Madonna has aped in. The Material Girl announced on Thursday (March 24) that she is now the proud owner of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT — Bored Ape No. 4988, to be specific.
“I finally entered the MetaVerse…,………..My very own Ape! What should I name her ? … We all need protection from Evil Eye,” the pop superstar captioned an image of her Ape on Instagram. Her BAYC ape features the sleeveless logo T-shirt, S&M hat and eyes on its magenta body, and per Madonna, was acquired with the help of crypto startup MoonPay.
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According to OpenSea — a popular NFT marketplace — Ape No. 4988 was purchased by MoonPay on March 14. The price? A whopping 180 ETH, which converts to about $560,000 at press time.
Like many Bored Ape holders, the seven-time Grammy winner is now using her Ape as her Twitter profile picture.
Madonna’s got another tie to the BAYC beyond owning one of the characters. Her manager, Guy Oseary, also represents Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which was recently valued at an astounding $4 billion. The BAYC is one of the most successful NFT projects to date. It launched April 29, 2021, at .08 ETH (about $250 today) and sold out two days later. The current floor price, per OpenSea? 103 ETH — or $322,100.
More and more celebrities have been hopping on the NFT bandwagon as of late, with BAYC being a popular choice. In November, Post Malone spent more than $700,000 on Bored Apes Nos. 9039 and 961. Marshmello, Steve Aoki, The Chainsmokers, Lil Baby, Timbaland and many others are also among BAYC collectors. Timba has also created a BAYC metaverse entertainment brand called Ape-In Productions, which will use Bored Apes to perform music and sell items as NFTs.
NFT enthusiast Snoop Dogg bought Death Row Records — his former label — in February and announced shortly after that it would be an NFT label. “We will be putting out artists through the metaverse,” said the rapper during a Clubhouse chat. “Just like [Death Row] broke the industry when we was the first independent to be major, I want to be the first major in the metaverse.”
See Madonna’s Bored Ape announcement below: