- NFL quarterback Tom Brady has lost tens of thousands of dollars on his Bored Ape NFT.
- He paid 133 ether ($430,000) for it in April, which is $235,436 right now. Its best offer is $136,034.
- Celebrities have famously hyped up NFTs to the masses, who stand to lose more amid the crypto winter.
It appears that NFL quarterback legend Tom Brady has taken a bit of an L on one of his recent investments.
The 45-year-old purchased an NFT from the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection in April for 133 ether, which amounted to around $430,000 at the time.
But its value has plummeted in the four months since — 133 ether is now worth $235,436, and the best offer his NFT, #3667, has is 77 ether, or $136,034.31, meaning its worth has dropped by 68%.
It's a stark dip that has coincided with a broader slump in the world of crypto and all things decentralized finance. Bitcoin's price has dipped considerably — dragging other coins, like ether, down with it. Trust in the ecosystem has fallen, and users are less likely to invest in such risky assets right now due to rises in inflation and federal interest rates.
Bitcoin was at an all-time high of $68,000 in November and is around $23,000 this month, for example, while ether sat at $4,800 in late 2021 and is now trading at about $1,700.
Though luckily for Brady, he has plenty of cash to spare — the NFL great penned a post-retirement, 10-year, $375 million broadcasting contract with Fox in May. He also launched an NFT company called Autograph in 2021 that will sell digital collectibles from celebrities and sports icons.
Brady is one of many crypto-curious, multimillionaire celebrities that have dived into the Web3 space face first in the past year, endorsing exchanges and NFT projects and likening investing in crypto to exploring outer space.
But the crypto winter that began creeping in last November has wiped out much of the market, which in June fell below the $1 trillion mark for the first time since February 2021.
The NFT market specifically has seen daily sales decline from 225,000 in September 2021 to about 19,000 as of early May, the Wall Street Journal reported.
And as Insider's Avery Hartmans has reported, it's the average retail investor — not the deep-pocketed celebrity sponsors — who feel the greatest effect from dwindled or lost holdings.
For example, if you had invested in bitcoin on the same day that actor Matt Damon's now-famous Crypto.com ad aired on October 28, you would have seen over half of that investment wiped out by now.