Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow joined the Bored Ape Yacht Club Wednesday night with the purchase of Ape #6141. The celebrity tweeted out the purchase with an animated short of her Ape morphing into the blonde-haired, blue-eyed star:
The purchase came courtesy of NFT concierge service MoonPay.
Ape #6141 is ranked #5426 in the collection. It has blindfolded eyes, a horizontally-striped shirt, and a WWII pilot’s helmet donning its head. The pilot’s helmet is its rarest trait, with just 110 Apes in the 10,000 Ape collection wearing one.
The purchase marks a star-studded two months for the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Since December, several celebrities have joined the Club, including Neymar, Kevin Hart, and Paris Hilton. The BAYC also received prime-time coverage, with Hilton and Jimmy Fallon comparing and discussing their Apes earlier this week.
The Club has been popular most among rappers. Meek Mill, Lil Durk, Lil Baby, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg are all members. Rumors have it Eminem and Snoop Dogg will use their Bored Apes in the SuperBowl Halftime Show in February.
The turn from scrappy Yacht Club to celebrity must-purchase has solidified the Apes as status symbols. Some Ape holders like to state on Twitter, “Rolex makes a million watches per year. There only ever will be 10,000 Bored Apes.”
The floor price has risen in conjunction with this turn, flipping the fabled CryptoPunk collection in the process and currently sitting just shy of 100 ETH ($245,000). The Mutant Ape Yacht Club, a sister collection to BAYC, has also seen a rise in popularity, with its floor currently around $45,000.
But the rise in popularity of the collection has not been without its casualties. Recently, a rash of early BAYC holders has sold, saying other members have grown entitled and that the community lacks the spirit of the early BAYC days.
This selling has coincided with the launch of the Ox_Apes collection, which some BAYC members, former and present, consider a worthy tribute to the BAYC collection and have similar “early community” vibes.
With this run of celebrity BAYC purchases, it appears that the Club will only continue to grow in popularity. However, there is the question of whether it can retain the same spirit as the prices for Bored Apes reach into the hundreds of thousands.