Jimmy Fallon: From Madonna to Gwyneth Paltrow: The celebrities join the NFT crypto craze | Culture

by James · October 10, 2022

Of all the questions one could ask Madonna, her thoughts on NFT artwork BAYC #3756 are not the first to come to mind. But that’s exactly it Variety magazine did during an interview with the American pop star in July. Madonna is the latest celebrity to jump on the NFT bandwagon. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique digital images recorded on a blockchain, certifying ownership. These virtual drawings usually belong to collections with a common aesthetic, such as trading cards. And they are very, very expensive. A picture from the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), one of the most popular NFT collections, can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are so exclusive that even Madonna missed out on buying BAYC #3756.

“I was so pissed off that I didn’t get the one I wanted,” she shared Variety. “Once I get my mind around something, that’s what I’m going to have. But I quickly learned that having 32 musicians on stage in a small theater is not the same as having a monkey with a leather motorcycle cap and multicolored teeth.”

For some time now, celebrities have been working hard to promote their NFTs. This could involve discussing the digital artwork in interviews, using the image as their social media profile picture or even – in the case of Snoop Dogg and Eminem’s recent collaboration – showcasing them in music videos. In the video for their song From D 2 The LBC, the rappers appear as the two BAYC characters they had purchased. They even performed at the 2022 MTV Awards as digital avatars.

Such actions all come down to money, according to Andrés Guadamuz, an NFT expert from Sussex University. “The goal is to generate FOMO [fear of missing out] and otherwise raise the price of NFTs,” he explains via e-mail. The price of NFTs is highly variable and largely depends on how popular the image in question is. So when celebrities show off their NFTs, they can increase the value of the specific image they own, as well as the entire collection it belongs to: in other words, it’s product placement.

At the end of 2021, the market for cryptoassets (which includes NFTs and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) was at its peak. But it was not yet mainstream – ordinary people did not buy NFTs. That’s when actor Matt Damon started promoting the crypto market for the digital investment platform Crypto.com. Dozens of other celebrities began dropping mentions of NFTs and cryptocurrency in interviews. The idea was to normalize it and encourage the fans to invest.

Celebrities who have jumped on the NFT craze: (l-r) Madonna, Paris Hilton, Eminem and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Last January, Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow changed her profile picture to her BAYC avatar. A month later she changed it to a NFT from the FlowerGirls collection. And 30 days later, she replaced it with another one from the WoWGalaxy collection. Meanwhile, singer Jason Derulo not only changed his profile picture to an NFT from the CryptoPunks collection, he also lectures on how to invest in the market on crypto site Discord. Other musicians such as John Legend, Steve Aoki and the band Kings of Leon have even decided to release their own NFT compilations.

But perhaps the worst example of shameless advertising was an interview between presenter Jimmy Fallon and heiress Paris Hilton on The Tonight Show. During the interview, Fallon and Hilton showed photos of the BAYC artwork they had purchased and discussed the digital monkeys at length. “I love the red heart sunglasses. I love the captain’s hat,” Hilton said of Fallon’s NFT. “They look like they could be friends,” Fallon added, holding up photos of the NFTs side by side. While the awkwardness of the moment was bottled up with canned laughter, the interview was attacked by the media the next day. “Why were these celebrities talking about crypto on late night?” asked the magazine Polygon.

“The answer is money,” says Guadamuz. “There are a number of venture capital funds that have invested heavily in NFTs.” Of all these funds, one stands out: Horowitz. This Silicon Valley venture capital firm played a leading role in the early days of the Internet. And now it is the world’s largest crypto investor.

“Horowitz has connections with several Hollywood talent agencies, and they have apparently purchased NFTs for clients as part of their promotional packages,” says Guadamuz. “Yuga Labs [the company that created the BAYC] are among those who have received the most money from these funds, he adds. That would explain why Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, Neymar, Paris Hilton, Timbaland, Ellen DeGeneres and Steve Aoki have an NFT of a monkey. And why don’t they stop talking about it.