bored yacht club logo

How Four NFT Novices Created a Billion-Dollar Ecosystem of Cartoon Apes

By Samantha Hissong

Samantha Hissong

J ust last year, the four thirtysomethings behind Bored Ape Yacht Club — a collection of 10,000 NFTs, which house cartoon primates and unlock the virtual world they live in — were living modest lifestyles and working day jobs as they fiddled with creative projects on the side. Now, they’re multimillionaires who made it big off edgy, haphazardly constructed art pieces that also act as membership cards to a decentralized community of madcaps. What’s more punk rock than that?

The phenomenal nature of it all has to do with the recent appearance, all over the internet, of images of grungy apes with unimpressed expressions on their faces and human clothes on their sometimes-multicolored, sometimes-metal bodies. Most of the apes look like characters one might see in a comic about hipsters in Williamsburg — some are smoking and some have pizza hanging from their lips, while others don leather jackets, beanies, and grills. The core-team Apes describe the graffiti-covered bathroom of the club itself — which looks like a sticky Tiki bar — in a way that echoes that project’s broader mission: “Think of it as a collaborative art experiment for the cryptosphere.” As for the pixel-ish walls around the virtual toilet, that’s really just “a members-only canvas for the discerning minds of crypto Twitter,” according to a blurb on the website, which recognizes that it’s probably “going to be full of dicks.”

(Full-disclosure: Rolling Stone just announced a partnership with the Apes and is creating a collectible zine — similar to what the magazine did with Billie Eilish — and NFTs.)

“I always go balls to the wall,” founding Ape Gordon Goner tells Rolling Stone over Zoom. Everything about Goner, who could pass for a weathered 30 or a young 40, screams “frontman,” from his neck tattoo to his sturdy physique to the dark circles under his eyes and his brazen attitude. He’s a risk taker: Back during his gambling-problem days, he admits he’d “kill it at the tables” and then lose it all at the slot machines on the way to the car. He’s also the only one in the group that wasn’t working a normal nine-to-five before the sudden tsunami of their current successes — and that’s because he’s never had a “real job. Not bad for a high school dropout,” he says through a smirk. Although Goner and his comrades’ aesthetic and rapport mirror that of a musical act freshly thrust into stardom, they’re actually the creators of Yuga Labs, a Web3 company. 

Editor’s picks

Every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history.

Goner and his partners in creative crime — Gargamel, No Sass, and Emperor Tomato Ketchup — were inspired by the communities of crypto lovers that have blossomed on platforms like Twitter in recent years. Clearly, people with this once-niche interest craved a destination to gather, discuss blockchain-related developments, and hurl the most inside of inside jokes. Why not, they thought, give NFT collectors their own official home? And Bored Ape Yacht Club was born.

This summer, 101 of Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens, which were first minted in early May, resold for $24.4 million in an auction hosted by the fine-art house Sotheby’s. Competitor Christie’s followed shortly thereafter, auctioning off an art collectors’ haul of modern-day artifacts — which included four apes — for $12 million. Around the same time, one collector bought a single token directly from OpenSea — kind of like eBay for NFTs — for $2.65 million. A few weeks later, another Sotheby’s sale set a new auction record for the most-valuable single Bored Ape ever sold: Ape number 8,817 went for $3.4 million. At press time, tokens related to the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem — this includes the traditional apes, but also things called “mutant” apes and the apes’ pets — had generated around $1 billion. “My name’s not even Gordon,” says Goner, who, like the rest of Yuga Labs’ inner circle, chooses to hide his true identity behind a quirky pseudonym. “Gordon Goner just sounded like Joey Ramone. And that made it sound like I was in a band called the Goners. I thought that was fucking cool. But when we first started, I kept asking, ‘Are we the Beastie Boys of NFTs?’ Because, right after our initial success it felt like the Beastie Boys going on tour with Madonna: Everyone was like, ‘Who the fuck are these kids?’ ” (Funnily enough, Madonna’s longtime manager, Guy Oseary, signed on to rep the foursome about a month after Goner made this comment to Rolling Stone .) He’s referring to the commotion that immediately followed the first few days of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s existence, when sales were dismal. “Things were moving so slowly in that weeklong presale,” recalls Goner’s more soft-spoken colleague, Emperor Tomato Ketchup. “I think we made something between $30,000 and $60,000 total in sales. And then, overnight, it exploded. All of us were like, ‘Oh fuck, this is real now.’ ” The 10,000 tokens — each originally priced at 0.08 Ethereum (ETH), around $300 — had sold out. While the crypto community may have been asking who they were, the general public started wondering what all the fuss was about. Even Golden State Warriors player Stephen Curry started using his ape as his Twitter profile picture, for all of his 15.5 million followers to behold. 

Bored Ape art isn’t as valuable as it is because it’s visually pleasing, even though it is. It’s valuable because it also serves as a digital identity — for which its owner receives commercial usage rights, meaning they can sell any sort of spinoff product based on the art. The tokens, meanwhile, act like ID cards that give the owners access to an online Soho House of sorts — just a nerdier, more buck-wild one. Noah Davis, who heads up Christie’s online sales department for digital art, says that it’s the “perennial freebies and perks” that solidify the Bored Ape Yacht Club as “one of the most rewarding and coveted memberships.” “In the eyes of most — if not almost all of the art community — BAYC is completely misunderstood,” he says. However, within other tribes of pop culture, he continues, hugely prominent figures cherish the idea of having a global hub for some of the most “like-minded, tech-savvy, and forward-thinking individuals on the planet.” Gargamel is “a name I ridiculously gave myself based off the fact that my fiancée had never seen The Smurfs when we were launching this,” says Goner’s right-hand man, who looks kind of like a cross between the character he named himself after and an indie-music-listening liberal-arts school alum. He’s flabbergasted at the unexpected permanence of it all. “Now, I meet with CEOs of billion-dollar companies, and I’m like, ‘Hi, I’m Gargamel. What is it that you would like to speak to me about?’ ” 

The gang bursts out in laughter.

In conversing, Gargamel and Goner, whose relationship is the connective tissue that brought the others in, are mostly playful — but they do bicker, similar to how a frontman and lead guitarist might butt heads in learning to share the spotlight. They first met in their early twenties at a dive bar, in Miami, where they were both born and raised, and immediately started arguing about books. “He doesn’t like David Foster Wallace because he’s wrong about things,” Goner interjects, cheekily, as Gargamel attempts to tell their story. “He hasn’t even read Infinite Jest . He criticizes him, and yet he’s never read the book! He’s like, ‘Oh, it’s pretentious MFA garbage.’ No, it’s not.” Gargamel then points out that he has read other books by Wallace, while No Sass, who still hasn’t chimed in, flashes a half-smile that suggests they’ve been down this road more than once before. “I think, on the whole, he was the worst thing to happen to fucking MFA programs, given all the things people were churning out,” says Gargamel. They eventually decide to agree that Wallace, like J.D. Salinger, isn’t always interpreted correctly or taught well, and we move on — only after Goner points out the tattoos he got for Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski “at like 17,” but before diving too deep into postmodernist concepts. Goner and Gargamel’s relationship speaks to how the group operates as a whole, according to No Sass, whose name is self-explanatory. “There’s always a yin and yang going on,” he says. Throughout the call, No Sass continues to make sense of things and keep the others in check in an unwavering manner, positioning him as the backbone of the group — or our metaphorical drummer. “It’s like, I’ll come up with the idea that wins us the game,” Goner says, referencing his casino-traversing past. “And his job is to make sure we make it to the car park.” No Sass’ rhythm-section counterpart is clearly Tomato, the pseudo-band’s secret weapon who’s loaded with talent and harder to read. (He picked his name while staring at an album of the same name by English-French band Stereolab.) The project’s name, Bored Ape Yacht Club, represents a club for people who got rich quick by “aping in” — crypto slang for investing big in something unsure — and, thusly, are too bored to do anything but create memes and debate about analytics. The “yacht” part is coated in satire, given that the digital clubhouse the apes congregate in was designed to look like a dive bar in the swampy Everglades. 

