Eminem is the latest superstar to purchase an ape avatar from the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, which consists of 10,000 ape avatars that retail for more than $200,000 each.
Eminem. Jimmy Fallon is the host of the Tonight Show. Curry, Steph. Snoop Dogg is a rapper from the United States. What do these famous people have in common? They’re all members of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a renowned group of 10,000 ape avatar NFTs with a variety of characteristics and qualities. Above are three NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC); the centre one with the captain’s hat is Jimmy Fallon’s.
What distinguishes BAYC as “prestigious”? For the time being, the entry fee is 71 ether. That’s around $267,000 in today’s money.
You’ve undoubtedly seen a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT if you spend any time online, particularly on Twitter. These serve as avatars as well as membership cards for an online social group. Owners of BAYC are either crypto savvy enough to be early to the NFT boom, or affluent enough to buy in now that the collection has garnered cultural weight, having launched in April for 0.08 ether each — approximately $190.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is gradually becoming an off-chain brand, in addition to the celebs who are buying in. (It’s a brand that doesn’t exist on the blockchain.) Adidas teamed up with BAYC for its first NFT initiative, a mobile game is in the works, and one of the Club’s apes was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine last year.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club, like everything else related to NFTs, is divisive. Those who own and trade NFT art are jealous of ape owners, but those who don’t are confused and suspicious. NFTs, like cryptocurrency, are extremely volatile. As a result, critics believe that the so-called “bubble” will eventually burst.
Here’s all you need to know about the exhibit.
There are 10,000 of them?
NFT art can be divided into two categories. First, there are one-of-a-kind visual art pieces that are marketed as NFTs, exactly like real-life paintings. Consider the $69 million Beeple NFTs that were sold at Christie’s auctions. Then there are NFT collections, often known as “projects,” such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club. These work in a similar way to Pokemon cards in that they take a template and generate hundreds or thousands of variations, each of which is graded in terms of rarity. There are 10,000 apes in BAYC, each with unique “properties” like as fur types, facial expressions, clothing, accessories, and more.
These properties are displayed on OpenSea, the primary trading platform for NFTs. The properties of each NFT will be published on its page, along with the percentage of NFTs in the collection who share that property. Anything less than 1% is usually considered uncommon. Take a look at the apes at the top of the page, for example. One with the rare “Solid Gold” fur trait can be found on the right. Only 46 apes out of 10,000 have this trait, making them extremely valuable.
As previously stated, the “floor price” for the project is 71 ether, which is what you’ll pay for an ape with common qualities. Apes with golden fur are quite rare, so they sell for a lot more. Someone paid 333 ether, or $1.36 million, for one last week. Two months ago, one with gold fur and laser eyes, two sub-1 percent features, sold for $3 million.
After CryptoPunks, BAYC is the second largest NFT project of its sort. CryptoPunks is a 2017 collection of 10,000 8-bit avatars that derives much of its worth from the fact that it is the first NFT collection. CryptoPunks had a floor price of roughly 90 ether in the second half of 2021. This has plummeted in recent weeks, and supporters of Bored Ape are hopeful that the BAYC floor price will overtake CryptoPunks, which is known in the NFT realm as “the flippening.”
What distinguishes the Bored Ape Yacht Club from the competition?
This is a difficult question to answer. The quick answer is that value is very much in the eye of the beholder, just as it is with real-world art.
Let’s get this party started. Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and No Sass, four pseudonymous developers, debuted Bored Ape Yacht Club in late April. At a price of 0.08 ether, or roughly $190, it took 12 hours for all 10,000 to sell out. The price slowly increased from April through July before rocketing in August, as shown in the price chart below (the price on the Y axis is in ether).
It’s difficult to say what makes BAYC or any other NFT collection valuable. In general, it’s a combination of three factors. Involvement of celebrities and influencers, community strength, and member benefits
The first is self-evident. When celebrities own an NFT, it inspires others to want one as well. Jimmy Fallon is a recent example. On Nov. 8, the Tonight Show host purchased a BAYC for $145,000 and used it as his profile photo on Twitter, where he has 50 million followers. This has resulted in a frenzy of buzz and sales, as seen by the increase in sales volume and price shown on the right of the above figure.
Second, there is the issue of utility. The majority of NFT projects claim to provide some type of usefulness, whether it’s access to play-to-earn games or the ability to stake an NFT in return for a cryptocurrency. CyberKongs, another high-value collection, gained notoriety by allowing Kong owners to breed a BabyKong NFT with two Kongs.
To keep owners interested, the Bored Ape Yacht Club has done a few things. First, it established the Bored Ape Kennel Club, which allows owners to “adopt” a dog NFT with characteristics similar to those of the Bored Apes. Another freebie arrived in August: digital bottles of mutant serum. Owners might combine their Bored Ape with the serum to create a Mutant Ape, a new NFT. NFTs from the Kennel Club and Mutant Ape sell for a lot of money. The Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection has exploded in popularity in recent weeks, with the floor price climbing from roughly 4 ether ($55,000) in November to 15 ether ($55,000) presently.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a collection’s community. Meetups for the Bored Ape Yacht Club have taken place in New York and California, as well as Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. A weekend of festivities for owners was recently hosted in New York, which included an actual yacht party and a concert with Chris Rock, Aziz Ansari, and The Strokes.
Developing a community does, after all, have an economic side to it. Art, in whatever form, is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. The floor price in an NFT collection is essentially the same as what the least-invested members are willing to sell for. People who believe they are carrying a community token are less likely to post their monkeys for sale. Selling your ape includes not just an NFT, but also a community pass.
A collection also becomes a status symbol once it reaches a particular degree of worth. Chief executives wear Rolexes, and those in the cryptocurrency and NFT industry use Rolexes as profile images on Twitter, Discord, and other sites. Just like you can wear a $10 Rolex fake, you can download a JPG of a bored ape. However, in both circumstances, people will be aware.
What comes next?
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is gradually moving away from NFTs and toward being a “offchain” brand, or one that lives outside of the blockchain. Yuga Labs, the creators of BAYC, stated on Dec. 21 that they are collaborating with developer Animoca on a play-to-earn game that will be released in 2022. Owners of BAYC boats are expected to benefit.
The Bored Apes have also begun to incorporate themselves into the fashion world. Into The Metaverse, Adidas’ first NFT project, was launched in partnership with many NFT brands, including Bored Ape Yacht Club. Adidas also purchased a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, which is now shown on the company’s Twitter profile.
What people are doing with their apes, on the other hand, is more odd. The complete commercial rights that come with owning a Bored Ape NFT are being used in some innovative ways by holders. One Bored Ape owner gave his ape a Twitter account and gave him a backstory, transforming him into Jenkins, a valet at the Yacht Club. Jenkins was signed to a real-world agency in September. He’ll be the subject of his own biography, which will be written in part by New York Times bestselling author Neil Strauss. Universal Music Group has invested by signing three bored apes and one mutant ape as a band.
You may believe NFTs are ridiculous — and bad for the environment — but the Bored Apes aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
