFTs. “The danger is that you have these $3 million monkeys, and it turns into a different form of gambling,” he explained.

Despite his displeasure with celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon promoting their own Bored Apes or people “just buying yachts and Lambos,” Buterin did admit to “one silver lining.” The Russian-born Buterin wrote to Time that all of the recent blockchain-based efforts to aid the Russia–Ukraine crisis have served to remind the crypto community “that ultimately the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that help people.