Gargamel, whose college roommate started mining Bitcoin back in 2010, got Goner into crypto in 2017, when the latter was bedridden with an undisclosed illness, bored, and on his phone. “I knew he had a risk-friendly profile,” Gargamel says. “I said, ‘I’m throwing some money into some stupid shit here. You wanna get in this with me?’ He immediately took to it so hard, and we rode that euphoric wave of 2017 crypto up — and then cried all the way down the other side of the roller coaster.” At the start of 2021, they looked at modern relics like CryptoPunks and Hashmasks, which have both become a sort of cultural currency, and they looked at “crypto Twitter,” and wondered what would happen if they combined the collectible-art component with community membership via gamification. The idea was golden but they weren’t technologically savvy enough to know how to build the back end. So, Gargamel called up No Sass and Tomato, who both studied computer science at the same university he had attended for grad school. “I had no idea what was involved in the code for this,” Gargamel admits. “I read something that said something about Javascript, so I called them and said, ‘Do you guys know anything about Javascript?’ And that couldn’t be further from what you’re supposed to know.” While they were tech-savvy, No Sass and Tomato were not crypto-savvy. They both wrote their first lines of solidity code — a language for smart contracts — in February of this year. “I was like, ‘Just learn it! It’s going to be great. Let’s go,’ ” recalls Gargamel. “From a technical perspective, some of the stuff that we’ve built out has had relatively janky workflows, which people then seize upon, asking us how we did it,” says Tomato. “It’s actually stake-and-wire or whatever, but nobody else has done it.” A lot of “stress and fear” went into the first drop, according to No Sass: “We were constantly on the phone going, ‘Oh, shit, is this OK? Is it going to explode?’ ” He shakes his head. “I wish we still had simple NFT drops. We can pump those out superfast now.” “Every single thing we do scares the shit out of me,” adds Tomato.

They started out with unsharpened goals of capitalizing on a very clear trend. But a fter one particularly enervating night of incessant spitballing, Goner realized that all he really wanted was something to do and for like-minded people to talk to in an immersive, fantastical world. Virtual art was enticing, but it needed to do something too. “We’d see these NFT collections that didn’t have any utility,” Goner says. “That didn’t make any sense to me at the time, because you can cryptographically verify who owns these things. Why wouldn’t you offer some sort of utility?”

Gargamel told him the next day he loved the clubhouse idea so much that he’d want to do it even if it was a failure. They realized they just craved “a hilarious story to tell 10 years later,” Gargamel says. “I figured we’d say, ‘Yeah, we spent 40 grand and six months making a club for apes, but it didn’t go anywhere.’ And that’s how we actually started having fun in the process.” Goner chimes in: “Because at least we could say, ‘This is how we spent our summer. How ridiculous is that? We made the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and it was a total disaster.’ ”  Gargamel interjects to remind everyone that Tomato ended up reacting to their springtime victory by buying a Volvo, the memory of which incites another surge of laughter. They haven’t indulged in too many lavish purchases since then, but they all ordered Pelotons, Tomato bought a second Volvo, and they all paid their moms back for supporting them in becoming modern-day mad scientists. “I’ll never forget the night that we sold out,” says No Sass. “It was like two or three in the morning, and I hear my phone ring. I see that it’s Tomato and think something has gone terribly wrong. I pick up the phone and he’s like, ‘Dude, you need to wake up right now. We just made a million dollars.’ ” Nansen, a company that tracks blockchain analytics, reported that for one night Bored Ape Yacht Club had the most-used smart contract on Ethereum. “That’s absurd,” says Gargamel. “Uniswap [a popular network of decentralized finance apps] does billions and billions of transactions. But for that one night, we took over the world.” At press time, the foursome — let’s just go ahead and call them the Goners — had personally generated about $22 million from the secondary market alone. “Every time I talk to my parents about how this has blown up, they literally do not know what to say,” adds Tomato, whose mom started crying when he first explained what had happened.

Since its opening, the group has created pets for the apes via the Bored Ape Kennel Club, as well as the Mutant Ape Yacht Club. The latter was launched to expand the community to interested individuals who weren’t brave enough to “ape in” at the beginning: Yuga Labs unleashed 10,000 festering, bubbling, and/or oozing apes — complete with missing limbs and weird growths — via a surprise Dutch auction, which was used to deter bots from snatching up inventory by starting at a maximum price and working its way down. With a starting price of 3 ETH — or about $11,000 — this move opened up the playing field for about an hour, which is how long it took for the mutants to sell out. (The team also randomly airdropped 10,000 “serums,” which now pop up on OpenSea for tens of thousands of dollars, for pre-existing Apes to “drink” and thusly create zombified clones.) When they sold 500 tangible hats to ape-holders in June, the guys spent days packaging products in Gargamel’s mom’s backyard in Florida. “Immediately, some of them sold for thousands of dollars,” Gargamel exclaims. “It was a $25 hat. We were like, ‘Holy shit, we can be a Web3 streetwear brand. What does that even look like?’ ”

But the team is still searching for ways to create more value by building even more doors that the tokens can unlock. They recently surprised collectors with a treasure hunt; the winner received 5 ETH — worth more than $16,000 at press time — and another ape. And on Oct. 1, they announced the first annual Ape Fest, which runs from Oct. 31 through Nov. 6 and includse an in-person gallery party, yacht party, warehouse party, merch pop-up, and charity dinner in New York. Goner tells Rolling Stone that they’re currently discussing partnership ideas with multiple musical acts, but he refuses to reveal additional details in fear of jinxing things. Further down the line, the Goners see a future of interoperability, so that collectors can upload their apes into various corners of the metaverse: Hypothetically, an ape could appear inside a popular video game like Fortnite , and the user could dress it in digital versions of Bored Ape Yacht Club merch. “We want to encourage that as much as possible,” says Gargamel. “We’re making three-dimensional models of everybody’s ape now. But, y’know, making 10,000 perfect models takes a little bit of time.” At the start of the year, the guys had no idea their potentially disastrous idea would become a full-time job. They were working 14 hours a day to get the project up and running, and after the big drop, they decided to up that to 16 hours a day. “None of us have really slept in almost seven months now,” says Goner. “We’re teetering on burnout.” To avoid that, Yuga Labs has already put a slew of artists on staff and hired social media managers and Discord community managers, as well as a CFO. “We want to be a Web3 lifestyle company,” says Goner, who emphasizes that they’re still growing. “I’m a metaverse maximalist at this point. I think that Ready Player One experience is really on the cusp of happening in this world.” If Bored Ape Yacht Club is essentially this band of brothers’ debut album, there’s really no telling what their greatest hits will look like.

Most Popular

Pat sajak passes 'wheel of fortune' hosting baton to ryan seacrest and tells him: 'you’re never going to find a better job' or 'a better co-host' in vanna white, kenya moore suspended indefinitely from ‘real housewives of atlanta’, prince harry & meghan markle might be going back to their royal exit plan that queen elizabeth nixed, photographer wins ai image contest with real picture, then gets disqualified, you might also like, kylie minogue, janelle monáe and keke palmer kick off pride month with a bang at west hollywood’s outloud music festival, eddie redmayne, jonathan groff, daniel radcliffe and more hit the carlyle for the tony awards after party, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, how ‘inside out 2’ created its virtuosic panic attack sequence, learfield, penn state settle legal dispute over multimedia rights.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

What Is Bored Ape Yacht Club?

• Understanding BAYC
• The BAYC Team
• BAYC's High Value
• More Than an NFT

The Bottom Line

• Cryptocurrency
• Strategy & Education

Bored Ape Yacht Club

Erika Rasure is globally-recognized as a leading consumer economics subject matter expert, researcher, and educator. She is a financial therapist and transformational coach, with a special interest in helping women learn how to invest.

Bored Ape Yacht Club, popularly called BAYC, is a collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain . These NFTs are graphical representations of cartoon-like apes that are distinctive by their metadata, which includes the characters’ backgrounds, earrings, clothes, fur, and eyes. Metadata for NFTs is information about and descriptions of a token that the NFT creator supplies.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, which was launched in 2021, is similar to pieces of artwork sold physically. However, these pieces exist only digitally and are one of a kind because they live on the blockchain (which allows ownership).

