Mixed fortunes of celebrities who jumped on the NFT craze – Arts & Culture

Sports, movie, and music stars have flocked to the NFT marketplace to buy ape photos, endorse corporate partners, or even launch their own art collections.

Despite the cryptocurrency sector taking a downturn with sales and stocks falling and scams proliferating, celebrities continue to sign up for the so-called non-fungible token craze.

monkey gone

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is ground zero for NFT “collectibles.”

It features cartoon images replicated thousands of times with variations generated by algorithms.

The initial collection of 10,000 computer generated images has been followed by several other generations and many millions of fakes.

For fans, they are a status symbol, a key to an exclusive club where ordinary people can mingle with the famous and the rich.

Brazilian soccer player Neymar and tennis legend Serena Williams tweeted their ape images on the same day in January.

American talk show host Jimmy Fallon and socialite Paris Hilton showed off their apes on television.

Madonna stated on Instagram in March that she had “entered the MetaVerse” with the purchase of an ape, reportedly for more than $500,000.

She followed musicians like Justin Bieber, Eminem and Snoop Dogg, basketball luminaries Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry, and actors like Gwyneth Paltrow.

To critics of NFTs, these apes symbolize everything that is wrong with the crypto world: fundamentally worthless but selling for huge sums with valuations based on hype.

And ultimately, these celebrities do not own the images of the apes in any traditional sense: anyone can download and use the images.

What they own is essentially a digital receipt linked to the image.

But celebrity endorsement is vital.

The apes, along with cartoon collections like CryptoPunks, seem to be weathering the crisis better than other parts of the cryptocurrency sector.

solo missions

Celebrity NFT enthusiasts have delved much deeper into the industry than just buying ape images: many have created their own NFT collections, with mixed results.

American musician Grimes got in early and managed to pocket nearly $6 million for some fantasy-inspired art last year.

However, many of these NFTs are now nearly worthless, selling for fractions of their original prices, when sold.

Other collections have failed to even take off. Wrestler John Cena sold just a handful of NFTs from a collection he put together last year with WWE.

He admitted it was a “catastrophic failure.”

Skateboarder Tony Hawk has been more successful in sales, but at the cost of the admiration of some of his fans.

He announced on Twitter last year that he would be selling versions of his famous tricks as NFTs, prompting responses ranging from “Stop Tony” to “Tony, no, you don’t either.”

Hawk hasn’t mentioned the project on Twitter since then, though he has continued to trade NFTs.

Only business

One of the pillars of the celebrity-NFT relationship is old-fashioned brand endorsement.

This week, French megastar footballer Kylian Mbappe became the latest star to sign on as an “ambassador” and invest in French startup Sorare.

The firm runs a fantasy football game where players can purchase sports card-style NFTs.

Serena Williams, along with soccer players Gerard Piqué and Rio Ferdinand, have already bet on the game.

And not to be outdone, the world’s most famous footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, announced last week a partnership with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency firm.

The offerings will apparently include designs created in collaboration with Ronaldo, who said in a statement that he hoped to “deliver unprecedented experiences and access through this NFT platform.”