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The Street
The Street
Business
Colette Bennett

This Crypto-Fueled Dating App Has Hung Up Its (Virtual) Hat

While the world of crypto and nonfungible tokens has been embraced by some and shunned by others, it's never had quite as hard a time as it's having right now.

A recent cryptocurrency crash left some adopters on social media feeling unsure whether their investments were a good idea. And interest in NFTs has plummeted, prompting speculation about their value as investments as well. Uncertainty about both has increased sharply.

But crypto and NFT fans both tend to be devoted to and passionate about their investments, not to mention speaking a language about them that to the average person would be gibberish. 

So it makes sense that someone came up with the idea of making a dating site for crypto/NFT fans so they could actually, you know, have a chance at romance.

It was called Lonely Ape Dating Club, and like all things having to do with crypto, it was designed to be an exclusive soiree intended for a select few people. 

You could participate only if you were the owner of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, which has the distinct "you can't sit with us" vibe of a "Mean Girls" moment.

On the other hand, since celebrities such as Eminem, Jimmy Fallon, Mark Cuban, and even Madonna owned them, one with an active imagination might be able to foresee an opportunity to at least bump into them on such a dating app.

All this is in the past tense, as you may have noticed, because the dating app for crypto bros has been canceled.

Bored Ape Yacht Club

Wait, There Was a Crypto Dating App?

Well, yes and no. It certainly seemed like there was one at first, as it was announced back in February by Year 4000, a collective of hackers and NFT collectors.

But the app had some strange asks. It required users to link their crypto wallets, for example, and filtered potential matches by cryptocurrency value and net worth. After all, why discuss things like shared goals and the desire for a family when you could simply wax poetic about the future of blockchain?

But then this tweet about the Dating Club surfaced on May 12, and it seemed as if the founders had decided to cancel the project.

Naturally, crypto and NFT haters jeered immediately, quick to use it as further evidence that NFTs owners are a bunch of dudes too awkward to ever find love. 

But according to Buzzfeed News, the app itself may never have existed to begin with, as its creator insinuated in Twitter DMs with the writer.

We may never know whether the app was a joke to begin with or a real project that simply didn't work out as planned. 

Meantime, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs continue to draw interest, but if you want to date within the small exclusive club that owns these NFTs, you'll just have to slide into their DMs the old fashioned way.

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