Key Takeaways

• Bored Ape Yacht Club is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection of 10,000 cartoon-like apes.
• At launch, each Bored Ape Yacht Club token cost 0.08 Ether (ETH), or $220; by mid-October 2022, they cost 76 ETH, or approximately $100,418.
• BAYC was developed in April 2021 by Yuga Labs, whose founders use the pseudonyms Gordon Goner and Gargamel.
• Rarity, utilities, and celebrity endorsement drive the high price of the BAYC collection. 
• BAYC is considered a status symbol, and celebrities like NBA star Stephen Curry, singers Eminem and Snoop Dogg, and late-night show host Jimmy Fallon own one.

Understanding Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)

The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT was launched in 2021 at the pinnacle of the cryptocurrency bull market. BAYC has flourished among other notable NFTs, including CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks.

When launched, a BAYC cost 0.08 Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum platform. That was equivalent to $220 at the time. It sold out within 12 hours. By mid-October 2022, it had climbed to a “floor price” of 76 ETH, or approximately $100,418.

A floor price refers to the minimum cost of an NFT within a collection. The dollar value of BAYC is subject to the price of Ether—if ETH rises, the value of the NFTs within this collection takes off. BAYC’s trading volume on Oct. 14, 2022, according to NFT marketplace OpenSea, was 673,000 ETH.

BAYC has garnered interest from celebrities, who purchased the NFTs at inflated prices. Some high-profile stars who flaunt their BAYC include “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, who bought Bored Ape #599; NBA champions Steph Curry and Shaquille O’Neal; singers Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Justin Bieber; and world-class soccer player Neymar Jr.

In a historic moment in September 2021, Sotheby’s , one of the world’s largest auction houses, closed its online auction for 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs at $24.4 million.

The Team Behind BAYC

Yuga Labs developed the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The Yuga Labs team comprises four pseudonymous core members: Gordon Goner and Gargamel (co-founders), No Sass, and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, who handled the technical aspects of BAYC.

They appeared under these pseudonyms in the early days of the launch. But BuzzFeed’s revelation of the co-founders’ identities in February 2022 led the other two core members to also give up their incognito status and post pictures of themselves on X (formerly Twitter).

On March 11, 2022, Yuga Labs acquired the intellectual property for rival NFT collections CryptoPunks and Meebits, giving it ownership of the brand and logo of each of those NFT collections. CryptoPunks is one of the earliest NFT projects. It was among the most valued NFT collections on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, with a trading volume of 1 million ETH before it got delisted in February 2022 for a copyright violation.

In a fundraising round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the Yuga Labs team raised $450 million. In March 2022, it was reported to be valued at $4 billion. Yuga Labs planned to use the capital to expand its activities and accelerate brand growth.

Other NFT collections that Yuga Labs started are Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC)—a spinoff of BAYC—and Bored Ape Kennel Club. Both were trading at volumes of 457,000 ETH and 110,000 ETH, respectively, on OpenSea in mid-October 2022.

What Makes BAYC Valuable?

Whether the Bored Ape collection is truly worth millions of dollars has been hotly debated. Some believe the high valuations are simply based on speculation. But, in fact, rarity, celebrity endorsements, and utilities and perks have driven the collection’s value up.

The array of BAYC’s unique traits and accessories are used to measure its value. The term “rarity” gauges how unusual an NFT is within a collection with an assigned number. In the BAYC collection, there are more than 160 traits, and each ape may have four to seven trait categories. These traits are background, clothes, earrings, eyes, fur, hat, and mouth.

The most expensive Bored Ape in the collection, BAYC #8817, was auctioned in October 2021 for $3.4 million on Sotheby’s Metaverse marketplace, an online platform dedicated to rare and extraordinary NFTs. BAYC #8817 had the Solid Gold Fur trait—making it a relatively rare variety of the NFT. Other characteristics of the #8817 token are the Silver Hoop Earrings and the Wool Turtleneck.

Celebrity Endorsement

BAYC has enticed several celebrities and brands to own pieces of its NFT collection. Adidas is one of the brands contributing to the hype surrounding the NFT collection. Adidas launched “Into the Metaverse,” its native digital collectible, in partnership with Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gmoney, and PUNKS Comic.

Following the partnership launch, BAYC uploaded an image of a Bored Ape wearing an Adidas jacket on X. Gmoney tweeted a silhouette picture that displayed the Adidas logo. PUNKS Comic tweeted a picture of a character wearing a shirt bearing the Adidas logo.

Other celebrities, beyond those already mentioned, who bought BAYC include billionaire Mark Cuban, prominent X personality and DJ Steve Aoki, X personalities and musicians Post Malone and Mike Shinoda, and producer and songwriter Timbaland.

Utilities and Perks 

One of the distinctive features of the Bored Ape NFT, compared with other NFT collections, is its utilities. Owners of Bored Apes have exclusive access to a private Discord group where they chat, network, and build relationships with other Bored Ape members, including celebrities who own a Bored Ape. Ape holders also have access to “The Bathroom,” letting them make a drawing every 15 minutes on a virtual bathroom wall that acts as a community board.

Some utilities that have made BAYC attractive include ApeCoin, ApeCoin DAO, and upcoming metaverse games and events. ApeCoin is the official currency for the Bored Ape ecosystem and is used to purchase BAYC’s merchandise, event tickets, and more. ApeCoin DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization whose members—every ApeCoin holder—govern the DAO’s treasury and decide on future projects by voting on proposals.

Overall, owning a Bored Ape is considered a status symbol among many individuals. That's another key reason for the steady rise in its price since its launch.

The exclusivity that comes with the token’s perks makes Bored Ape Yacht Club much more valuable in price than many other NFTs.

BAYC Is More Than a NFT Collection

In March 2022, BAYC launched ApeCoin and adopted it as the official currency for the BAYC ecosystem. Shortly thereafter, ApeCoin was distributed to BAYC NFT holders. As mentioned, with ApeCoin, holders can participate in the governing process and engage the Bored Ape ecosystem. The ApeCoin DAO members will chair further development on the team’s road map, including creating blockchain games, hosting virtual events in the metaverse , and introducing physical products.

In December 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club partnered with Animoca, a blockchain gaming firm, to launch a play-to-earn game using the BAYC NFT. Animoca has designed some popular play-to-earn games , such as The Sandbox, and is valued at more than $5 billion.

Also, via the aforementioned partnership with BAYC, Adidas plans to cast a 3D Bored Ape character in its upcoming metaverse game. The goal is to foster 3D interaction among internet users through collectibles .

Is It Possible to Lose a Bored Ape Yacht Club Non-Fungible Token?

Yes. Several Bored Apes have been stolen through fraudulent hacks. In April 2022, the official Instagram account and Discord server of Bored Ape Yacht Club were hacked, and a phishing link was posted on both BAYC platforms. Hackers stole about 30 Bored Ape tokens from owners who approved a transfer using a fake “mint” link. Outside of potential hacks, however, it is increasingly challenging to lose a Bored Ape NFT.

How Can I Buy a Bored Ape Token?

To buy a Bored Ape token and be part of the exclusive club, visit a platform where the BAYC collection is listed, such as OpenSea. Connect a compatible Ethereum wallet to the marketplace. Once that’s done, search “Bored Ape Yacht Club,” filter out the ape of your choice, and place an order. If the order is confirmed, the ownership of the ape will be transferred to you.

Are Bored Apes Losing Value?

The value of Bored Apes, like most NFTs, is tied to the crypto market’s condition. In a bear market , where prices of crypto assets steadily decline, it’s expected that the value of Bored Apes will follow the same pattern. But if crypto market sentiment is bullish, then Bored Apes’ value will probably rise above the current floor price.

BAYC has evolved into more than a profile-picture (PFP) NFT. It has set a new standard and pace for other NFT collections with the various utilities it has added and plans to add to its collection. Yuga Labs has introduced products built on the blockchain as well as physical products attached to the Bored Ape collection.

OpenSea. “ Bored Ape Yacht Club .”

