Justin Bieber's Bored Ape NFT sure looks like monkey business

At the height of crypto mania Justin Bieber reported bought a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for $1.3 million. Today that digital picture has lost about 95% of its value and is only worth a cool 69k. But that's not the strangest thing about the purchase...

Some very crafty internet sleuths spent a lot of time digging into Justin's "purchase" back in February and discovered his Bored Ape NFT was technically bought by a "global crowdsourced community" called the InBetweeners.

Nobody could really connect the dots of what was happening until Justin Bieber was named in a lawsuit against Yuba Labs, Bored Ape Yacht Club's parent company, in which investors are claiming that Yuba Labs paid celebrities like Bieber to make their endorsements and purchases of Bored Ape NFTs look organic. Do you see where this is going?

Turns out Bieber was probably "gifted" that very expensive Bored Ape NFT, which makes a lot of sense since no one in their right mind would actually pay millions for a digital picture of a somewhat bored-looking cartoon ape... But what's the story behind the purchase/ gift?

At the time of Bieber’s "purchase", Rug Radio cofounder and host Farokh Sarmad tweeted, "Who [the F] is advising Justin Bieber’s NFT purchases and how can I get in touch to sell them NFTs for 500 ETH?"

The massive drop in the value of Biebers NFT seems to have been related to the recent collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange. 

There has been a massive sell-off from major NFT 'investors' as they’ve panic-sold their assets in an attempt to recoup some of their losses, and Bieber wasn’t the only celebrity affected.

Brazillian football star Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior was caught up in the digital gold rush back in January as well, and he spent over one million dollars on two Bored Ape NFTs for his digital art collection. 

Unfortunately, the value of Neymar’s NFTs has dropped significantly since their purchase as well, and the football phenomenon is looking at a loss of around $700,000 according to Zi Wang from Executive Standard. 

Famous rap god, and all-around good choice maker, Marshel Mathers III (a.k.a. Eminem) purchased his Bored Ape for around $462,000, which has only lost about $300,000 since January. 

Other celebrity investors who bet big on Bored Ape NFTs include Logan Paul, Steve Aoki, Shaquille O'Neal, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Curry, Mark Cuban, and Madonna—though their losses can only be speculated about at this time and it seems several of them have also been named in the lawsuit against Yuba Labs, the biggest being Jimmy Fallon as well as his production company. 

All of these losses and apparent corruption have left fans wondering just how Justin Bieber and so many other celebrities got caught up in the NFT craze. Was it all just a big scam? 

“The common thought is that the specific traits spoke to him” a crypto expert known as Punk9059 told Artnet News about Bieber's purchase, “He had released a song about being sad at the time.” 

But some people had a different theory as to why so many celebrities like Justin Bieber were buying Bored Ape NFTs at the same time, and their theory has a lot to do with money…

Some sleuth-y users on Reddit's largest entertainment subreddit suggested that the NFT purchases were initially part of a larger publicity campaign being run by the owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club, and it turns out they were probably right.

“Justin probably was given it in exchange for publicity by the bored ape guys,” said user ttylyl, setting off a long debate on which celebrities were possibly involved.

“Pretty sure Steph Curry did too.” commented user ValjeanLucPicard, “If I remember right, he paid for it with whatever token or coin that the site had as their own payment method. I definitely agree they were most likely gifted an amount of site currency to pay for it, as a way to show celebrity interaction with their product.”

As with most things crypto, it looks like Bored Ape Yacht CLubs NFTs were probably just one big scam with celebrities like Bieber being paid off for their endorsements. We'll have to wait for the lawsuit against Yuba Labs to unfold before we can learn the full story about how deep the scam ran...