Justin Bieber Paid $1.3 Million for a Bored Ape NFT and It’s Now Worth roughly $69k

Pop star Justin Bieber purchased a Bored Ape NFT in January 2022 for $1.3 million. That same ape is now worth just $71,500 as digital collectibles take a hit from the decline in the crypto market.

Justin Bieber purchased his Bored Ape #3001 for 500 ETH at the beginning of the year. The value now is sitting at just 59.16 ETH, representing an 88% loss.

Similarly, the collection’s floor price has fallen to 58.2 ETH, according to data from NFT Price Floor.

Justin Bieber also holds non-fungible tokens from the CLONE X – X TAKASHI MURAKAMI, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, World of Women, and LIVES of LALISA collections.

Yuga Labs released the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection in a presale on Apr. 23, 2021, and soon became a celebrity status symbol.

According to Bloomberg, NFT sales sequentially fell two-thirds in the third quarter, as many holders dumped assets that they deemed had little prospective value. Those who held onto their tokens did so because of different potential use cases.

This phenomenon dovetails with a recent report by Activate Technologies suggesting that the NFT speculation phase is over and that web3 and blockchain will drive greater utility for the tokens in 2023.

But the buzz has faded amid the crypto bear market, and the price to join the exclusive club has been dropping lower and lower in recent weeks. And a “floor” Bored Ape, like the one that singer Justin Bieber spent $1.3 million worth of ETH to buy in January, now sells for a tiny fraction of that price point.

As of this writing, the floor price for the Bored Ape Yacht Club—that is, the price of the cheapest-available NFT listed on a marketplace—is about 58.2 ETH, per data from NFT Price Floor, or about $69,800. On Monday, the floor price dipped below $60,000 for the second time this month, but it ticked back upwards throughout the day on Tuesday.

It’s been a rough November for the Bored Apes, as the floor price in USD has fallen 33% since the start of the month. Last week’s collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX had an apparent impact on the NFT market, driving down crypto prices and impacting NFT valuations as well, but other notable projects aren’t taking as hard of hits as the Apes.

CryptoPunks, another “blue chip” NFT project owned by Yuga Labs, has seen its floor price drop by 23% this month to about $79,800 (66.5 ETH) in November. Its price in ETH today is nearly identical to what it was on November 1; what’s changed is the USD value of ETH. The Bored Ape floor, on the other hand, has dropped from 66.6 ETH to 58.2 ETH, and fell as low as 48 ETH on Tuesday morning.

But the crypto crash led to rapidly diminishing speculative frenzy around NFTs, and that has driven Bored Ape prices down significantly over the past six months. The entry price for a Bored Ape today is about 84% less than it was at the April peak, as measured in USD.

An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership in an item, including unique profile pictures (PFPs) like the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The project’s 10,000 NFT avatars grant users access to a private community and events, as well as exclusive merchandise, potential future NFT and token drops, and the ability to commercialize their owned NFT artwork.

Amid the decline, we’ve seen no major recent examples of celebrities flooding into the project, following a barrage of buys in late 2021 and early 2022 that brought folks like Jimmy Fallon, Steph Curry, Madonna, Eminem, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Snoop Dogg into the club.

The price drop has also made some of the seven-figure Bored Ape purchases stand out even more in hindsight. One notable example is musician Justin Bieber’s January purchase of an Ape for $1.3 million (500 ETH)—a pickup that was deemed questionable at the time by crypto influencers who said that he overpaid for an Ape with very common traits.

It’s ranked the 9,810th most rare Bored Ape based on its traits and features, per Rarity Tools, meaning it’d probably sell for floor price if not tied to a world-famous celebrity.

A similar Ape might sell for nearly one-ninth of that price in ETH today, or almost 1/19th of the price in USD. Bieber’s purchase may have marked the top of the celebrity Bored Ape boom, even as holders like Eminem and Snoop Dogg have continued to use their Apes prominently since.

The falling prices appear to be juicing sales, however: some $6.5 million worth of Apes were sold Tuesday, per data from CryptoSlam—a 135% increase from the previous day’s sales.