X. “ @BoredApeYC: Apr. 23, 2021 .”

Yuga Labs. “ Let’s Make a NFT .”

Decrypt. “ The Biggest Celebrity NFT Owners in the Bored Ape Yacht Club .”

Sotheby’s. “ Samsung’s State-of-the-Art 98 Inch Neo QLED TV on View at Sotheby’s .”

BuzzFeed News. “ We Found the Real Names of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Pseudonymous Founders .”

X. “ @TomatoBAYC: Feb. 8, 2022 .”

X. “ @SassBAYC: Feb. 8, 2022 .”

X. “ @yugalabs: Mar. 11, 2022 .”

OpenSea. “ CryptoPunks .”

OpenSea. “ Mutant Ape Yacht Club .”

OpenSea. “ Bored Ape Kennel Club .”

X. “ @Sothebysverse: Oct. 26, 2021 .”

X. “ @BoredApeYC: Nov. 28, 2021 .”

X. “ @gmoneyNFT: Nov. 28, 2021 .”

ApeCoin. “ ApeCoin Is for the Web3 Economy .”

Animoca Brands. “ Bored Ape Yacht Club and Animoca Brands Join Forces to Make Blockchain NFT Game .”

Animoca Brands. “ Animoca Brands Raises US$358,888,888 at Over US$5B Valuation to Grow the Open Metaverse .”

Adidas. “ Into the Metaverse: Let's Go .”

X. “ @BoredApeYC: Apr. 25, 2022 .”

CoinDesk. “ NFTs Stolen After Bored Ape Yacht Club Instagram, Discord Hacked .”

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

Welcome to the new CoinCentral !

• Press Releases

What are Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) & Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs)

What is Lido: How Liquid Staking is Changing Ethereum

What is Optimism ($OP): Layer 2s Scaling ETH and the $OP Token

The Base Ecosystem and Coinbase: Your Ultimate Guide to the Ethereum Layer-2

Bear Market Trends

3 Common Cryptocurrency Tax “Loopholes” and Why They Don’t Work

Bored ape yacht club guide: bayc, apecoin, and the apeverse.

Never Miss Another Opportunity. Get hand selected news & info from our Crypto Experts so you can make educated, informed decisions that directly affect your crypto profits!

Regenerative Finance 101: A Guide to Crypto’s ReFi Movement

Laying the foundation: cryptopunks, enter the apeverse, what is apecoin a guide on the bored ape yacht club token , the apecoin airdrop, final thoughts: what is the bored ape yacht club future.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is an exclusive membership project open to any and all owners of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, underpinned by the ApeCoin (APE) token.

BAYC is considered one of the most forward-pushing NFT projects on the market, and might be one of the highest returns on investment ever recorded for early holders. 

Released in April 2021, each NFT from the collection of 10,000 BAYC NFTs had a mint price of  0.08 Ethereum. By December 2021, each BAYC NFT had an average floor price of around 60 Ethereum. After the ApeCoin (APE) airdrop, the floor price was over 100 ETH.

The creators also released a few derivative sets available to be claimed for free by BAYC holders including the Bored Ape Kennel Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club. These derivatives rewarded BAYC holders while creating addiionalmarkets for people wishing to join the BAYC fold with a not-as-valuable variation; this was a very effective way for Yuga Labs to scale the project and raise capital for future growth. 

The BAYC turned a couple of hundred dollar investment into hundreds of thousands of dollars within the span of months. 

The following Bored Ape Yacht Club guide explores the BAYC universe, its role in the evolving NFT landscape, and ApeCoin. 

Cryptopunks is a historic project created by Larva Labs that launched in June 2017; it issued 10,000 profile picture NFTs, and all were free for anyone to claim.

Why Profile Pictures?

The NFT profile picture movement is fueled by undertones of association and affiliation– think of it like holding a similar model of car in a classic car club. Higher-ticket profile pictures tend to demonstrate status, and since ownership of NFTs is verifiable, it holds its weight. 

Cryptopunks set a trend in the NFT ecosystem: release 10,000 NFT profile pictures and an online community forms. 

Cryptopunks have historically been an aspirational asset for the average NFT buyer. The Bored Ape Yacht Club and other projects iterated the Cryptopunk model by granting intellectual property rights to buyers, which Cryptopunks did not. 

In other words, BAYC holders have full IP rights to do what they want with their NFTs, posing a stark difference from the Cryptopunk model– creators Larva Labs had the full legal right to go after Cryptopunk holders had they infringed on the larger brand’s copyright.  

On March 17, 2022, Yuga Labs (BAYC creators) purchased the CryptoPunks holding company Larva Labs (including the Cryptopunks IP); the first thing that Yuga Labs did after they obtained the IP was drop all infringement claims against Cryptopunks holders. 

Yuga Labs is credited with a moral coup in the NFT community, signaling a shift to a less litigious and more open and inclusive NFT ecosystem.

Yuga Labs is building out a dominant NFT ecosystem. 

A leaked pitch deck shed a glimpse into the minds of the creators.

While pitching BAYC to a leading venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz ( a16z) the Yuga Labs team revealed that it is building a metaverse, video games, launching additional NFTs, and going to be selling metaverse land.

Yuga Labs intends to build the strongest NFT brand we have ever seen, and it’s an evolving case study on Web 2.0 versus Web 3.0.

Web 2.0 companies look to extract value out of their users in exchange for a product, service, or experience, passing along the financial value to stakeholders (traditionally these stakeholders are venture capitalists, angel investors, or private equity funds.)

Web 3.0 companies aim to keep the value circling around their ecosystem of users– in Web 3, the direct stakeholders are the token holders.  

Historically,early-stage investing in the United States has been an opportunity reserved for accredited investors. 

Blockchain technologies make the accredited investing criteria difficult to enforce– a web of crypto wallets, DAOs, and other crypto investment vehicles can purchase any token or digital asset they please. 

By sourcing investment from traditional VC funds like a16z, Yuga Labs will start to face pressure to work in a Web 2.0 model while most likely attempting to present it in a Web 3.0 way to their users . 

In March 2022, Yuga Labs closed a $450 million round led by a16z, valuing the company at $4 billion. 

ApeCoin is an ERC-20 governance and utility token created primarily for the APE ecosystem to empower a decentralized web3 community. As the open-source protocol layer of the ecosystem, ApeCoin underpins several key use cases:

• Governance: ApeCoin allows holders to participate in ApeCoin DAO. 
• Unification of Spend: As the ecosystem’s utility token, all participants can share the use of the open currency without centralized intermediaries.  
• Access: the token gives access to exclusive gains and services that are exclusive to tokenholders only. 
• Incentivization: Third-party developers are incentivized to participate in the APE ecosystem since APE is built into services and games.

It’s not a stretch to liken, not pejoratively, ApeCoin as the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s “Chuck E Cheese” token. Holders can buy merch, play games (to earn more ApeCoin), and spend it in other ways.

Yuga Labs also set up an ecosystem fund; ApeCoin functions as a DAO token, enabling ApeCoin holders to vote on ecosystem happenings and fund allocations. Holders can also write proposals for what they would like to see happen, to be voted on by the community. 

Yuga Labs gifted ApeCoin DAO a one-of-one NFT of a blue Bored Ape Yacht Club logo, which conveys with it all rights and privileges to the logo’s intellectual property to the DAO. The ApeCoin DAO will vote and decide how the IP is used.

There is an appointed Board to facilitate DAO decisions. The current ApeCoin DAO board members include:

• Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian 
• Head of Ventures & Gaming at FTX Amy Wu
• Principal at Sound Ventures, Maaria Bajwa 
• Co-founder & Chairman of Animoca Brands, Yat Siu 
• President & General Counsel at Horizen Labs, Dean Steinbeck

Token holders can vote board members out every six months.

Many millionaires and multi-millionaires were created via the ApeCoin airdrop. 

Each Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holder was airdropped an ApeCoin allocation on March 17, 2022; Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders received 15% of the total token allocation. 

Soon after, popular exchanges Coinbase, FTX, and Binance listed the token available for trading.

