How is Bored Ape Yacht Club revolutionizing the market of NFTs?
The NFT market has become such rich, that it's hard to keep track. CryptoPunks, Axis, Solana's SolPunks, Degenerate Apes, and Bored Ape Yacht Club are just a few of the multi-million dollar NFT fortunes. It turns out that crypto assets have not only become legal (and increasingly common) currency in many countries around the world. But there is also now merchandise closely related to cryptocurrency technology elements; for the first time in history, there is a trademark that claims the title of "NFTs brand ambassador" for itself.
The Bored Ape trademark comes from the set of viral images called the Bored Ape Yacht Club. So, what is the Bored Ape Yacht Club? The BAYC is a collection of pictures anchored to the Ethereum blockchain; they are cartoons of chimpanzee faces with funny expressions or flashy clothing items. They are sold for thousands of dollars, are even used by celebrities, and have become world-famous in 2021.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is an NFT collection of 10,000 ape avatars. As you can imagine, the artistic freedom to create all sorts of stylish apes under the sun shines through within that range. Some are working bums; some are cyborgs; some wear rainbow skins, while others shoot laser beams out of their eyes. So it's safe to say that there are more BAYC types than there are human personality types. As expected, this drove their sales through the roof in record time.
A few days after the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club in late April, all 10,000 apes sold out for $24.3 million in total, approximately $200 per ape.
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, Yuga Labs created BAYC inspired by the famous "Planet of the Apes" movie trilogy. Specifically, the meme "Apes together strong" uttered by Caesar in the first movie: "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (2011).
What is an NFT?
NFT stands for non-fungible token. In economics, a fungible asset is something with units that can be easily exchanged, like money. For example, with cash, one can trade a 10 dollar bill for two five dollar bills, which will have the same value. However, if something is not fungible, that is impossible: it means that it has unique properties, so it cannot be exchanged.
It could be a house or a work of art like the Mona Lisa, which is unique. One could photograph the painting or buy a copy, but only one original image will exist. NFTs are an "inimitable" asset in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other property type, but have no tangible form in themselves. These digital tokens can be understood as certificates of ownership of virtual or physical assets.
Characteristics of NFTs
Strangely unique: these assets have many analogies with works of art, of which there can be copies (it is even easier to make copies of digital works), but here the owner can certify that he is the sole and real owner of the original work, even though it can be (and is) easily shared on the internet. It's a curious situation and a twist on the value we place on physical and digital artworks.
Non-interoperable: you can't use a Cryptokitties avatar/card in other similar games like CryptoPunk.
Indivisible: unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs cannot be divided into smaller parts, and have full value as a complete entity or token, without more. You cannot have 1/1000 of a crypto-token.
Indestructible: the data of an NFT is stored on the blockchain through a Smart Contract, which makes it impossible to destroy, delete or replicate.
Absolute ownership: unlike music or movies, if you buy one of these goods its ownership is absolutely yours. You don't buy a license to watch the movie or listen to the song, but that intangible asset is completely yours.
Verifiable: the blockchain makes it possible to verify something that is rather more complex to prove or certify with things like art or stamp collecting, for example: the blockchain keeps a history of who has bought or sold an NFT and who its current (absolute) owner is, including the original creator from whom that digital asset was bought in the first place.
How do NFTs work?
Traditional works of art like paintings are valuable because they are unique. But digital files can easily be duplicated over and over again. With NFTs, art can be tokenized to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold. As with cryptocurrencies, a record of who owns what is stored on a shared ledger like the blockchain.
The records cannot be falsified because the ledger in question is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. NFTs can also contain smart contracts that could provide the artist with, for example, a share of a future sale of the token.
How much are NFTs valued at?
In theory, anyone can tokenize their work to sell it as an NFT, but interest has grown in the wake of reports of multi-million dollar sales. For example, on February 19, a Gif of Nyan Cat, the famous 2011 meme of a biscuit-bodied cat flying, sold for more than $500,000. A few weeks later, Canadian singer Grimes sold a collection of digital artwork for more than $6 million. But it's not just art being sold through NFTs. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet on the social network for $2.9 million.
Why are Bored Ape tokens so relevant?
An NFT is essentially backed by a deed of ownership of a digital item, allowing buyers of that NFT to prove that they own the only version of that image. It is a buyer's need to know that the NFT is authentic and that there is no other like it. In this case, buyers own an illustration of a disinterested-looking monkey with randomly generated features and accessories. No two images are exactly alike.
Bored Ape Yacht Club comes with perks.
Besides using them as digital avatars, NFTs also serve another purpose. Each BASIC NFT holder gets a lifetime membership to a secret club just for "Apes." One of the most famous Bored Ape owners is NFT star Stephen Curry, who paid $180,000 for a tweed Bored Ape NFT.
So far, it seems that the benefits of membership are highly profitable. For example, the Yuga Labs team launched a second series of apes creatively. But, instead of a new series, they released 10,000 "Mutant Ape serum vials." Each life member received one for free.
BAYC consists of three levels: M1, M2, and Mega Mutant. When injected into an ordinary Bored Ape, the serum generates a Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT. In addition, another 10,000 were released to the public, all selling for around $10,000 each, or about 3 ETH. At the time of publication, the Mutant Ape strain has reached nearly $260 million in total sales, according to OpenSea.
How to buy an "Ape"?
Many NFT investors have made fortunes selling these NFTs on the secondary market. If you want to join the fold of the secret sim club for future releases, there's only one thing to do: fill your cryptocurrency wallet with ETH.
Thanks to cryptocurrency wallet extensions, it has never been easier to participate in the NFT markets. All you have to do is follow this guide to install the MetaMask wallet. Then, when you open a website for an NFT marketplace like Rarible.com or OpenSea.io, connect it to the wallet and start your NFT adventures.
The rise of Bored Ape has boosted the sale of merchandise under the use of this trademark. In this way, it has sought to popularize the world of crypto-assets by linking them to other spheres of life. One of the most common examples of merchandise sold by the Bored Ape brand is easy cosmetic masks, the packaging of which are the avatars of the apes that give the brand distinction.