Bored Ape Yacht Club

What is Bored Ape Yacht Club?

Bored Ape Yacht Club is, along with CryptoPunks, one of the most popular digital collectibles in NFT format on Ethereum. If CryptoPunks can be considered the genesis of the PFP (profile picture) concept applied to collectible digital assets that take the form of non-fungible tokens, Bored Ape Yacht Club represents the refinement of this concept through a series of innovations.

First of all, the Bored Ape Yacht Club nfts are not only presented as a digital collectible that follows the canon established by CryptoPunks -with a supply capped at 10,000 units and an attribute system linked to rarity. Rather, each Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT represents a membership token to an exclusive digital hangout called the swamp club.

The second novelty is that Bored Apes Yacht Club implements a much more generous licensing system for its IP (intellectual property), which allows owners of NFTs to exploit them commercially -for example, licensing all kinds of derivatives, editorial, and audiovisual products, or merchandising. The CryptoPunks, on the other hand, were launched under a much more restrictive IP regime, which allowed a level of exploitation by NFT holders to be capped and restricted to certain uses -although that is something that has recently changed, as a result of the acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP from Larva Labs by Yuga Labs, creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

In this article, we'll take a look at what Bored Ape Yacht Club are, review their origins as a collection of NFTs, explore their distinguishing features, and show you what metrics are important to consider before proceeding to purchase your first ape monkey.

Bored Ape Value

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of NFTs on Ethereum, made up of 10,000 unique avatars with varying levels of rarity determined by a combination of randomly generated attributes. As we have already explained, one of the characteristics that differentiate this Yuga Labs project from previous ones such as CryptoPunks is that the NFTs work as membership tokens of an exclusive club. Being an NFT ape holder opens the door for you to participate in events, access airdrops such as the $APE token one (the Bored Ape Yacht Club coin), and many other advantages that are outlined in the Bored Ape Yacht Club roadmap.

As with CryptoPunks, the list of possible Bored Ape Yacht Clubs attributes is quite extensive and includes elements such as skin, mouth, eyes, background, clothing, and accessories such as hats. The mix of these elements varies greatly between apes and is one of the main factors determining the wide range of bored ape values. Those Bored Ape that present scarcer attributes -that is, they are present in a smaller number of NFTs- will be more expensive than those that are characterized by combining more common attributes.

As we can see, the value of bored apes is highly dependent on many factors.

NFT monkey items as the cornerstone of a global franchise

Each ape is a non-fungible token that, unlike CryptoPunks, adopts the ERC-721 token standard -which makes it easy to integrate into all kinds of marketplaces without the need for wrappers. But what both collections do share is the fact that they belong to the PFP (profile picture) category which, as the name suggests, are perfect for being used as a profile picture on social networks.

But the similarities end there. While the creators of the CryptoPunks present them as an artistic project, NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club has taken a more commercial approach from the beginning. The idea is to develop a powerful brand that in the future could compete with large global franchises such as Marvel or Disney. A key factor in the promotion and viralization of the project has been the adoption of an IP (intellectual property) model that guarantees a commercial license to each holder of a monkey NFT. Having a license that allows the commercial exploitation of the NFT is an intelligent economic incentive of the first magnitude that manages to transform the commercialization and marketing of the project into a collective effort.

Another key factor that explains the success of the collection is that Bored Apes Yacht Club NFT is conceived as a kind of digital club. The community that has gathered around the project has organized events in various cities in the US, and also in other regions of the world, such as the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. One example would be parties to be held on a yacht and in a former Brooklyn Steel warehouse that would include a performance by The Strokes, Beck and Lil Baby during New York NFT week in November 2021. Bored Ape Yacht Club merch has also played an important role in the consolidation of the brand.

Also, the fact that Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs function as exclusive club membership tokens may be one of the secrets behind the incredible bull run (~1,898x in ETH and ~2,100x in USD) they experienced after their launch in April 2019. 2021 to today's date (March 2022). The price floor of a collection is the minimum sale price that a token holder is willing to accept to get rid of it. And the fact that the monkey NFTs have become a status symbol that grants access to exclusive events (where you can meet famous holders like Gwyneth Paltrow, Eminem, Shaquille O'Neal, Post Malone, Snoop Dogg, Mark Cuban , and Steph Curry) is an intelligent mechanism that discourages its sale.

