Madonna Becomes the Latest Star to Join the Bored Ape Yacht Club

Key Insights:

• Madonna is the newest celeb to join the Bored Ape Yacht Club. 
• The firm behind the NFT collection has been in the news lately due to their recent announcement of creating an open Metaverse. 
• The firm’s new token, ApeCoin, saw instant popularity on release but is currently traded at $13.24. 

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), comprising celebrities and millionaires, almost looks like a star-studded film cast. The newest member to join the BAYC is popstar Madonna. 

Another Popstar Pepping BAYC

The 63-year old singer Madonna revealed in an Instagram post that she had acquired a Bored Ape non-fungible token (NFT) valued at more than half a million dollars.

On Thursday evening, the American singer-songwriter told her 17.8 million followers that she had ‘entered the metaverse’ by acquiring Bored Ape #4988, an animated monkey with funky fur and an ‘S&M hat.’

Madonna also thanked MoonPay, a financial technology company that builds payments infrastructure for crypto. The platform has been buying big-ticket NFTs on behalf of celebrities since late last year.  

OpenSea transaction records highlight that MoonPay acquired Madonna’s Bored Ape NFT for 180 ether which was around $564,000 last week. The platform later transferred the piece to a wallet presumably owned by Madonna two days ago.

Bored Ape NFTs have been making a lot of headlines lately. Another recent development that boosted the NFTs’ popularity was when rapper Snoop Dogg collaborated with Wiz Khalifa to create music NFTs inspired by Bored Ape. 

Reportedly, American rappers Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa released a set of music tracks as NFTs where ApeCoin (APE) and BAYC are the themes on Thursday. 

ApeCoin and Yuga Labs’ Metaverse

As reported by FXEmpire earlier, Yuga Labs, the firm behind Bored Ape Yacht NFT collection, secured a significant funding round led by the crypto industry’s most prominent venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz.

Yuga Labs aims to use the $450 million funding to create an open Metaverse called ‘Otherside.’

Last week, the company also launched a cryptocurrency called ApeCoin (APE), which garnered considerable social media attention. The token will be governed independently and used as the primary currency in Yuga Labs’ properties. 

At press time, ApeCoin traded at $13.24, noting a 6.14% drop in price over 24-hours. After the token’s launch, each BAYC holder was awarded 10,094 APEs ($128,000) for each NFT they held as a reward.