Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has been seeing crazy traction in the market, and in this article we’ll cover the price, where to find them, and everything you’ll need to know.
Even if you are just getting into NFTs, you would have probably heard about the project and the massive craze it has generated over the past few months.
It is indeed one of the most huge significant NFT art collections of our time. Some of the more rarer apes have sold for as much as $24M (yes, you read that right!).
More than offering some cool pictures of apes, the project has been successful in creating an entire community around NFTs. Furthermore, that community has served as an entry point for many users to the world of crypto.
The project was founded by Yuga Labs that is led by four (pseudonymous) founders: Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and No Sass. The four have collectively started a revolution.
But what is the BAYC all about? What perks do the holders get by having a BAYC? How has the project performed? And most importantly, what kind of a revolution has it actually ignited?
We’ll be exploring all these questions in this article. Let’s dive in.
What is the BAYC project all about?
BAYC is a collection of 10,000 unique apes that have been given a humanlike avatar.
Some traits are considered rarer than others. In this sense, the collection draws inspiration from the CryptoPunks collection where some punks have unique traits that made them more valuable than others.
Each Ape is an ERC-721 NFT, which means that each of them has a unique identity on Ethereum’s blockchain. There are seven traits that when combined in different ways give unique identities to the apes: background, earring, eyes, mouth, hat, fur and clothes.
One of the biggest perks of holding the apes is that you get access to a digital graffiti wall known as the Bathroom Wall. The collection was officially launched on April 30th offering all of the 10,000 apes for sale.
The founding team members of Yuga Labs – the brains behind the project – now look at it as a defining movement in the “cryptoverse”, as opposed to what it was – a fun and collaborative crypto art experiment.
The objective of the experiment to create a digital space where “like-minded” and “tech-savvy” people could come forth and interact.
Where to buy Bored Ape Yacht Club
You can purchase them on the popular secondary market, OpenSea.
Not sure how to use OpenSea? Check out our guide here.
How the idea originated
The idea behind the creation of such a collection was the understanding that the founders had of the NFT space.
They knew early on that NFTs (and crypto as a whole) was operating more on the back of the underlying community – if there was a community that supported a project, they would collectively put their money to see it grow.
In addition to this, the idea was to create a relatively free environment for all crypto enthusiasts to come in and share their ideas and discuss what they had learned – and probably have a laugh too.
The project’s name was inspired from the common theme in crypto to “ape” the more prominent crypto degens in hopes of making it big. These are the users who do not focus too much on what a project/NFT does but invest in it just for the sake of making money.
They also sold 500 “physical” hats to all the BAYC NFT holders in June. One of the founders recalls selling one hat for as much as “thousands of dollars” when they were just planning to sell it for $25 apiece.
How the BAYC was initially received
The founding team members of the Yuga Labs recall how the sales around the collection were very slow initially.
The total profit that was made by the team during the first weeks was reportedly under $60,000.
But, all it took was the crypto community to take notice of the project and then suddenly – people started flowing in.
What also helped the community around the collection grow was the fact that many public celebrities like Stephen Curry had started their favorite apes as their Twitter profile picture exposing the entire collection to almost 15M people.
No looking back
One of the most defining things happened for the community when 101 of the minted tokens were resold for about $24.4M in an auction organized by Sotheby’s.
Around the same another token off the collection was bought for over $2M on OpenSea.
This was followed by one of the most expensive ape ever sold – for $3.4M.
By this time, more NFT collections with a very similar concept were springing up into reality – known as the Bored Ape Mutant Club.
Something that the founding team stressed upon was the utility of the NFTs. They had already seen NFT projects in the past – while they had their own aesthetic value, they did not really serve any purpose for the user beyond that.
That is why, they decided to host the first annual Ape Fest, which ran from Oct. 31 to Nov. 6. It included an in-person gallery party, yacht party, warehouse party, and even a charity dinner in New York.
Now, the team even wants to enter in to space of the metaverse. They want their users to have the ability to have their favorite apes (or at-least their dress) to be used within various metaverses.
Once interoperability of metaverses have been figured, we could potentially use our Apes in video games and even the different versions of the metaverse.
What gives BAYC its value?
The value for the collection is solely derived from its community – and its exactly applicable to the BAYC collection as well.
The main reasons why it has been so successful is because it:
- Helps users enter a world that only comprises people who also share similar passion for NFTs and/or digital collectibles
- Gives the holders commercial rights that allows them to create various versions of their own ape and sell it for profit
- All the NFT enthusiasts who entered the space fairly recently had no idea about the existence of CryptoPunks – and even if they did the allure of the project wasn’t as great as something that was created right in front of their eyes.