As with the CryptoPunks, we can say that board apes have reached the Olympus of NFTs and have gone from being simple digital collectibles to becoming true status symbols. And it is that in a world in which everything tends to be digitized, the ostentation mechanisms end up suffering the same fate. The role previously played by refined Audemars Piguet jewelry and watches is now played by coveted and rare collections of NFTs that can be used as profile pictures on various social networks -especially now that platforms like Twitter implement verification mechanisms that certify that one really is the owner of the NFTs monkey in question.

Bored Ape Yacht Club Creator

The Bored Ape Yacht Club creator wasn’t a single person, but a group of 4 people operating under the brand Yuga Labs. Upon launching the collection on the market in the spring of 2021, Yuga Labs co-founders decided to adopt pseudonyms to protect their identity: Gargamel and Gordon Doner, who would adopt the role of founders, and Emperor Tomato and No Sass, who would take care of all development issues.

It is important to point out that although Yuga Labs was the creator of the collection and therefore the original repository of the intellectual property -which is assigned to each of the owners of an Ape-, the Bored Ape Yacht Club artist that designed the apes and their different attributes was a freelance called Seneca.

The pseudonym of the founders of Yuga Labs, together with the fact of opting for a generous intellectual property license system with the owners of the NFTs that make up the collection, would be one of the main hallmarks of the project. The 4 original members of the team would manage to maintain their anonymity until February 2022, when their identities would end up being revealed -without their prior consent- by the digital media BuzzFeed.

Bored Ape Yacht Club founders

Gargamel and Gordon Goner, the two co-founders, would turn out to be Greg Solano and Wylie Aaronow, two thirty something lovers of literature and philosophy -especially the works of David Foster Wallace and the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Both would be surprised by the sudden success of their ape-themed NFT collection. At the time of its launch, Bored Ape Yacht Club would raise about 2 million dollars, but from there the thing would only grow and grow. During an auction held at Sothebys, more than 100 apes would be sold and around 24 million dollars would be raised - that is, almost a quarter of a million dollars per NFT on average. Numerous celebrities would begin to acquire Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, including: soccer star Neymar, singers Justin Bieber, Snoop Dog and Eminem, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, athletes Stephen Curry and Shaquille O'Neal, and the investor Mark Cuban. Another event that would boost the popularity of this digital collectible would be an interview with Paris Hilton on Jimmy Fallon's famous late show, during which both would confess to being members of the select NFT collectors' club.

Bored Ape Yacht Club most expensive item

Along with the CryptoPunks, the Bored Ape Yacht Club would be protagonists of the NFT fever that would be experienced throughout 2021.

Several CryptoPunks with rare attributes would reach multi-million dollar prices, marking a record 8,000 ETH (23M USD) paid for an Alien in February 2022. The Bored Ape Yacht Club would not be far behind: in an auction held at Sotheby's Marketplace , a coveted gold fur belonging to @jimmyeth, CEO of NFT42, would sell for $3.4M USD, breaking all previous monkey nft price records.

It’s worth taking into account these single item record-breaking sales would be highly influenced by bored ape price overtime performance.

Bored Ape Yacht Club price. Why is the collection valuable?

As we have already explained, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT are PFPs or avatars represented as non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, that act as a very special type of status symbol.

But, Yuga Labs would take a very different approach to Bored Apes NFT than Larva Labs did with the CryptoPunks. The latter would be treated as a kind of hybrid between a digital collectible and a pure work of art, detached from any utility beyond being a status symbol -although they can also be considered instruments to build a digital identity, a pseudonymous alter ego in the metaverse. But in any case, their value is individual, the CryptoPunks can be appreciated without the need to take into account the larger group of which they are a part.

