Madonna ‘Hellbent’ on buying $1.3m Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT – now deemed ‘too expensive’

Madonna is upset with a certain rainbow-toothed monkey.

Bored Ape #3756 is currently listed on OpenSea for an eye-watering 800.69 ETH, roughly $1.27 million. The superstar told Variety she has dreaded it Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, who has “trippy” fur, an “S&M” hat, a motorcycle jacket and rainbow teeth.

“I was set on getting an Ape and very specific about what I wanted: the Ape with a leather motorcycle cap and multi-colored teeth,” Madonna said. “I was told it was inspired by me, and modeled after me, and it was bought by a woman who is a fan of mine. She was going to sell it to me, but it was far too expensive.”

NFTs are unique blockchain tokens signifying ownership over an asset – in this case over a 2D image of a monkey, which comes with other membership benefits such as merchandise, special Discord access, and event access.

When asked if Ape #3756 or its features were inspired by the singer, the BAYC creators Yuga Labs told Decrypt via email that Apes “is not necessarily designed or modeled after anyone in particular.”

“The Yuga Labs team loves it when people see themselves in certain monkeys. The S&M hat is one of the founders’ favorite features in the collection, they love all things punk rock. Madonna helped popularize that style, which the founders are a fan of, a Yuga Labs representative said Decrypt.

Madonna – whose net worth is $575 million and has taken in $1.2 billion during her prolific career, as of Forbes estimates— ended up getting Bored Ape #4988 instead through MoonPay. The crypto payment company handed over 180 ETH ($466,000) for NFT back in March and transferred it to Madonna’s wallet.

But #4988 is not a bad consolation prize. Like Ape #3756, Ape Madonna also owns the black S&M hat and psychedelic fur. But according to Rarity Sniper data, it is significantly less rare – the NFT she wants is ranked 123rd, while the one she owns is ranked 3,754 out of the 10,000 NFTs in the collection.

In NFT collections, rarity is determined by the number of times a particular trait appears on an asset. The fewer times a trait appears in the entire collection, the rarer the NFT. So a rarity score is a cumulative rating based on the respective rarity of each of the properties on a single asset compared to the rest of the collection.

And Madonna has set her sights on more than just Bored Apes. The singer has two World of Women NFTs, bought for about $13,000 each. She also minted an Otherdeed (Yuga Labs’ NFTs that grant scholarship holders land in the upcoming The other side metaverse games).

Madonna also became an NFT creator herself, and worked with Beep for a year to develop a series of very NSFW, philosophical Ethereum NFTs called “Mother of Creation”, video renderings of a very naked Madonna in various sci-fi settings.

The three NFTs sold for 170.5 ETH, 66.55 ETH and 72.05 ETH each back in May, with the proceeds going to charity.