Why celebrities like Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon bought Bored Ape NFTs

Jimmy Fallon purchased an NFT officially, which he displayed on national television. On Monday night’s episode of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon shared their new Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs — or rather, the physical, printed out copies of them. Fallon’s is decked out in nautical gear, with a captain’s hat and striped shirt. Hilton’s has shaggier red fur and a black pair of shades. This segment was very awkward and only received a mediocre response from the audience. Mostly it felt bizarre compared to Fallon’s typical fare of promoting celebrity shows and movies, or doing silly games like karaoke. These celebrities were talking crypto late at night.

Hilton and Fallon seem strangely at odds to be chatting blockchain. But Hilton is in fact a great partner. It is really into NFTs. She’s the reason Fallon even knows what they are. “You taught me what’s up, and then I bought an ape,” Fallon said, as a kind of brag that read a little more like a mea culpa. And if you’ve taken a peek at Hilton’s social media lately, you’ll notice she’s increasingly styled herself as a crypto influencer-evangelist, as well as an early adopter of the metaverse trend (true Hilton devotees might recall that in 2021, she launched “Paris World” in Roblox). It Tonight Show episode capped off with Hilton announcing her own NFT collection, a collage of GIFs largely about her and her husband called “My Forever Fairytale.” Every audience member got one for free, and we can only assume they all thought it was CertainLive-audience is better than flatscreen TVs or any Ellen card.

The short segment is yet another mainstream recognition of non-fungible tokens by celebrities — and not just those involved heavily in tech. So, what’s going on here?

What exactly is an NFT (Network for the Future)?

An NFT, or non-fungible token, is just a token (sorry, that’s already in the name) that says you own a digital item. The key distinction is that it’s unique. This is what fungible means — though you’d be forgiven for thinking these NFTs are for non-mushrooms only. (Please laugh.) Each NFT can be tracked on the blockchain as an owner. Think of it like a Pokémon trading card. It will likely be duplicated, correct? However, each cardIt is technically distinct. Depending on the rarity or popularity of these cards, they can have different value. You can find out more information about NFTs and their effect on climate change here.

Hilton isn’t the only celebrity who’s making NFTs. Not at all. There’s Lindsay Lohan’s fursona — disliked by furries, apparently — and the perhaps less surprising “War Nymph” series from Grimes, in which winged babies wave swords. Though these examples are clearly priceless art, NFTs don’t all skyrocket in price or desirability. There are some communities in NFT trading that focus on a specific theme. They then attract special attention. This is similar to a collection of collectibles. Funko Pop.

Bored Ape Yacht Club, (BAYC), is one example. You may notice that the digital art here is not necessarily digital. It’s goodIt appears that the popularity or value of NFTs is not a factor. The BAYC collection consists of 10,000 unique, avatar-like digital illustrations of apes, depicted from the shoulders up — each with a different expression and wearing different clothes and accessories.

Recently, these apes have been everywhere. People seem to be going … [long-suffering pause]They are apeshit. BAYC’s brand recognition has resulted in a handful of important collaborations with Adidas. BAYC images can also be found on Twitter. This is because buyers often make these images their avatars. Or maybe you’ve noticed buyers getting roasted by people who joke that “stealing” one of these pieces is as easy as hitting right click/save as.

So, you’re saying I can steal Jimmy Fallon’s Bored Ape by downloading the JPEG?

Technically speaking, actually owning the NFT means owning the commercial rights to it, rather than just the JPEG, which … can be downloaded by anyone, any number of times? We’ll let you puzzle that out.

Celebrities are buying NFTs because they make them look good.

The short answer is: They can afford it. A certain type of buyer is attracted to scarcity, speculation and hype. A feedback loop can make the NFT attractive by enhancing the profile of the buyer or artist. Price increases can result. Steep. Rinse, repeat.

