Bieber’s ape bet turns costly

Justin Bieber’s headline-grabbing purchase of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for about $1.3 million in January 2022 has become one of the clearest symbols of how sharply the NFT market has deflated, with comparable pricing for the collection now hovering around $11,000 to $12,000. The singer bought Bored Ape #3001 for 500 ether at a time when digital collectibles were commanding extraordinary sums, fuelled by celebrity endorsements, easy money and a broader speculative frenzy across crypto markets.

Bieber’s million-dollar ape now nears five figures

That change in value is not simply a story about one celebrity purchase gone wrong. It reflects the collapse of pricing across much of the NFT sector after its 2021-22 boom, when collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club were treated by some buyers as status symbols, investment vehicles and online membership badges all at once. At the height of the craze, Bored Apes were still selling for around $300,000 on average in early April 2022, according to Reuters, before average prices tumbled to roughly $110,000 by June that year.

Today, the numbers look starkly different. Current market data show the Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price at about 5.17 ETH, or roughly $11,024, while ether itself is trading a little above $2,100. That means a valuation near $12,000 is broadly in line with the cheapest entry point for the collection at present, though the exact worth of Bieber’s ape could differ depending on its specific traits and what a buyer is willing to pay. Even allowing for rarity premiums, the asset is worth only a fraction of its purchase price.

Market watchers say the shift was driven by several forces hitting at once. Central banks tightened financial conditions after the pandemic-era stimulus period, speculative appetite weakened, major crypto firms collapsed, and investors who once chased digital scarcity began to ask harder questions about utility, liquidity and long-term demand. The same forces that lifted NFTs quickly also exposed how dependent many collections were on hype, community sentiment and rising token prices rather than underlying cash flow or durable commercial use.

The Bieber trade has remained especially resonant because it captured the mood of the peak. Celebrity involvement helped turn Bored Ape Yacht Club into a cultural marker well beyond crypto-native circles, with high-profile holders using their apes as profile pictures and public proof of entry into an exclusive digital club. That visibility helped Yuga Labs, the creator of the collection, build a strong brand that later expanded into ApeCoin, spin-off collections and metaverse-style projects. Even now, the collection remains one of the best-known names in NFTs despite the deep fall in prices.

That brand strength, however, has not insulated the ecosystem from broader questions about the sector’s future. Yuga Labs has faced legal scrutiny and brand-related disputes, including a trademark fight that returned to the spotlight in 2025 when a US appeals court overturned an $8.8 million judgment previously awarded to the company and sent the case back for trial. While that ruling did not directly concern Bieber’s purchase, it underscored how the NFT business has shifted from exuberant expansion to a more contested phase focused on intellectual property, commercial rights and what exactly buyers own.

Industry data suggest the market has not disappeared, but it has changed shape. DappRadar said NFT trading volume in the first quarter of 2025 totalled $1.5 billion, down 24% from the previous quarter, while sales fell by 10%. Profile-picture collections such as Bored Apes still accounted for the biggest share of trading volume, but the market increasingly showed interest in gaming-linked assets and tokenised real-world items rather than purely collectible profile images. That marks a notable shift from the celebrity-driven picture-based mania that defined the period when Bieber made his purchase.

Scholars and analysts studying NFT pricing have also pointed to the powerful role of attention and online sentiment in shaping value. A 2026 academic paper examining major Ethereum NFT collections found that valuation was closely linked to sustained public attention and sentiment, reinforcing a point long suspected by traders: the market price of many high-profile NFTs was shaped as much by narrative as by scarcity. When attention faded, prices were left exposed.