Having fully lost himself in the music/moment, Eminem is the latest to invest in the popular NFT (non-fungible token) project called the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) — a collection of 10,000 unique digital collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain, minted by four anonymous 30-somethings operating under the name Yuga Labs.
The rapper reportedly dropped a cool $450,000 USD on an ape artwork that resembles his likeness, which he's now using as his Twitter profile picture.
According to Decrypt, it's one of at least 15 NFTs that Eminem appears to have purchased on the OpenSea marketplace under the username Shady_Holdings. (Will the real one please log in?)
The ape in question was sold by BAYC member Gee_Gazza, who apparently had been manifesting the transaction, which was facilitated by digital agency Six, for at least a couple of months.
"I still think @Eminem is destined to buy my @BoredApeYC one day," they tweeted back in November.
The rapper reportedly dropped a cool $450,000 USD on an ape artwork that resembles his likeness, which he's now using as his Twitter profile picture.
According to Decrypt, it's one of at least 15 NFTs that Eminem appears to have purchased on the OpenSea marketplace under the username Shady_Holdings. (Will the real one please log in?)
The ape in question was sold by BAYC member Gee_Gazza, who apparently had been manifesting the transaction, which was facilitated by digital agency Six, for at least a couple of months.
"I still think @Eminem is destined to buy my @BoredApeYC one day," they tweeted back in November.
And purchase the blinged-out ape he did! Eminem now joins the ranks of Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon and Steph Curry as a member of OpenSea's second-largest NFT project by volume. Since its launch in April 2021, the oft-memed BAYC has traded $977.6 million USD in secondary sales [via CryptoSlam].
That's a lot of non-money money. The NFT obsession continues to swallow the music industry whole, with many arguments being made both for and against the value of cryptocurrency in art, as well as concerns about the troubling energy consumption of the trade.
Brian Eno recently called NFTs an opportunity for artists to "become little capitalist assholes as well." Meanwhile, Arcade Fire performed at a Las Vegas Crypto Gala and Live Nation is planning to digitalize ticket stub collections as NFTs.
See Slim Shady's crypto profile pic in action below.
Last fall, Eminem was announced as one of the Super Bowl LVI Halftime performers ahead of an NFL player vomiting after eating at Mom's Spaghetti, the "Lose Yourself" lyric-inspired Detroit restaurant the rapper launched in September.