If you held a qualifying NFT and were airdropped ApeCoin and subsequently sold it at $13.69 on airdrop day:

• One Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT: 10,094 APE, or about $138,237.17 at the time.
• One Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT: 2,042 APE, $28,021.28  at the time.
• One Kennel Club NFT: 856 APE tokens, $11,718.64 at the time.

If you had multiple Bored Apes and Mutants you got a multiplier against the amount of allocation. 

The remaining tokens will be allocated to project launch contributors, Yuga Labs and its founders, as well as a donation to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem will be incredibly interesting to follow, as multiple precedents are being set:

How will a venture-funded Web 3.0 company as large as Yuga Labs deliver value to both tranches of token and investor stakeholders

How will ApeCoin underpin the entire ecosystem– will it hold its value? 

How will the value creation of the massive BAYC machine spread throughout other realms of crypto?

Never Miss Another Opportunity! Get hand selected news & info from our Crypto Experts so you can make educated, informed decisions that directly affect your crypto profits. Subscribe to CoinCentral free newsletter now.

What’s Happening in the Cosmos Ecosystem? An Early 2022 Review

Legal disclaimer.

CoinCentral’s owners, writers, and/or guest post authors may or may not have a vested interest in any of the above projects and businesses. None of the content on CoinCentral is investment advice nor is it a replacement for advice from a certified financial planner.

Get Crypto News - Delivered!

Bored Ape Yacht Club

2021–present [ ].

Bored Ape Yacht Club: What Is It & Why Are They So Expensive?

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

What Is an NPU? How to Compare Its Specs Like Other PC Hardware

Llama 3 vs. gpt-4: which is better, gpt-4 vs. gpt-4 turbo vs. gpt-4o: what's the difference.

Despite the numerous explanations that have flooded the internet since its introduction, most people are still baffled by Web 3.0 and NFTs.

It doesn't help that the industry is rife with preposterous purchases, such as Eminem's roughly $460,000 purchase of a cartoon ape. This ape is one of 10,000 in an NFT collection called the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Naturally, you probably have a lot of questions. What on earth is the Bored Ape Yacht Club? Why is a cartoon so expensive? Is this another financial bubble masquerading as innovation? Well, we have answers. Let's dig in.

What Is the Bored Ape Yacht Club?

Bored Apes are a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs based on the Ethereum blockchain. The Bored Apes are grungy simian avatars with different characteristics—some rarer than others. For example, only 5% of Bored Apes have red fur, and 3% have a biker vest. The rarer the traits of a Bored Ape, the more expensive it's likely to be.

As is the case with all NFTs, the Bored Ape is not the asset itself—instead, it's a kind of certificate of ownership or, in this case, a passkey. If you're new to NFT purchases, find out what you actually own when you buy an NFT .

Bored Apes are the cornerstone of an elite movement called, you guessed it, the Bored Apes Yacht Club. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card and grants access to members-only benefits—the first of which is THE BATHROOM, a community drawing board where Bored Ape owners can leave digital graffiti. Bored Ape ownership also comes with access to a private Discord server where you can hang out and chat with other owners.

All the Bored Apes were initially available on a first-come, first-served basis and were priced the same—0.8 ETH or about $190 at release. But, because they all sold out quickly, they are now available on the secondary market OpenSea , which is like eBay for NFTs. As of writing, the floor price for an Ape on OpenSea is 108 ETH, or about $368,000.

Who's Behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club?

The Bored Ape Yacht Club was created by four founders via their company Yuga Labs, in 2021. The founders go by cartoonish pseudonyms: Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and No Sass. Or at least they did until February 2022, when BuzzFeed revealed the identities of Gordon Goner and Gargamel.

It turns out Gargamel is Greg Solano, a writer and book critic, and Gordon Goner is 35-year-old Wylie Aronow. Both went on to reveal their true identities on Twitter alongside their Bored Apes. Following that, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and No Sass went ahead and did the same.

Per a Rolling Stone interview , the founders drew inspiration for BAYC from modern NFT OGs like CryptoPunks, which have become a sort of cultural currency. Like Bored Apes, CryptoPunks are also a 10,000-strong collection of unique NFT avatars, and they also cost a fortune—with one selling for a whopping $11.7 million. If you haven't already, catch up with news about CryptoPunks and why they're so expensive.

For BAYC, the plan was to combine the collectible-art component of NFTs with community membership, essentially giving NFT ownership some utility beyond just being cult symbols of crypto cool kids.

Why Are Bored Apes So Expensive?

To the most pressing question of all: why do Bored Apes cost so much? Even the most exclusive club memberships in the US do not cost $368k. What's the fuss about? Let's see.

Bored Ape art is not only valuable because it serves as a digital identity—but also because of the accompanying commercial usage rights. Not only can Bored Ape owners re-sell the NFT for a profit, but they can also sell spinoff products based on the art.

One Bored Ape owner set up a Twitter account for his ape , spinning an entire backstory where the ape is Jenkins, a valet at the Yacht Club. Jenkins is personable, crypto-savvy, and tells amazing stories—it's the perfect combo for a successful Twitter account.

Jenkins' story is made all the more endearing by the fact that he was the cheapest ape in the collection, which influenced his character as a valet. On a basic level, people are drawn to the classic "rise of the underdog" story.

In September 2021, Jenkins was signed to a real-life agency to explore publishing opportunities across books, podcasts, films, TV, and more. He'll also have his own biography, written in part by New York Times bestselling author Neil Strauss.

Jenkins' owners are creating a sort of sub-BAYC community by allowing users to buy NFTs that serve as rights to vote on the creative direction of Jenkin's first book release. It's essentially a massive community project, except in this case, people are paying to participate.

The potential for opportunities like this drives up the value of a Bored Ape.

Brands have also 'aped in', with Arizona Iced Tea purchasing a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT in August 2021 and using it in marketing materials. Adidas also purchased a BAYC NFT intending to develop a character and backstory.

Some basic economics here: because there are only 10,000 Bored Apes, the supply of the NFT art is pretty limited. Coupled with the massive interest in the brand, we have a high-demand/low-supply dynamic that inevitably drives prices up.

To boot, some Bored Ape avatars within the same collection are rarer than others. Each Ape is a one-of-a-kind, randomly generated combination of 170 traits, such as background color, earrings, expression, headwear, clothing, etc. This derived scarcity also contributes to the high prices of some Bored Apes.

Exclusive content

BAYC offers exclusive content benefits to Bored Ape holders, some of which are spelled out in the detailed roadmap on the Bored Ape Yacht Club website. The roadmap is a sort of to-do list that the founders intend to check off when they hit their target sales percentages.

In keeping with the 10th goalpost of finding "new ways to ape with our friends", the BAYC have gotten even more creative with their community-building tactics.

For example, in June 2021, every Bored Ape holder was allowed to 'adopt' a canine companion NFT for free (only paying for 'gas', which is the fee you have to pay for processing transactions on the Ethereum blockchain). That's how Bored Ape Kennel Club was born. The club used secondary sales of these canine companions to raise $1 million for animal shelters.

While these dogs were free for BAYC holders, the current floor price for a Bored Ape Kennel Club dog is 7.60 ETH or about $17,000 at current ETH prices.

In August 2021, BAYC created 20,000 mutant Apes. They released 10,000 to the public for 3 ETH to bring new members on board. It worked— the entire set sold out within an hour, generating $96 million in the process.

But, all Bored Ape owners got a free airdrop of 10,000 digital vials of mutant serums with which they could mint new mutant apes from existing Bored Apes. And they could sell the new NFT on the secondary market for profit.

And in March 2022 — the BAYC launched their own cryptocurrency, the APE coin , and airdropped $ape tokens to each BAYC and MAYC holder. Owners of BAYC NFTs will be able to claim approximately 10,000 ApeCoin each, which amounts to about $100,000 for each holder.

The APE coins are already finding utility within the BAYC community—Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa released an eight-track NFT mixtape for $APE holders.

