The crypto-currency boom over the past few years has helped propel a newer market to record heights: digital collectibles known as NFTs.
In fact, total NFT sales volume hit $22 billion over the past year as artists, investors, and entrepreneurs descend upon the nascent Web3 space.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique, irreplaceable, mostly digital items that users buy and sell online.
NFTs use blockchain technology to keep a digital record of ownership, similar to cryptocurrencies. They were first launched on Ethereum, the same blockchain that supports the cryptocurrency ether, and most NFTs can still only be purchased using ether.
What makes Bored Ape Yacht Club valuable?
This is a complicated question. The short answer is that, as with real-world art, value is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Let’s start at the beginning. Bored Ape Yacht Club was launched in late April by a team of four pseudonymous developers: Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and No Sass.
It took 12 hours for all 10,000 to sell out at a price of 0.08 ether, or around $190. As you can see in the price chart below the price grew steadily from April to July before rocketing upward in August.
When famous people own an NFT, it makes others want to own one too. An example is Jimmy Fallon. The Tonight Show host bought a BAYC on Nov. 8 and for weeks after he used it as a profile picture on Twitter, where he has 50 million followers.
That brought a flurry of hype and sales, which is reflected in the sales volume and price rise you can see on the right of the above chart.
Bored Ape Yacht Club has done a few things to keep owners interested. First, it created the Bored Ape Kennel Club, offering owners the opportunity to “adopt” a dog NFT with traits that mimic those of the Bored Apes.
Another freebie came in August: digital vials of mutant serum. Owners could mix their Bored Ape with the serum to create a Mutant Ape NFT. Both Kennel Club and Mutant Ape NFTs sell for a lot.
In recent weeks, the Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection has blown up, with the floor price rising from around 4 ether in November to 20 ether ($60,000) now.
What’s so special about them?
As the name suggests, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is billed as an exclusive society or social organization, and owning one of the coveted NFTs unlocks that membership.
It earns users access to an exclusive Discord server, for example, where fellow owners—including celebrities—hang out and chat. And Apes tend to flock together on social media, where the increasingly familiar avatars have united a digital brotherhood of sorts.
Perhaps more importantly, owning a Bored Ape NFT earns you access to additional NFT collectibles, which can then be resold for potentially considerable amounts of cash.
Yuga Labs first offered free Bored Ape Kennel Club dog NFTs to Bored Ape owners, and then later released free “mutant serum” NFTs that generated a Mutant Ape Yacht Club image.
It’s almost like paying a one-time fee for an ongoing subscription plan for NFTs and perks.
How to buy Bored Apes
Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are available through secondary markets, most notably OpenSea.
To purchase a Bored Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, or Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT on OpenSea, simply visit the project page for each to view the entire collection.
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