

Broadly, it's a mix of four things: Influencer or celebrity involvement, mainstream potential, utility for members and community appeal. What makes an NFT collection successful is highly subjective. The price of Bored Ape NFTs rose steadily until July, when they spiked dramatically and the collection became a blue-chip set. It took 12 hours for all 10,000 to sell out at a price of $190 (0.08 ether). Bored Ape Yacht Club was launched last April. Their argument is that NFTs are better status symbols than real-world items, since when used as profile pictures they can be seen by millions of people on Twitter and Instagram. Just like a CEO may try to communicate business acumen with a Rolex or a luxury suit, people who trade NFTs display their success with a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT. The short answer is that they're status symbols, and like all status symbols their value comes from perception and branding rather than utility. What makes Bored Ape Yacht Club valuable? For instance out of 10,000 apes only 46 have solid gold fur, making these particularly valuable. Usually, anything under 1% is considered rare. On any given NFT's page, its properties will be listed as well as the percentage of NFTs in the collection that share the property. These properties are displayed on OpenSea, the main platform where NFTs are traded. Each attribute has a rarity component, which makes some much more valuable than others. In the case of BAYC, there are 10,000 apes, each with varying fur types, facial expressions, clothing, accessories and more. You have a set amount - usually between 5,000 and 10,000 - which all have the same template, but each has different attributes that make them unique. Pioneered by CryptoPunks in 2017, NFT collections are a little like Pokemon cards. The latter have become the dominant style, where most of the money is spent. Second, you have NFT collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which are mostly designed to be used as profile pictures on social media. Think the Beeple NFTs that were sold at Christie's for as high as $69 million. First, you have one-off visuals that are sold as non-fungible tokens, just like paintings in real life. Why are there 10,000 Bored Apes?īroadly speaking, there are two types of NFT art. Others think they're an environmentally-costly ponzi scheme. Some people think they'll revolutionize the internet, at last allowing digital goods to be bought and sold like real-world, physical products. Whether that makes NFTs valuable is a judgement call. Here's what you need to know about the collection.

That means NFTs like BAYC are likely to lose their lustre if crypto collapses - something critics have prophesized for years. Their value is instrinsically tied to ether, the second biggest cryptocurrency. Apes inspire jealousy among those who own and trade NFT art but confusion and suspicion among people who don't. Like everything else to do with NFTs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is contentious. Already it's collaborated with brands like Adidas and Gucci, and last year a Bored Ape graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. More importantly, it's developing a "metaverse" MMORPG game called "Otherside." People holding Bored Ape NFTs are betting that the brand will completely break through and go mainstream. Yuga Labs, the company behind the NFT collection, has already expanded the ecosystem to include a cryptocurrency (Ape Coin). In June, Eminem and Snoop Dogg released a video clip in which the rappers are depicted by their respective Bored Apes.īREAKING: just bought BAYC #9055 for 123.45 ETH ($461,868.42) WELCOME to the BAYC 🤗 /UvQFntDa8Q- m0rgan.ethᵍᵐ 💎🙆🏼♀️🆘 December 31, 2021

Justin Bieber made headlines with his purchase of a $1.29 million Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT in February. Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton are also BAYC holders, discussing their Apes in a (cringey) Tonight Show segment. You've probably seen a BAYC, even if you didn't realize you were looking at one.īored Ape owners currently using their NFT as a Twiter profile picture include Timbaland (1.6 million followers), Eminem (22.6 million followers) and footballer Neyman Jr. Far from the all-time-high, but insane considering these NFTs sold for about $200 apiece last April. Following the crypto crash, caused by the Federal Reserve's hiking of inflation rates to tackle inflation, that's fallen closer to $150,000. When NFTs were at their hottest, in April, the entry price for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs was $400,000. BAYC has over the past year become a bellwether for NFTs, just like bitcoin is for the crypto market at large. It coincided almost perfectly with the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 cartoon ape NFTs that's come to embody the whole industry. NFTs have been around for five years, but the nonfungible token boom only truly began in 2021.