To top it off, BAYC has started hosting club members at real-life, offline events that will become a yearly tradition. BAYC held its first annual Ape Fest in November 2021, which included a gallery exhibition, a costume contest, and a party on a real 1000-capacity yacht off the coast of Manhattan. Lil Baby, the Strokes, Questlove, Beck, Chris Rock, and Aziz Ansari all made surprise appearances at the grand finale "warehouse" party in Brooklyn.

Celebrity Backing

Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone, Mark Cuban, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, Stephen Curry, Eminem, and Shaquille O'Neal all own Bored Apes. And it's a well-known fact that involving celebrities in anything can raise interest—and prices.

Because of the significant celeb involvement, Bored Apes have become a status symbol — like a digital Veblen good — the more expensive they are, the more people want to have one.

Early Entrance

While Bored Apes aren't the first NFT collection, they're one of the few collections out there. Not to discredit the innovation, but the novelty does contribute to the movement's success. CryptoPunks , for example, are valuable primarily because they represent the first NFT collection.

BAYC bought Cryptopunks in early March 2022—an acquisition that significantly tackles competition and establishes their position as pioneers of the NFT-community movement. BAYC plans to grant intellectual property and commercialization rights to CryptoPunks owners, just as they have with Bored Ape owners. Inevitably, this will increase demand, which will lead to a price increase.

How's That for Monkey Business?

BAYC has recently raised $450 million in funding to develop its own gamified, decentralized Metaverse project dubbed Otherside. The company is gunning for a "Ready-Player-One-Esque" experience that merges virtual reality with real life. If their Metaverse project succeeds, the utility for the BAYC's offerings will blow up at scale.

There's a lot of doubt surrounding the viability of the NFT sector in the cryptosphere, but the BAYC's moves are establishing the brand as more than just an art collectible. If anyone thought the BAYC a fluke, the company's methods for building a community and incentivizing participation should change their minds—this is definitely a brand to keep an eye on.

• Technology Explained

Bored Apes Yacht Club: The monkey business behind the world's most expensive NFTs

Celebs and NFT platforms sing the project's praises—while secretly pursuing their own interests

The Bored Ape Yacht Club has become one of the most-prestigious NFT projects on the planet. But what kind of tactics did it employ to tower above the millions of other not-really-dissimilar NFT collections? OMR cut through the monkey business and found companies pushing the project on the downlow—all in the pursuit of their own interests.

An exclusive club with a logo featuring a comic ape, membership perks like exclusive parties and members such as A-listers like Eminem, Snoop, Serena Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow and NBA star Steph Curry—if you’ve heard of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) that description would seem more than apt.

BAYC drop was a flop

It’s been long road for BAYC to reach its current in-demand status. In April 2021, Yuga Labs, the company founded by two thirtysomethings behind the BAYC , releases 10,000 NFTs (If you’ve been living under a digital rock for the past year+ here is our detailed breakdown of WTF NFTs are ) to attract NFT collectors. The pre-launch drop flops; only 650 BAYC NFTs are sold.

It’s not until the "reveal" and the official launch that two influential individuals from the crypto scene snatch up several BAYC NFTs and start banging the drum: NFT entrepreneur Jimmy McNelis aka "j1mmyeth" finds out about the BAYC from a tweet from an "Honorary Ape" ( a  collection of 35 NFTs of special members , that Yuga Labs gifted to smaller-scale crypto influencers). McNelis buys 100, then 320 more, tweets repeatedly about it (at the time McNelis has followers in the low 5-figure range) and ends up elevating BAYC’s profile in the crypto scene.

Recommended editorial content

At this point you will find external content from Twitter that complements the article. You can display it with one click.

I consent to external content being displayed to me. This allows personal data to be transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy.

Whales gonna Whale

While this is going on, McNelis recommends BAYC to a group of business associates in a private chat (listen to the exchange in the Gary Vaynerchuk podcast ), including anonymous NFT collector "Pranksy." He gained notoriety in the scene as a collector of NBA Top Shot NFTs (Top Shots are video moments from the NBA packaged and dropped as digital trading cards). Pranksy is said to have turned a USD 600 investment into an NFT portfolio worth several million dollars .

There are divergent opinions about whales in NFT circles like Pranksy. On the one hand, they are admired for the success they’ve had. Even more, as they often purchase numerous NFTs from new collections, they help generate awareness and subsequent demand. On the other hand, some of these NFT whales have a reputation of being able to inflate prices and a collection’s value just through their name and social media reach—only to sell high and make bank. Smaller investors are then left holding the losses of a given project.

Ape flex with PFP

On May 1, 2021, Pranksy buys 250 BAYC NFTs and over the course of the coming hours expands his collection to a total of 1250. Just like McNelis, Pranksy tweets repeatedly about the purchases—at the time, Pranksy has nearly 50k followers on Twitter. These two "sweeps" unleash a snowball effect: interest in BAYC NFTs skyrockets, the message spreads rapidly on crypto Discord servers and the Bored Ape logo becomes a status symbol on crypto Twitter. It takes Yuga Labs fewer than 12 hours to sell out the entire collection—an estimated USD 2.8m in revenue for the company.

In an interview  a week later, the BAYC founders confirm that McNelis and Pranksy were both instrumental in the success of the project. They underscored, however, that they had zero prior contact to the two NFT entrepreneurs—only after McNelis' initial purchase did the team send him a message thanking him.

Yuga Labs earns with each resale

In the months post-launch, McNelis and Pranksy continued to raise awareness for the BAYC—in their unofficial role as BAYC marketing ambassador to celebs, as well. In August, Pranksy, for example, sells a BAYC NFT to superstar DJ Steve Aoki, who tweets it out to his 8.2 Twitter followers . Two months before, in June, Pranksy sold Bored Apes to NBA players Josh Hart of the Portland Trail Blazers and Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers. When the two teams meet in November 2021, Haliburton wears custom sneakers featuring his Ape, which leads to Hart taking to Twitter and pointing out that his Ape is better (because it has rarer attributes) than Haliburton’s.

These episodes further push the standing of the BAYC. At the same time selling BAYC NFTs figures to have made Pranksy several million dollars in profit. Yuga Labs also earns on these transactions.  According to multiple reports and social posts, the BAYC NFT smart contract includes a 2.5% commission for Yuga Labs on each subsequent sale.

Why give away 100 valuable NFTs?

McNelis also sells several of his Bored Apes – and at least one of them for an incredible sum of money. In October, one of his primates fetches USD 3.6m at a Sotheby's auction. But he also gives away 100 BAYC NFTs for free, as he disclosed in the Gary Vaynerchuk podcast . "Why? Because I can hack into people’s brains." He says that when he gives something to someone that he knows is going to increase in value, he basically plants an NFT virus in that person. He also gave Vaynerchuk five apes, as Gary V has confirmed.

McNelis is a serial entrepreneur in the NFT space: In 2020, he launched an NFT project under the name " Avastars ," he runs the Tokensmart community and founded the company NFT42 . One of the products of the service provider: Nameless , a service that lets brands and companies launch and manage NFT collections. Some of the first onboarded clients include Pranksy (who runs NFT subscription service NFTBoxes) and Vaynerchuk, who has his NFT collection and community Vee Friends. McNelis has a vested interest in promoting NFTs as a medium.

NFTs are a hell of a drug

During a panel discussion in November 2021 with Vaynerchuk as a part of the NFT.NYC event, McNelis draws an even more interesting description than planting a virus. When asked how to evangelize others about NFTs to others, McNelis said , "Give them a rising NFT. Give them an Open Sea account (an NFT marketplace editor’s note) and notifications so they can see the offers. It's their first hit of crack and they're hooked." Gary Vaynerchuk then cracks, “so you’re a drug dealer. But I agree with you!" Just 10 minutes before, Gary Vaynerchuk stated that carnage was imminent as so many people had invested their personal assets in NFTs and many would end up being worthless.

Nevertheless, he is a major player in the scene. In the past three years, Vaynerchuk has transitioned from an entrepreneur's guru and social media ambassador to a crypto bro. Not only does he have his own NFT community with "Vee Friends," but since July 2021 his company, Vaynermedia, also has a subsidiary, VaynerNFT , that helps brands enter the NFT space. Its first client: AB Inbev, owner of beer brand Budweiser.

