The Bored Ape Yacht Club is made up of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs, which are one-of-a-kind digital valuables that live on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape also serves as your Yacht Club membership card, granting you access to exclusive amenities like THE BATHROOM, a collaborative graffiti board. The community can access future regions and bonuses by activating the roadmap.
BAYC, which began in April and consists of 10,000 Bored Apes, is one of the most successful collections in the nonfungible token arena. The lowest one you can get right now is 49 ether ($231,000). They frequently sell for a lot more.
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. Some of its success can be attributed to the art, but it isn’t the case for the majority of it. 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.
The project’s “floor price,” or what you’ll pay for an ape with common qualities, is 52 ether, as previously stated. Apes with golden fur are quite rare, so they sell for a lot more. Below image shows the properties of BAYC in OpenSea.
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. The common ones go for roughly 100 ether, or $500,000.
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.
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.
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 the most recent example. The Tonight Show host purchased a BAYC on November 8 (for a cool $145,000) and has been using it as his Twitter profile photo ever since. This has resulted in a frenzy of hype and sales, as evidenced by the increased sales volume and price.
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.
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.
Kennel Club and Mutant Ape NFTs both sell for a lot of money, with starting prices of $14,000 and $26,000, respectively.
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?
Following the star-studded New York party, a new mobile game will be the next member-only reward for Bored Ape and Mutant Ape owners. Registration for BAYC x MAYC mobile competition is live at boredapeyachtclub.com/#/apesvsmutants
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.