A look at the art world's deal-with-the-devil approach to the NFT market, after allegations that FTX bought the $24.4M trove of 107 Bored Apes NFTs at Sotheby's
Nate Freeman / Vanity Fair : Tweets: @ryder_ripps , @vanityfair , and @agreenberg Tweets: Ryder Ripps / @ryder_ripps : “Ultimately, it alleges that the rise of the planet of the Bored Apes was nothing more than a scheme to make the monkeys look like assets that celebrities and art dealers were spending millions to obtain.” -Nate Freiman, for @VanityFair https://www.vanityfair.com/... @vanityfair : For greater insight into how the prices of certain NFTs rose, there's an explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court featuring a grab bag of stars: Diplo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg, and more. https://vntyfr.com/8F4cKtD @agreenberg : This a good summary of the bubble & terrible things that happened in crypto/web3/NFTs. But it omits so many of the wonderful parts. Where's @artblocks_io @XCOPYART @fewocious @FLAMINGODAO @brtmoments @ArtBasel @GrantYun2 @dianasinclair @DrifterShoots @nounsdao @proof_xyz etc? https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Vanity Fair's Nate Freeman frames the first wave of NFT cases reaching federal dockets through a new allegation: that FTX bought a $24.4M trove of 107 Bored Apes at Sotheby's, a purchase the lawsuit reads as part of a scheme to make the monkeys look like assets celebrities and dealers were genuinely competing for. The suit names Diplo, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Snoop Dogg among the stars whose promotion propped up prices.
The allegation lands on an art world already entangled with crypto money: reporting had earlier tied celebrity NFT promoters like Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon to OpenSea investor Creative Artists Agency, and later sources described MoonPay gifting celebrities BAYC NFTs at the late-2021 peak — claims MoonPay disputes. Meanwhile the market itself had collapsed, with OpenSea volumes down 80% from February's $248M peak.
First-order effects
- The named celebrities — Diplo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg — now face federal-court scrutiny of their Bored Ape promotions, turning paid endorsements into potential legal exposure rather than mere marketing.
- Sotheby's role as the venue for the alleged $24.4M FTX purchase puts the auction house's vetting of crypto-era consignments under the same cloud as the buyers it hosted.
Second-order effects
- The MoonPay gifting reports, if they hold up against the company's full-price defense, give plaintiffs a documented mechanism for how celebrity 'demand' was manufactured — strengthening the case pattern across promoters and platforms alike.
- With OpenSea volumes already down 80% from the February peak, litigation risk adds a discount layer to blue-chip NFT pricing, hitting holders and marketplaces that built fee models on peak-era valuations.
Third-order effects
- If courts treat coordinated celebrity promotion plus institutional purchases as price manipulation, NFTs drift toward the securities-adjacent treatment early docket cases flagged, forcing marketplaces and auction houses to police provenance and promoter incentives like regulated venues.
- The art world's 'deal-with-the-devil' accommodation of crypto wealth — auction houses validating NFT prices with marquee sales — gives way to a legitimacy test where every headline sale must survive the question of who actually paid.
The trend: Celebrity-driven NFT valuation is being repriced from marketing story into legal liability, as courts and reporters unwind how blue-chip prices were made.