Justin Bieber’s million-dollar JPEG is now worth less than a used laptop. The pop star paid roughly 1.3 million USD for a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT at the height of the 2022 mania. Today the same token is valued at about 12,000 USD — a collapse of roughly 99 percent — and Blockstream CEO Adam Back says the real number is even worse: in his view, the collectible now carries effectively “negative” value once you count the cost of keeping it. The story is the NFT market in miniature, and it holds a practical lesson for anyone still holding digital collectibles.
By Jordan Lee | September 28, 2026
The Hook
Bieber bought his Bored Ape — a cartoon primate portrait that became a status symbol for athletes, musicians and executives — at the absolute peak of the NFT bubble, when celebrities were spending seven figures on profile pictures. Multiple outlets including Decrypt and Yahoo Finance reported this week that the token’s value has since fallen to roughly 12,000 USD, a staggering decline from the purchase price. The floor price of the entire Bored Ape collection has followed a similar path down from its highs.
Enter Adam Back, the Bitcoin pioneer whose cryptographic work is cited in the original Bitcoin whitepaper. Reacting to the story, Back argued that an NFT like Bieber’s ape is not merely worth almost nothing — it is worth less than nothing, because owning it carries ongoing costs. His reasoning points at a part of NFT ownership most buyers never think about: the artwork does not actually live on the blockchain, and somebody has to pay to keep it online.
On-Chain Evidence: Where the Value Went
The numbers tell the story of a market that repriced almost everything at once. At the 2021 peak, Christie’s sold a Beeple artwork for 69.35 million USD and Sotheby’s took 24.40 million USD for a bundle of 101 Bored Apes. This week, coverage from BeInCrypto, CryptoRank and Futurism all circled the same Bieber datapoint: from 1.3 million USD to about 12,000 USD. That is not a dip. That is a round trip to nearly zero.
The broader market confirms it was not just one unlucky ape. NFT trading volumes have fallen for months, and recent weekly sales data — even when showing percentage rebounds — remain a fraction of 2021 levels. Collections that once had waitlists now struggle to find bids at any price. Even celebrity-endorsed projects have not been spared, and several once-famous marketplaces have shut down entirely.
Bitcoin itself is trading around 83,000 USD, well below its recent run near 87,000 USD, and Ethereum sits near 2,667 USD. Most NFTs are priced in Ethereum, so the collectible market has taken the crypto-wide risk-off on the chin — renewed Middle East tensions knocked all risk assets lower this week.
The Core Conflict: Is an NFT Worth Less Than Nothing?
Back’s “negative value” quip is sharper than it sounds. Here is how NFT storage actually works, in plain terms. The blockchain records who owns each token — that part is permanent and needs no upkeep. But the image itself usually lives on separate storage, often on decentralized networks like IPFS or Arweave, and keeping files retrievable requires someone, somewhere, to pay for computers to host them. Think of the token as a deed and the artwork as furniture in a rented storage unit: the deed never expires, but the unit’s rent keeps coming due.
The industry just lived through this lesson. Nifty Gateway, the marketplace owned by crypto exchange Gemini, announced its closure in January as the parent company refocused on its main financial app. Its exit plan included moving records and media hosting to Arweave and extending a bulk withdrawal window to April 23 — but artworks created in 2021 or earlier had records permanently tied to Nifty’s own servers, and the company had to promise indefinite hosting for those. Not every marketplace exit comes with such accommodations, and collectors have spent the year discovering that a token in your wallet does not guarantee the picture still loads.
So Back’s arithmetic: if an ape trades at 12,000 USD but preserving it reliably means ongoing pinning and hosting arrangements — plus the illiquidity of a market with few buyers — the realistic net value can drop below zero for an owner who wants guaranteed access to what they bought. It is a joke with a receipt attached.
Market Implications: What This Means For You
If you still hold NFTs, three practical takeaways emerge from the Bieber saga and the marketplace closures behind it:
- Self-custody the token, then check the art. Move collectibles to a wallet you control, then verify the image and metadata still load through independent gateways — not just the marketplace app you bought them in.
- Revoke old permissions. This year’s Magic Eden scare, which put thousands of NFTs into protective custody over an old payment-processor vulnerability, showed that stale approvals from 2021-2024 listings remain a live risk. Auditing and revoking token approvals costs nothing.
- Value is usage, not celebrity. The projects still functioning tend to be the ones with games, communities or real utility attached — not the ones with the most famous buyers.
There are faint green shoots. OpenSea recently brought Solana back to its main platform, new SEC staff guidance clarified that many collectibles are not securities, and gaming communities are driving a slow, unglamorous comeback. But nobody should mistake any of that for a return to 2021.
The Verdict
Justin Bieber’s Bored Ape was never an investment — it was a flex, bought at the exact moment flexing was most expensive. The 99 percent collapse to roughly 12,000 USD, and Adam Back’s point that storage costs can push the true value negative, together deliver the NFT era’s closing argument: ownership recorded on a blockchain is only as durable as the infrastructure — and the demand — behind it. The collectibles that survive this winter will be the ones people actually use, not the ones celebrities actually bought. If you are still holding, secure your tokens, check your storage, revoke stale permissions, and hold only what you would keep even if nobody ever bid on it again.
The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
1.3M to 12k. the greatest jpeg L ever recorded, put it in a museum
he bought at 1.3M while the whole timeline called it genius. celebrity portfolios are just lagging indicators
every celebrity that aped into bayc did it at the exact top. its basically a reverse market signal at this point
adam back’s negative value point is real. the art lives off chain, someone pays to keep the server or arweave tx alive. storage costs on a ‘permanent’ asset nobody prices in
exactly, most apes are a url plus vibes. you never owned the image
the arweave point is underrated. owning the ape always meant owning a hosting bill forever, nobody priced the storage line in 2021
collection floor dragged down with him and it bleeds lower from here. illiquid jpegs reprice slowly, then all at once
adam back doing the math nobody asked for and its still more accurate than the floor price lmao
a 12k floor on a 1.3 mil buy is a museum piece now. celebrity jpegs at those prices were the ultimate top signal
sold my two apes at 180k each in early 2022 and got roasted for paper handing. now adam back is calling them negative value, wild
1.3 mil for a monkey jpeg and now its 12k. my 2021 bags feel seen, at least mine only cost a few hundred
At least yours was a rounding error. His loss is a house in most countries. The 99 percent drop math is wild.
A house in most countries, yeah. Brutal way to learn that a 12k floor on a 1.3M buy is not liquidity, its a screenshot
adam back saying negative value is funny but kinda true, the paperwork and storage headache on that thing probably costs more than its worth now
The tax angle is the part nobody talks about. If he ever sells, the loss only helps if he has gains somewhere to offset.
carried forward a decade against what, his next ape purchase? the loss harvest only works if he stops buying jpegs entirely
the tax loss harvest on a 1.288M loss is the only W in this whole story. offset that against basically anything
The catch on the tax loss is he needs gains somewhere to offset. A 1.3M loss gets carried forward for a decade, its a consolation prize not a win