One of the most prominent brands in the NFT space is the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which offers 10,000 avatars of apes in all shapes, sizes, outfits, and backgrounds as tickets to an online social club. The NFTs themselves have generated more than $1 billion in sales.
In just a few months after its launch in April 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) became one of the main reasons Wall Street should take the emerging nonfungible token (NFT) market seriously; thanks to its recent sales turnover of over $1 billion.
Even though each individual ape is virtually a picture file, they should be worthless in a sane world. Yet, they have been fetching astonishing sums, sometimes even from some of the world’s most prominent celebrities.
Amid the rising floor at BAYC, celebrity members have been joining in droves. We would like to honour the amazing success that BAYC continues to see – especially after its Aped NYC event in November 2021.
Jimmy Fallon, a popular American TV host, purchased the image of a striped T-shirt wearing a bored ape wearing heart-shaped shades for almost $220,000 in November last year. The Academy Award-winner rapper Eminem recently bought an ape that somewhat resembled him for nearly $462,000.
In accordance with Hypebeast, the basketball superstar purchased a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for 55 ETH, which equates to USD 180,000.
According to the Bored Ape Yacht Club website, the Bored Ape NFT also serves as a membership pass for owners of the yacht club. It grants them access to exclusive club amenities such as The Bathroom – a collaborative graffiti wall.
In October, an online auction held by Sotheby‘s brought $3.4 million to one of the rarest Bored Apes with a gold fur trait, breaking the record set a month earlier by a similar specimen with laser eyes purchased by The Sandbox for $2.9 million.
Rather like Bitcoin (BTC), the BAYC collection is derived from NFTs, digital ownership proofs logged on a public blockchain. Each “coin” is different and indivisible. BAYC, like most NFT projects, settles through the Ethereum blockchain, priced with its native token, Ether (ETH).
Art is subjective, so it will never be possible to predict the rise of an NFT project. First, there is momentum, and then it is the “vibe” of the art. Having been heavily involved in NFTs for the past few months and having produced detailed breakdowns of other NFT projects, I have a few hypotheses supported by some data to help us better understand the phenomenon.