NFTs was the case they gave me?

Vaynerchuk is not alone in his efforts to raise the mainstream profile of NFTs. Other celebs and well-known names from the US tech and entertainment scene are active participants as well. Jimmy McNelis is well connected to several of them. As he stated in the "Metaverse Podcast" (starting at 46:33), his NFT42 venture completed Seed funding in February 2021. Participants included Sound Ventures (the crypto fund of movie star and tech investor Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, manager of U2 and Madonna), tech billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Marc Cuban, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, Nick Adler (head of brand partnerships for Snoop) and Gary Vaynerchuk’s holding company Vaynerfund.

Oseary even took on a management role for Yuga Labs in October 2021 . The NFT scene is closely knit—and the line between NFTs and the entertainment scene blurred. McNelis, for example, founded a virtual band, named Kingship, with four Apes from the Yuga Labs collection. The band is signed by 10:22, a new sublabel of Universal Music. Purchases of Bored Apes are also making more headlines. Some of the famous buyers, like NBA star LaMelo Ball from the Charlotte Hornets, use the purchases to plug their own NFT collections . It is what it is—never clear what’s done on conviction and what’s done in blatant self-interest.

Steph Curry inflates Google search

Another example: When Justin Bieber posted a picture of a Bored Ape to his 220 million followers on Instagram in late January 2022, the entire world just assumed that the music superstar bought it himself. But it seems that the owner of the BAYC NFT is actually Bieber’s business partner Gianpiero D'Alessandro , designer for Bieber’s fashion line Drew House who recently released the NFT collection Inbetweeners , which Bieber has promoted as well. According to Coindesk , shortly thereafter “the InBetweeners Twitter account began gloating about how the (maybe) Bieber-owned NFT was inflating the price of [D’Alessandros] InBetweeners NFTs.

At this point you will find external content from Instagram that complements the article. You can display it with one click.

But probably the biggest awareness push for BAYC came from NBA superstar Steph Curry, who, as far as we can tell, has no vested interest. In August 2021, Curry bought a Bored Ape for USD 180,000 and uses it occasionally as his Twitter avatar (Curry has 15.5 million followers) and joined the BAYC Discord server for a quick chat . Both his celebrity and the price make headlines; the impact is also recorded by Google Trends , which registered a spike in searches for BAYC in the next week.

Jimmy Fallon uses Moonpay

After all of these events helped advance the BAYC brand beyond crypto circles, the project then reached the next level: Infrastructure platforms from the crypto and NFT space begin piggybacking off the brand’s mainstream status to indirectly market themselves. Crypto payment service Moonpay especially has profited from the practice. In December 2021, it sponsored "Ape Fest," an exclusive party for the BAYC community in New York, where, among others, rapper Lil Baby performed.

A month before, during an interview with NFT artists Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann, late-night host Jimmy Fallon announced that he had purchased his own "Bored Ape" —thanks to  Moonpay, "which is like Paypal, but for crypto." In November, clips of a “Mutant Ape” that Lil Baby acquired using Moonpay went viral on Tiktok. Then there is rapper Post Malone whose song "One Right Now," which has 44.6m views on Youtube, shows him using Moonpay to buy a Bored Ape right at the start of the video. He also posted screenshots of it on Instagram and Twitter and tagged the company.

At this point you will find external content from YouTube that complements the article. You can display it with one click.

NFT services crack the mainstream with celeb power

"As we strive for mass adoption, we understand that big splashes can go a long way in providing visibility for those outside the crypto space," writes Corey Barchat on the Moonpay blog . " This level of exposure can only happen with Bored Apes."

Moonpay has continued the practice. In late December, Snoop announces on Twitter that he bought a "Bored Ape," "Mutant Ape" and Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT. In a follow-up tweet,   he thanks both Moonpay and Jimmy McNelis, who sold him NFTs. The celebrity NFT Moonpay boom reached its climax, so far at least, in late January when Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon showed each other their apes during Fallon’s show —again thanking Moonpay. A video of the cringy scene went viral.

Yuga Labs is worth billions

US journalist Max Read made an attempt to map the "NFT Celebrity Complex." He speculates that Creative Artists Agency (CAA) might be instructing its clients to push NFTs, because CAA is an investor in NFT marketplace Open Sea—the most-important platform in the space at the present and who earns a commission on every transaction. CAA represents stars Ashton Kutcher and Jimmy Fallon, as well as "Jenkins the Valet," a fictitious BAYC NFT character, who is set to release an autobiography , and NFT collector 0x1b , who owns Bored and Mutant Ape NFTs as well.

Yuga Labs, the company behind the BAYC figures to have generated a massive amount of revenue with the project. In addition to the USD 2.8m of Bored Apes and the USD 90m from Mutant Ape sales, there are commissions on resales. Estimates made by Cryptoslam on BAYC- and MAYC NFTs including the secondary markets put the total revenue at USD 2.17b. For Yuga Labs, that could mean an additional USD 54m in revenue from commission. According to the Financial Times , the company is in negotiations with the most well-known US VC venture Andreessen Horowitz about a possible investment, based on a valuation between 4 and 5 billion dollars.

Free Online Seminars

KI im Marketing: 3 Dinge, die du mal ausprobiert haben solltest

Employer Branding für Fortgeschrittene: Insights und praktische Tipps

Bored Ape Yacht Club

The most popular NFT project is called Bored Ape Yacht Club, a.k.a. BAYC. The collection comprises a set of 10,000 Ethereum tokens, each representing a vacant-looking ape with a different trait, such as a hat, fur, or facial accessory. 

Launched in April 2021 by Yuga Labs, holding a Bored Ape provides access to an exclusive Discord community and, occasionally, real-world parties. 

The NFTs quickly became popular replacements for profile pictures on crypto’s watering hole, Twitter . Celebrities and socialites aped in, including Paris Hilton, Eminem, Jimmy Fallon, and Justin Bieber. 

Like all NFTs, Bored Apes are resold on secondary markets, the most popular of which is OpenSea. They have sold for several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sometimes for millions ; rarer traits command higher prices.

The highest sale occurred in September 2021, when a solid gold Bored Ape sold through auction house Sotheby’s NFT marketplace for $3.4 million. Minters had paid just 0.08 ETH for each Bored Ape, at the time worth about $235, just five months earlier during a public launch that took several days to sell out.

Yuga Labs has given Bored Ape holders extra NFTs, including some from its dog-themed NFT collection called Bored Ape Kennel Club and another BAYC-related collection, Mutant Ape Yacht Club. A decentralized autonomous organization linked to Yuga Labs, ApeCoin DAO, also distributed fungible APE tokens to Bored Ape holders, which were needed to buy plots of land in the company’s not-yet-released metaverse game, Otherside.

BAYC holders have also sold these free tokens for enormous profits on secondary markets. They have also eked out more cash by licensing them out or launching businesses centered around their Bored Apes like restaurants, product labels, and even a not-yet-released sitcom .

While skeptics say Bored Apes and other high profile NFTs are nothing more than glorified JPEGs, boosters say they are a new frontier for art and intellectual property. Go deeper: Planet of the Bored Apes —a longform essay on BAYC and its founders Video interview with BAYC founders —Full Send podcast What it’s like holding a BAYC NFT —a thread by a BAYC holder See also: What are NFTs? What is Ethereum? Try it:  OpenSea —the largest NFT marketplace Rarity Sniper —browse BAYC NFTs by rarity

• global">Global
• indonesia">Indonesia
• united_kingdom">United Kingdom

We got you covered. Don’t miss out on the latest news by signing up for our newsletters.

By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy .

Download Our App

• dark_mode" data-event-name="menu_navigation" data-custom-event="null" class="dark-mode icon-type d-none d-lg-flex nav-item">
• login">Login
• sign_up">Sign Up
• search" data-event-name="menu_navigation" data-custom-event="null">
• Food & Beverage
• Movies & TV
• Tech & Gadgets
• Brand Ranking
• Brand Directory
• Hypebeast100

Bored Ape Yacht Club and BAPE To Collaborate on Limited Edition Collection

With early teasers indicating a remix of the classic ape head logo tee and camo motif..

