Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is not impressed with the obsession about wealth creation in the cryptocurrency community, taking to social media to say that coin and token founders should be focusing on trying to make the world a better place.

In a series of tweets on his Twitter account, timed to coincide with the combined value of all cryptocurrencies passing $500 billion for the first time, Buterin (pictured) wrote that “all crypto communities, Ethereum included, should heed these words of warning.” There is a “need to differentiate between getting hundreds of billions of dollars of digital paper wealth sloshing around and actually achieving something meaningful for society,” he added.

Amping up his rhetoric, Buterin went on to say that “if all that we accomplish is lambo memes and immature puns about ‘sharting,’ then I WILL leave.” Lambo memes are (usually) joke pictures describing, in this case, how much investors in a particular cryptocurrency will make, for example “Soon I will be able to buy a Lamborghini.” “Sharting,” a combination of the words shit and farting, is a joking play on the Ethereum blockchain process of “sharding,” a way for transactions to be validated by a subset of network nodes.

Buterin was not all negative, adding that “I still have a lot of hope that the community can steer in the right direction.”

Buterin’s threats to leave the community may sound glib but also has some level of precedent. Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, sold his holdings in the cryptocurrency Dec. 20 because of perceptions that he has a conflict of interest.

Buterin may have already started on the path to pulling out of Ethereum. Cryptocurrency Journal reported that he had transferred 30,000 ETH to Bitstamp, although the article speculates that there may have been a number of reasons behind the unexpected move. That said, Buterin still sits on more than $300 million in Ethereum, so he has a long way to go if he does indeed intend to quit the project and sell off all his holdings.

Photo: Vitalik Buterin