BAYC has been successful in showing that people can come together just for the purpose of distinguishing themselves from other similar users.
Today, every individual that has a BAYC not only has access to special events but also gets to have a feeling of being a part of something that is much bigger than themselves. This is evident in the various spinoffs of the BAYC collection that followed suit.
Also, adding in exclusive places like the Bored Ape Yacht Club Bathroom was also a bonus for everyone holding the NFTs.
What is it?
It is a digital space where the holders can “paint” a pixel every fifteen minutes on the bathroom wall.
It can be thought of as a community drawing board. While the idea itself might not seem as moving, the fact is that it is just one of the ways using which the community creates exclusivity.
BAYC started a revolution
I would be remiss not to also mention the fact that BAYC did indeed start a revolution and served as a catalyst for the entire NFT community to grow. Within almost a month of its release, the collection was averaging a $41,000 in average sales across a 30-day period.
The collectibles market saw an instant spike from what it was in 2020 to post the release of the BAYC collection. The digital collectibles market was a mere 11% in the last quarter of 2020.
This number jumped to 76% in the third quarter of 2021.
While we cannot attribute this whopping rise to just one project, we are quite confident that BAYC has had a major part to play in it. The number of active wallets has also increased during this period.
Even in the third quarter of 2021, it has been reported that BAYC is the second most popular NFT project in the market – second only to the CryptoPunks project.
What has also fueled growth of the project is the rise in the secondary market sales, which currently averages 47,331 sales everyday since the collection was launched.
Some of these secondary sales have been extremely lucrative for a few holders. One of the most expensive BAYC NFTs to be ever sold was the #8817 ape selling for a record $3.4M in an auction by Sotheby’s.
For several users, the BAYC collection has been a crucial starting point. The CryptoPunks collection had its own appeal because of its historical value – it is one of the earliest collectibles NFT project on Ethereum.
However, BAYC pushed the envelop forward by introducing further utility to these tokens. Also, the fact that it led to the creation of an entire ecosystem around cool-looking apelike characters is an added benefit of its own.
Mutant Ape Yacht Club
The Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) is a project very similar to the BAYC one. It contains 10,000 apelike characters but with a twisted mutant theme.
The floor price is also less expensive, as of the time of this writing (subject to change).
Holders of these NFTs were airdropped a mutant serum of categories M1, M2 and M3. If any holder got the first two types, then they could combine the two to create a new ape – however this creation had some resemblance to the original one.
The M3 vial added a level of exclusivity by offering the users to create a completely new
MAYC, thereby increasing its rarity and value. Yuga Labs has announced that the MAYC is the “final tier” of membership for all Ape holders.
Bored Ape Kennel Club
Bored Ape Kennel Club was another collection introduced by the Yuga Labs and was exclusively available to only the Ape holders.
The collection features various dog characters as NFTs that have various attributes. All the Ape holders had the option to mint them – without having to pay anything apart from the gas fee.
And if this wasn’t enough, then there have been several collaborations that have taken place because of the project. Here is a list of some of them.
Rolling Stone – the favored music magazine – recently collaborated with the BAYC to “honor” the artwork in an exclusive NFT collection. These NFTs were released on SuperRare and helped fuel the growth of the platform by almost 50%.
Adidas recently collaborated with BAYC to fuel its ventures into the world of metaverse and the entire Web3 ecosystem.
Timbaland recently announced his partnership with the BAYC to create a Ape in Productions (AIP) music label.
Closing thoughts
The entire ecosystem that has been created around the collection renders exclusivity to the entire project. When the collection was first launched, it was hardly making sense to anyone.
Even as it started taking the world by a storm, people were confused about its utility – and more shocked to see something like this gaining so much traction.
They would ask: Why would someone want to pay millions of dollars for some JPEGs? Well, the truth is that BAYC’s launch led to a storm of projects that were all focused around PFP (profile pictures). People on Twitter were using their newly minted Apes as their profile pictures.
Here’s the thing: BAYC was not just a token, but a key to access an exclusive community of enthusiasts who wanted to experiment with NFTs and the whole ecosystem that was being built around it.
If you held a BAYC, you were part of an exclusive club (you still are). And that is what made it different. Crypto has always been about a shared sense of purpose.
Whether that purpose is finding additional APRs by creating money legos or buying NFTs that add an aesthetic value to their portfolio.
The entire BAYC market has now ballooned to over $1B in total assets. For a digital collectibles project that was launched less than a year ago, this is a great achievement. We can only imagine how the project will evolve in the coming years.
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