THE APES OF WRATH

NFTS LIKE BORED APES WERE SUPPOSED ΤΟ BE A FAST TRACK TO BILLIONS. THEIR RAPID DECLINE SAYS A LOT ABOUT CRYPTO, CELEBRITY, AND ART IN THE HYPE ERA

- NATE FREEMAN

IN SEPTEMBER Sotheby’s offered up for auction a cache of 101 Bored Ape NFTs as a lot in a special sale called Ape In! The digital art revolution had seemingly remade the art market in the months prior, and this was the finest collection of non-fungible tokens ever assembled by one of the world’s oldest auction houses, founded in 1744. Scrolling through the catalog of cartoon monkeys in funny hats and jackets, one could see a rare Bored Ape with solid gold fur and holographic eyes, and, rarer yet, an Ape with an unshaven face eating a piece of pizza. For digital art enthusiasts who aspired to membership in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, this was a huge deal.

The house was confident that Ape In! could ride the NFT momentum that had been building since the previous spring, when Everydays, a work by the digital artist Beeple, sold at Christie’s for $69 million—and the house could peddle these online pictures of weird primates for a similar sum. A promotional video showed the cartoon monkeys in DJ booths spinning EDM at a party in what appeared to be Sotheby’s global headquarters on York Avenue in Manhattan. Young and ambitious specialists in the house’s digital art department, a brand-new endeavor, bullishly offered the lot at an estimate of somewhere between $12 million and $18 million.

Instead, the lot sold for $24.4 million, smashing records for Bored Apes. What newly minted patron of the digital arts snagged this for eight figures? At the time, Sotheby’s wouldn’t comment on the buyer apart from saying that among those heavily involved in the bidding were legacy art collectors.