The internet can't believe how much Steph Curry paid for this NFT
Steph Curry, one of the world's richest basketball players, has purchased an NFT — and the internet is in an uproar. Non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs, are a controversial topic all on their own, but a large-scale celebrity spending outrageous amounts of money on one of them is certainly worthy of a special mention. And when we say outrageous, we really do mean outrageous.
The famous basketball player has recently purchased an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The image features essentially what the name suggests — an ape that doesn't look the least bit amused. The ape has blue fur, yellow-green eyes, and is wearing a tweed suit with a polka-dotted cravat. As per the rule of non-fungible tokens, Steph Curry is now the sole owner of this Bored Ape. But the question is, how much did he pay for it?
The Ape was sold in August 2021 on OpenSea, an NFT marketplace. The details of the sale are public, so everyone can see that Curry paid 55 ETH (Ethereum) for the fancy-looking monkey. This means that Steph Curry spent around $180,000 (converted using USD/ETH prices in August, 2021) to become the sole owner of the #7990 NFT in the Bored Ape Yacht Club series.
A good investment or an expensive jpg?
Stephen Curry proudly presented his Bored Ape on Twitter by making it his profile picture — this is a common thing to do in the NFT community. While his profile is now back to normal, he remains the owner of this ultra-expensive non-fungible token. But if $180k sounds insane to you, your mind is about to be blown, because Curry's NFT is not the most expensive Ape out there.
As of the publishing of this article in January of 2022, the highest recorded sale of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT on OpenSea was worth 769 ETH. At the time of the sale in September 2021, this amounted to over $2.3 million. Whether the Bored Ape art style satisfies one's personal sense of aesthetic or not, owning one has become a symbol of prestige in the NFT world.
CryptoPunks are a similar kind of NFT that have managed to reach insane numbers and is now a symbol more than a work of art—it's hard to find any trace of artistry in the pixelated images, but that doesn't prevent them from being sold for millions. In March 2021, a CryptoPunk sold for 4,200 ETH. By today's standards, that transaction was worth over $13 million. A CryptoPunk was one of the first three NFTs ever placed in a major auction with Sothebys.
It's clear that Steph Curry could have spent even more on his NFT, but the fact remains that he's now $180k short and is the owner of a highly sought-after non-fungible token represented by a jpg file. While it may seem ridiculous, it's possible that Curry made a good investment — the Bored Ape Yacht Club continues to go up in both price and popularity. However, the NFT market is highly volatile and unpredictable, so only time will tell whether Curry's Bored Ape will be worth the money.