Many celebrities promoting NFTs, like Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon, are either represented by, or have links to, OpenSea investor Creative Artists Agency
Where do celebrities even hear about “bored apes”? Who is recommending that they buy one? Is this really the best thing any of them can think to do with their money and fame?
Read MaxMax Read
Context & Ripple Effects
Read Max's reporting connects two dots the celebrity-NFT boom kept separate: Creative Artists Agency is an investor in OpenSea, and the stars most visibly promoting NFTs — Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon — are CAA-represented or CAA-linked. That reframes the late-2021 ape-buying spree documented in the earlier history of the NFT and cryptoart boom as something closer to a managed pipeline than organic celebrity enthusiasm.
The disclosure lands amid a broader unraveling of that pipeline: sources later reported MoonPay gifted celebrities BAYC NFTs at the height of the craze (which MoonPay disputes), and after the market crashed, Madonna, Kim Kardashian, and Tom Brady were among the promoters embroiled in legal difficulties over crypto endorsements. CAA's dual role — talent representative and marketplace shareholder — sits at the center of questions about who actually benefits when a famous face shills an ape.
First-order effects
CAA's OpenSea stake means every NFT promotion by its represented clients doubles as marketing for an asset the agency itself holds — a conflict of interest now visible to the public and to regulators scrutinizing undisclosed endorsements.
Second-order effects
With MoonPay's alleged gifting and CAA's investment both surfacing, other platforms and agencies face pressure to disclose how celebrity promotions are sourced and compensated, and celebrities' handlers become liable parties rather than neutral intermediaries.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, celebrity crypto promotion consolidates into disclosed, regulated endorsement deals — the same legal exposure that caught Madonna and Kardashian after the crash makes informal 'I just bought one' enthusiasm untenable for talent and their agencies.
The trend: Celebrity crypto endorsement is shifting from organic-seeming enthusiasm toward a disclosed, legally exposed industry where agencies and platforms with financial stakes are accountable for the hype.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest NFT group (the ones Paris Hilton and Gwyneth Paltrow own). Reported the company is raising money at a $5B valuation. But the founders are all pseudonymous. Which is, confusing. My story: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
I mentioned the whole way that the Jimmy Fallon/Paris Hilton strangely-stilted conversation regarding NFTs was likely part of a larger promotion plan and part of being a celebrity is being told to say weird stuff due to contracts. Someone did the digging https://maxread.substack.…
Celebrity NFT pumps always seemed gauche and stupid. After reading @readmaxread, they seem a little sinister as well. https://maxread.substack.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Here's a nice simple reminder of why people are so upset that the identities of about-to-be-billionaire founders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club were exposed https://twitter.com/...
Misinfo was a missed opportunity to study how consensus emerges online, and how attention and influence work in those spaces. Some of the most interesting stuff going on right now is at the intersection of finance and influence when it comes to researching society and the web. ht…
“Jimmy Fallon is represented by CAA, which is an investor in the NFT marketplace OpenSea, and which recently signed a deal to represent the NFT collector 0xb1, who owns NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club and World of Women?” https://maxread.substack.com/ ...
web3 seems intent on revealing is the extent to which the boundaries between concepts like “Ponzi scam,” “pyramid scheme,” ... and “just regular old financial capitalism working as intended” are not really as clear as we might like or hope. https://maxread.substack.com/ ...
and here's more on something i mentioned during last week's Scam Economy livestream: celebrities that are pushing NFTs just happen to all be repp'd by the same agency who also happens to have invested in an NFT platform https://twitter.com/...
NFT hype is manufactured just for a bunch of circlejerking dipshit celebrities to balloon their own wealth off the backs of gullible people everything about this shit is so sickeningly idiotic https://twitter.com/...
Now it all makes sense. All these celebrities hawking NFTs are either represented by, or connected to Creative Artists Agency (CAA) - which just so happens to be an investor in OpenSea - which sells NFTs. Fancy that! https://twitter.com/...
I don't think this will surprise anyone. If you look at the board composition of most multilevel marketing companies they're full of these kind of people. When bringing more and more suckers in is the game, celebrity advisors are the means. https://maxread.substack.com/ ...
the skeleton key of why many celebs (ashton kutcher, reese witherspoon, paris hilton) are talking in a weird robotic way about NFTs seems to be that they are connected to Creative Artists Agency, which is an investor in an NFT marketplace https://maxread.substack.com/ ...
As @readmaxread notes, Creative Artists Agency is the center of the “celebrity NFT complex” and they don't seem to realize that it's actually kind of a stupid as shit idea to have super famous people shill NFTs because all the transactions are public! https://maxread.substack.com…
“If you pay attention to both the Hollywood trades and the crypto press, and smoke enough weed, you can begin to pick out the contours of an expanding, interconnected, celebrity-based web3 financial-cultural complex.” https://maxread.substack.com/ ...
“Reese Witherspoon, for example, is a collector and promoter of the ‘World of Women’ NFT collection, which Gus Wenner's Rolling Stone tells me is 'cracking crypto's boys-cub image.'” https://maxread.substack.com/ ...
What's fun about crypto is that while it's extremely easy for someone to launder money, if you're a very public person like Justin Bieber, it's also extremely easy to watch someone launder money! https://twitter.com/...
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are collectively worth billions, but their founders were unknown. We found them, along with plenty of questions around Web3, anonymity and accountability. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
What's happening with Bored Ape Yacht Club is akin to a cultural phenomenon or a fashion brand. You can't extrapolate general NFT trends from it any more than you can predict the apparel industry from what happens with Gucci & Balenciaga. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...