Yuga Labs, on the other hand, would adopt an approach for the Bored Ape Yacht Club that would transgress the limits of pop art, to the point of turning the collection into something more than an artistic expression in the form of a digital collectible: the NFTs would act as membership tokens of a new movement, a brotherhood, a religion. The feeling of belonging is a very powerful human emotion, and the Bored Ape Yacht Club seems to have discovered the ultimate membership formula for a 21st century in which social networks and the metaverse will play a major role in our lives.

Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse land sale

BAYC offers its members a certain mystique, the romantic idea of belonging to a select group of chosen ones embarked on a mission to transform the world - just like the secret societies did in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Bored Ape Yacht Club is not only public though, but also viral - thanks to its enormous potential for generating memes. That means that ape holders are not only members of a select club of owners, but also its main promoters through social networks.

But probably, the most important component of the collection’s masterplan to become a cultural franchise behemoth is Otherside - Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse project. Instead of a traditional land sale, Yuga Labs reserved 30,000 Otherdeed for Otherside parcels for BAYC and MAYC holders, who could claim them for free. The remaining metaverse parcels (55,000) were only accessible for purchase after wallet pre-approval (KYC) for a price of 305 ApeCoin each.

Bored monkey NFT rarity

There is no official taxonomy to classify NFTs, but in our portal you will see that we organize them based on five categories: PFP/avatars, art, gaming, derivatives and metaverse. As is obvious, the Bored Ape Yacht Club are NFTs of the avatar type or PFP (profile picture or profile image) that are used as status symbols or as a form of digital identity in social media and, in the future, in the metaverse.

As with all other PFP-type collections, each Boarded Ape is unique, but not all are equally valuable. Some apes have extremely rare typologies or attributes, while others are very common, which is often reflected in their price.

Unlike the CryptoPunks, the Bored Ape Yacht Club are not divided according to general typologies (sex or race). Instead, they are differentiated by a combination of 7 attributes, each of which presents a range of options:

Background color (8 variations). Clothes (43 options). Slope (6 options). Eyes (23 options). Skin (19 variations). Hat (36 options). Mouth (33 variations).

Among all these attributes, the type of skin has emerged among collectors as the most decisive trait for Bored Ape Yacht Club rarity. Specifically, the items featuring golden (solid gold) and psychedelic (trippy) skin are the ones that have reached the highest valuations (in some cases, several millions of dollars).

Bored Ape NFT price history

At the time of its launch in April 2021, Bored Ape Yacht Club mint price would be 0.08 ETH (which was equivalent to less than 200 USD at the time). In less than 12 hours, the collection would be completely sold.

Not long after the public sale, the collection started what ended up being one of the most epic bull runs in NFT history. The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT price floor peaked at the beginning of May 2022 at almost 145 ETH.

The subsequent bear market that affected crypto, stocks and NFTs alike, also impacted Bored Ape Yacht Club price over time. The price of the most popular PFP collection tanked for some months, and eventually found at 48 ETH (floor price) in November of the same year.

After bouncing from November lows, Bored Ape Yacht Club led a general recovery of the NFT market, followed by a sideways trend that at the time of this writing still persists (a trend that has had the collection ranging between 60 ETH and 70 ETH for a while). That translates to a Bored Ape Yacht Club market cap of 600,000 - 700,000 ETH.

In a nutshell, we can say that Bored Ape Yacht Club price history has been bumpy, but with a very positive and constant upwards trend if we look at the whole picture.

BAYC floor price stats

Remember that on our website we track the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT floor price (the lowest ask price of the collection) by aggregating price data feeds from all the main marketplaces. And it’s worth noting that not all nft monkey price trackers aggregate data from all these venues, making our platform the best option in town. Also, in the Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price field you will always have a link that will redirect you to the market with the best quote - so that you can acquire the cheapest Bored Ape seamlessly and easily at any moment.

You can also track daily bored ape nft sales, the bayc market cap and bayc price history. We offer the best bayc chart so you cant track ape nft price performance over time.

Currently, the process to find the Bored Ape floor price and buy the item involves connecting with a wallet compatible with the Ethereum Blockchain (for example MetaMask) to one of the main NFT marketplaces (such as OpenSea, LooksRare, NFTX, Coinbase NFT, etc).