NFTs of cartoon apes sell for $24.4 million at Sotheby's auction

The NFT collection is called the Bored Apes Yacht Club.

Sareena Dayaram Senior Editor

Sareena is a senior editor for CNET covering the mobile beat including device reviews. She is a seasoned multimedia journalist with more than a decade's worth of experience producing stories for television and digital publications across Asia's financial capitals including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Mumbai. Prior to CNET, Sareena worked at CNN as a news writer and Reuters as a producer.

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Sareena Dayaram

Sept. 10, 2021 3:00 a.m. PT

There's no monkeying around as far as NFT art mania is concerned. Get this: A collection of 101 NFT apes sold for a total of $24.4 million at an online sale at Sotheby's on Thursday, the auction house said.

The collection of cartoon images is part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is a set of 10,000 computer-generated cartoon images of apes sporting a mix of clothing and facial expressions. The collection was created by a Delaware-based company known as Yuga Labs, which launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is stored on the Ethereum blockchain, on April 30.

The value of this sale is among the largest for NFTs. In March, a piece by the artist Beeple was auctioned off as an NFT at Christie's for $69.3 million.

#AuctionUpdate 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs just sold for $24.4 million and 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs achieved $1.8 million in our Ape in! auction - the most significant #BAYC sale to date. Congrats to all the apes out there 🐵🐶 pic.twitter.com/e7UghlgtKy
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) September 9, 2021

An NFT, which stands for nonfungible token, offers a blockchain-created certificate of authenticity for digital collectibles such as the Bored Ape pieces sold Thursday or for seemingly unassuming digital assets like tweets or memes. The frenzied interest has created a digital market that saw $250 million in sales in 2020, with NFTs reaching new levels of hype from Visa, Warner Music Group and Nike.