Bill Gates Has Nothing Nice to Say About NFT Chimps

Billionaires: they really are just like us. They say stupid things on Twitter! They get kale stuck in their teeth! They are sick of those Bored Ape Yacht Club profile pictures!

Onstage at a conference on June 14, Bill Gates was prompted to again open up about the metaverse. This is the second time in recent memory that the world’s third (or fourth or second or fifth or whatever) richest man was publicly skeptical of the medium.

In fact, in a rare stopped clock moment, Gates poked fun at Bored Ape Yacht Club, those grimacing, bong-smoking monkeys that’ve become indicative of NFTs at large.

“Expensive digital images of monkeys are gonna improve the world immensely,” Gates said sarcastically. “That’s so incredible.”

It pains me to agree with the guy whose house is named “Xanadu 2.0” but here we are.

Gates also compared NFTs and crypto to greater fool theory, wherein new suckers have to be brought in to relieve the old suckers of their overvalued possessions in a race to the top (and then the bottom).

Sadly, the owners of those damn, dirty apes are presumably all prepping their fedoras and monocles for the NFT.NYC 2022 conference scheduled for June 20 so there weren’t much outrage about Gates’ statement on social media aside from a couple salty NFT chimp people (including someone who apparently thinks BAYC is intrinsically comparable to Gates’ DaVinci notebook [lol]).

If anything, Gates’ sentiment echoes the trending disparity between older investors and younger folks more bullish on Web3 at large.

Whereas wizened moneymen tend to be skeptical of new tech (or manipulative at best), new money is more keen to dive in, perhaps at the expense of the planet.