Yuga Labs , the Web3 company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club ( BAYC ) NFT collection has announced a collaboration with iconic Japan-based streetwear brand, A BATHING APE, better known as BAPE .

While little information has been shared as to what type of items the collaborative capsule will include, BAYC did share that fans of both brands can expect to see designs that reflect “lazy opulence and irreverence.” Based on the teaser image that was shared, it appears there will be at the very least one Ape Head logo tee, with various BAYC elements and inspirations integrated into it.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by A BATHING APE® OFFICIAL (@bape_japan)

What to Read Next

Burna Boy Announces 2023-24 'I Told Them... Tour' Dates

New Balance 580 Has Surfaced in "Washed Burgundy"

McDonald’s Introduces Sweet & Spicy Jam Sauce and Mambo Sauce

Nike and Nashville's Slim & Husky’s Pizza Come Together for This Nike Terminator High

Louis Vuitton Announces Its Presence on Discord

Chevy Chase Says 'Community' "Wasn't Funny Enough" For Him

Rep Confirms "NEW FUTURE ERA" Track Is Not by Odd Future

The Nike Cortez Prepares for "Hangul Day"

Step Into Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City', Located Inside Milan's Fondazione Prada

Carhartt WIP Reveals New FW23 Campaign “Heart Eyes, Straight Face”

• Manage Account

Bored Ape #9797 Becomes the First NFT to Drop a Music Video: First Look

'I knew this is what we have to release to represent the Bored Ape Yacht Club and my vision 'cause we are all going to the moon,' said BAYC #9797's owner.

By Anna Chan

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on Pinterest
• + additional share options added
• Share on Reddit
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Whats App
• Send an Email
• Print this article
• Post a Comment
• Share on Tumblr

The Apes are sailing into the music scene. Bored Ape #9797 from the influential Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project dropped a music video on Friday (Dec. 10), becoming the first NFT to do so, and Billboard has the first look at the visual.

The video is for a song titled “Delist Your Ape (2DaMoon),” which features hip-hop artist Reo Cragun, who wrote the tune, and Clear Eyes (aka Jeremy Lloyd from electronic duo Marian Hill). In the animated visual created by Syft and Beverly Films, a bunch of Apes are aboard a yacht similar to the one teased by BAYC for its first annual ApeFest held Oct. 31-Nov. 6 in New York City. As the camera zooms in, #9797 — sometimes called “Jimbo” — begins to sing.

Bored Ape Supergroup KINGSHIP Now Has a Habitat in Roblox

Marian hill.

See latest videos, charts and news

“This is not a gimmick/ Wallet full of digits/ I was putting work in when they did then they were slipping/ Twitter full of GMs,” Jimbo rhymes as the yacht rises out of the water to soar above land and water. “Spinning little savings on a project worth a lot of bands/ Now I can take a flight anywhere …/ I could cop a Bored Ape/Join a yacht club/ they don’t understand.”

Trending on Billboard

The video ends with the yacht cruising in front of the moon, before the Bored Ape Yacht Club logo appears over the lunar body.

“When I met with the boys and we started plotting to work on a song together, they played me ‘To the Moon’ and I fell in love instantly,” #9797’s anonymous owner tells Billboard . “I knew this is what we have to release to represent the Bored Ape Yacht Club and my vision ’cause we are all going to the moon.”

Adds Clear Eyes: “Crazily enough, we made this song before s–tcoins and NFTs were going to the moon, in a real-life studio session together in L.A. in 2019. It was maybe the third or fourth song we made together, and it sparked a creative relationship that’s going strong to this day.”

Cragun added that he’s incredibly excited to release the song with Jimbo, and teased the future. “This is the first piece of many more songs to come, and next year, we have a lot in store with LNRZ DAO, and my album Diary of a Loner,” he shares. “We plan to onboard a lot of amazing talent into web3 and really take everyone ‘to the moon’ with us.”

This music video from Bored Ape #9797 is just the latest step NFTs are taking into the music business, with BAYC poised to lead the way. In November, Universal Music Group’s 10:22PM label announced that it had signed a virtual band named KINGSHIP, which consists of four Bored Apes owned by collector Jimmy McNeils. The same month, Post Malone spent a whopping 160 ETH (about $682,000) on Bored Apes #9039 and #961, with the latter appearing in the music video for his collab with The Weeknd, “Right Now.” Timbaland also aped in in November, creating a metaverse -based entertainment company called Ape-In Productions that will use BAYC NFTs to perform music and sell products.

Guy Oseary, who manages Madonna and U2, is also now representing Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The project, which originally launched in April as a collection of 10,000 NFTs, has since seen its popularity skyrocket. It currently boasts a floor price of 52.69 ETH (approximately $231,200) on popular NFT marketplace OpenSea , and according to Rolling Stone , the BAYC ecosystem has already generated about $1 billion .

Get weekly rundowns straight to your inbox

Want to know what everyone in the music business is talking about?

Get in the know on.

Billboard is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Billboard Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

optional screen reader

Charts expand charts menu.

• Billboard Hot 100™
• Billboard 200™
• Hits Of The World™
• TikTok Billboard Top 50
• Songs Of The Summer
• Song Breaker
• Year-End Charts
• Decade-End Charts

Music Expand music menu

• R&B/Hip-Hop

Videos Expand videos menu

Culture expand culture menu, media expand media menu, business expand business menu.

• Business News
• Record Labels
• View All Pro

Pro Tools Expand pro-tools menu

• Songwriters & Producers
• Artist Index
• Royalty Calculator
• Market Watch
• Industry Events Calendar

Billboard Español Expand billboard-espanol menu

• Cultura y Entretenimiento

Get Up Anthems by Tres Expand get-up-anthems-by-tres menu

Honda music expand honda-music menu.

Bored Club Association

The Association of Local Communities of the Bored Ape Yacht Club

Development

Association members.

The most boring communities

UK Ape Club

Bored Club Canada

French Ape Yacht Club

Bored LApes

Portugal Ape Club

Iberian Apes Club

Japan Ape Club

Apes of Korea

German Ape Club

Magic City Apes

Singapore Ape Club

Malaysia Ape Club

Turkish Ape Yacht Club

Ladies of BAYC

Chinese Ape Club

Dubai Ape Club

Elite Apes HK

Czech & Slovak Ape Yacht Club

Ape 101 TW Club

United Georgia Apes

Southwest Apes

Want to join the Association?

Let’s talk about your boring idea.

• Bahasa Indonesia
• Eastern Europe
• Moscow Oblast

Elektrostal

Elektrostal Localisation : Country Russia , Oblast Moscow Oblast . Available Information : Geographical coordinates , Population, Altitude, Area, Weather and Hotel . Nearby cities and villages : Noginsk , Pavlovsky Posad and Staraya Kupavna .

Information

Find all the information of Elektrostal or click on the section of your choice in the left menu.

• Update data

Elektrostal Demography

Information on the people and the population of Elektrostal.

Elektrostal Geography

Geographic Information regarding City of Elektrostal .

Elektrostal Distance

Distance (in kilometers) between Elektrostal and the biggest cities of Russia.

Elektrostal Map

Locate simply the city of Elektrostal through the card, map and satellite image of the city.

Elektrostal Nearby cities and villages

Elektrostal weather.

Weather forecast for the next coming days and current time of Elektrostal.

Elektrostal Sunrise and sunset

Find below the times of sunrise and sunset calculated 7 days to Elektrostal.

Elektrostal Hotel

Our team has selected for you a list of hotel in Elektrostal classified by value for money. Book your hotel room at the best price.

Elektrostal Nearby

Below is a list of activities and point of interest in Elektrostal and its surroundings.

Elektrostal Page

• Information /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#info
• Demography /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#demo
• Geography /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#geo
• Distance /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#dist1
• Map /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#map
• Nearby cities and villages /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#dist2
• Weather /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#weather
• Sunrise and sunset /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#sun
• Hotel /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#hotel
• Nearby /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#around
• Page /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#page
• Terms of Use
• Copyright © 2024 DB-City - All rights reserved
• Change Ad Consent Do not sell my data