Bored Ape Yacht Club is a limited NFT avatar project built on Ethereum. Only 10,000 Bored Apes exist, making them extremely scarce. Besides being rare and cool-looking, each Bored Ape NFT token doubles as membership to an exclusive online hangout called the swamp club.
When Bored Ape YC launched in April, they sold out in a single day for just under $200 per. Six months later, and the cheapest ape for sale is $80K. Oh, and did we mention Stephen Curry just bought one?
Along with CryptoPunks, Bored Apes NFTs look like they’re here to stay. In time, Bored Apes might even become iconic art pieces representing the mainstream emergence of the metaverse.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First thing’s first — let’s take a deep dive into the Bored Ape phenomenon and explain what they are, why they’re popular, and how to buy a Bored Ape NFT.
In 2020, just as the cryptocurrency market started to flip green following a long downtrend, investors and traders began calling each other apes. The ape meme originates with a line spoken by Caesar in 2011’s Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.
Soon after the meme started circulating, cryptocurrency traders were aping into decentralized finance tokens during last year’s DeFi summer bull market. The ape meme might even be responsible for the strong moves in Dogecoin and Shiba Inu tokens, given the camaraderie instilled by apes holding with diamond hands.
Around the same time, Bored Ape Yacht Club founders Gargamel and Gordon Goner had noticed the trend while trading cryptocurrencies themselves. By the spring of 2021, CryptoPunks and Hashmasks NFTs were skyrocketing in value.
If you’re unfamiliar, an NFT is a Non-Fungible Token, which is a fancy way of calling a unique digital collectible that you can prove is yours.
Before Bored Apes, NFTs were little more than avatars people used for Twitter accounts. Beyond being appreciated for rarity, attributes, or status symbols, they offered little else.
Gargamel and Goner felt the lack of deeper story arcs and utility for NFTs was a serious void they sought to fill with Bored Apes. So, unlike other NFTs that are nothing more than images, Bored Apes are dual-purpose: they’re your digital persona and grant you lifetime membership in a secret apes-only club.
Over time, benefits will continue accruing to Bored Ape NFT holders. Some of those benefits are immensely profitable, such as yesterday’s Mutant Apes NFTs dropped for free to all Bored Ape owners. Mutant Apes are already selling for around $20,000 a pop, with some fetching just over $1 million.
Alright, so Bored Apes are provably rare NFTs about a future in which everyone is rich from crypto trading yet stupendously bored. Hence the often dissatisfied and jaded faces worn by the apes.
But what makes some Bored Apes worth more than others? It all comes down to a mixture of traits. The Bored Ape NFT collection consists of 10,000 apes generated at random. That means trait assignment, including eyes, fur, and clothes, varies wildly from ape to ape.
Similar to CryptoPunks, Bored Apes with traits in low circulation tend to get valued highly, while those with a mixture of common traits are less so. But in a departure from the CryptoPunks standard, apes can remain valuable even with a high trait count (the number of different traits an NFT has).
A case in point is Bored Ape #7495, currently ranked as the rarest Bored Ape NFT. Despite having a high count of seven traits overall, #7495 is:
Besides the limited run of its traits, the Bored Ape generator gave #7495 a pretty phenomenal mixture of clothes, color, and attitude, making it desirable on aesthetics alone.
Bored Apes with laser eyes and cigarettes are also in high demand, as are apes with the number eight in them. However, gold apes are rapidly rising on the charts.
Ape #5809 features solid gold fur and holographic eyes, both of which are rare traits. However, its low trait count overall, blue background, and bored mouth are far more common, explaining why this ape, in particular, isn’t ranked higher.
On August 28th, Bored Ape owners were treated to a free airdrop of 10,000 Mutant Ape serum vials. The serum is classified into three tiers — M1, M2, or Mega Mutant serum. Once injected into a Bored Ape, a serum vial spawns a unique Mutant Ape NFT.
Mega Mutant serum vials are limited to eight, making them extremely rare and instantly valuable. Crypto Twitter influencer 0xb1.484 paid 350 ETH (~$1.1M) for a Mega Mutant serum vial that spawned the only Mega Demon Mutant Ape in the collection.
An additional 10,000 Mutant Apes were available to the public for an average of 3 ETH each, bringing the total number of Mutant Apes to 20,000. Gargamel and Gordon Goner, the Bored Ape YC founders, took home about $90 million from the sale, all of which they immediately liquidated to USD using FTX Exchange.
A few months after the original Bored Ape NFT sale, BAYC founders took to Twitter to announce a free NFT airdrop to Bored Ape owners. In a nutshell, Bored Apes are, well, bored — so they need companionship.
Enter the Bored Ape Kennel Club, a set of 10,000 dog NFTs that were free for every BAYC member. Like Bored Apes and Mutant Apes, BAYC dogs come with randomly generated traits, including rare gold fur.
And, like their counterparts, Bored Ape Kennel Club dogs are regularly selling for six figures. Some sellers, like the one above, are optimistically pricing their dogs in the millions.
If you’re ready to ape into a Bored Ape NFT, it’s going to cost you. Right now, the floor (lowest cost) for a BAYC NFT is 25 ETH (~$80,000) on OpenSea.
There are a few considerations to make before deciding if this is the right time to buy. Use this checklist to decide for yourself.
Besides OpenSea, you’ll soon be able to buy Bored Ape NFTs at Sotheby's auction house. On September 5th, Sotheby’s is auctioning 101 Bored Ape NFTs believed to be worth up to $18 million. They’re also selling a lot of 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club dogs — just to be on the safe side.
If you’re not keen to spend a fortune on an ape, you can become part owner of one via fractional Bored Ape ownership. The best platform for fractional NFT ownership at the moment is Fractional, where several Bored Ape YC NFTs are held in vaults, such as this Bored Ape with laser eyes.
Whether you opt for fractional ownership or choose to go it alone, the Bored Ape NFT market is very competitive, so be ready for a bidding war.
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