The longer answer is: NFTs have been deemed valuable and are now a status symbol. A Beeple NFT sold for $69 million at Christie’s, which the auction house said puts Beeple “among the top three most valuable living artists,” according to The Verge. Beeple is Mike Winkelmann’s real name. He has many reasons for being popular. He’s got roughly 2.5 million followers across social platforms, and is famous for creating and posting new art each day — the NFT is a compilation of 5,000 days of it. Then, what was the prize for this NFT winner? A digital file, and also, as The Verge put it, “some vague rights to present the image.” The buyer also won the ability to tell people they have a Beeple NFT. The person spending that amount on the item is most likely excited about owning something by this guy. Fun!

Some NFT collectors also think that these items will increase in value — a lot like priceless physical works of art. For a number of NFTs, they’ve been right, so far. Here’s an animated cube that originally listed for $500 but was last sold for $17,000.

And here’s where things get even hairier. What are the best ways to predict which NFTs would be wildly lucrative to resell. I don’t think any of us would have anticipated the popularity of Bored Ape NFTs — much less the current version of reality where a growing group of celebrities changed their social media images to ugly illustrations of primates. Deciding what NFT you want to purchase is a gamble. Making money means finding another person to sell it to. It’s a “bigger fool scam,” as Dan Olson puts it, in an episode of Folding Ideas. To actually make money, you always need someone to be the “bigger fool” in the chain of buyers, Olson explains, someone willing to pay increasingly large sums. (Some have made compelling arguments that NFTs are just a tech elite’s pyramid scheme.) If you’re buying as a “collector,” it’s that price tag that plays into the item’s value as a status symbol or a “flex.”

Foto by Noam Galai/Getty Images

Add in the fact that celebrities hold enough influence over popular culture to effectively impart value to NFTs — which don’t necessarily have intrinsic value — and it just feels skeezier and skeezier. With each additional Bored Ape purchase (or whichever NFT of the moment), celebrities further legitimize the brand, the idea that it’s appealing, and the notion that we should want to spend money on it. Celebrities are sharing the Bored Ape. endorsing other cryptocurrency brandsThis shared legitimacy is created by the purchase of rich, powerful individuals. Think about it that way, and Fallon and Hilton’s move to “share” their NFTs looks more like a naked promotion to inflate their value.

This is not a game for the poor; it’s a game that celebrities can play with as much as they might spend on a bag full of chips. Though the metaphor doesn’t VeryThe chips are delicious and easy to eat. It’s depressing to consider how easy it would be to lose a huge sum over an NFT purchase that never becomes popular enough for the money to be recouped.

So … why the apes?

Owning a Bored Ape is “cool” now. Mostly, it’s expensive! Each Bored Ape NFT sells for $190. 10,000 different versions might sound like a lot, but it’s a small enough number to still be considered limited-edition. By the time Fallon bought his BAYC NFT, it was roughly $216,000, the LA Times reported, in a piece that also notes the value might be even greater on resale given his “hyping it up on the show.” (Though, depending on your Fallon feelings, you could also argue his interest in BAYC will eventually ReduceThis is its worth. And he’s not the only one buying. Logan Paul bought one (which tracks), as has Eminem, Steve Aoki, Steph Curry, The Chainsmokers, Shaquille O’Neal, Gwyneth PaltrowParis Hilton is another example.

BAYC has other activities to entertain the lucky 10,000. They released a free-to-Bored-Ape-owners digital “serum” that turns their Bored Ape NFTs into “Mutant Ape” NFTs — essentially just modifying the art to make the primates look like ape-zombies — along with a “Kennel Club” line of dogs with traits based off of the original apes. As you can see, these NFTs have become very expensive to buy.

BAYC also likes to refer to themselves as a kind of “social club.” They’ve hosted meetups in California and New York — apparently 5,000 members literally ate bananas together in Manhattan. There’s also a private Discord, where the NFT owners can ostensibly gather and chat, giving it a different kind of exclusivity. This isn’t unique to BAYC — a number of these high profile NFT communities have them, including one called Pudgy Penguin. We don’t know if celebrities are participating, but I personally like to think about Shaq, Eminem, Paris Hilton, and now Jimmy Fallon, all sharing primate pics in there. It’s much nicer to imagine a world where these celebs are legitimately excited about their personal apes, as opposed to just pumping them for a future possible resale on a television show with a massive audience.