MoonPay Buys Bored Ape #1837 For $1.5 Million for Mysterious User

Credit: Reuters / Bored Ape Yacht Club

MoonPay, an NFT concierge service, spent 569 ETH on Bored Ape #1837. In U.S. dollar terms, the new owner of this elite gold fur BAYC NFT spent $1.49 million. 

According to OpenSea’s transaction data, the sale of Bored Ape #1837 closed on February 25th at 3:04 AM. Chain Protocol’s CEO Deepak Thapliyal was the previous owner of this “eye-popping” ape. “0xDeepak” is the name of Thapliyal’s official OpenSea account.

On Twitter, Deepak Thapliyal said he expected to bring in at least 690.42 ETH for Bored Ape #1837. He also claimed that Elon Musk used the fiat-to-crypto service MoonPay to purchase Bored Ape #1837. 0xDeepak sent Bored Ape #1837 to the OpenSea address “moonpay-eth,” which is widely assumed to be MoonPay’s OS account. 

Tesla’s CEO has yet to claim any involvement in this recent BAYC transfer. If Elon Musk did buy Bored Ape #1837, it would mark a significant change of heart to the NFT industry. Recently, Elon Musk has poked fun at the NFT craze on his Twitter feed. 

About two months ago, 0xDeepak bought Bored Ape #1837 from Pranksy on OpenSea for 420.69 ETH. At that time, Ethereum was trading for about $3,151 per Ether, which translates to a price of $1.33 million. Therefore, 0xDeepak gained about $160,000 at the time of MoonPay’s purchase.  

News of Bored Ape #1837’s sale comes almost two weeks after Thapliyal announced a historic CryptoPunk purchase. As Rarity Sniper recently reported, Thapliyal spent $23 million for Alien CryptoPunk #5822 on February 12th. Thapliyal also has plenty of other Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, and Doodles in his ever-growing NFT portfolio. 

Why Is Bored Ape #1837 So Valuable?

As mentioned above, Bored Ape #1837 has gold fur. Although Bored Ape #1837 has many other noteworthy features, it’s the gold fur that set him apart from most of the apes in the BAYC collection.

According to Rarity Sniper’s data, only 46 of the 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs have solid gold fur. Of all possible fur types, gold is the rarest. 

Bored Ape #1837 also has a black wool turtleneck. Just 2.4% of all Bored Apes are wearing this fashionable sweatshirt. 

Two other traits that make Bored Ape #1837 special include his “short mohawk” hairdo and “crazy” eyeballs. These traits are only in 3.18% and 4.07% of Bored Apes, respectively. 
Compared with other gold fur Apes, Bored Ape #1837’s $1.49 million sale is comparatively “cheap.” For instance, Bored Ape #8817 recently sold for $3.3 million on Sotheby’s metaverse auction house.