Galactic Brands: Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, which debuted in 2021, is one of the most renowned and admired NFTs available currently, comparable to the top arts from across the world!

The 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs that make up the Bored Ape Yacht Club are one-of-a-kind digital collectibles stored on the Ethereum blockchain. A Bored Ape NFT also serves as a membership card for the Yacht Club and gives access to exclusive perks to the club members, the first of which is THE BATHROOM, a collaborative graffiti board.

To access areas that are only accessible to members, the Apeholders must be logged into their Metamask Wallet.

Here's the verified smart contract address of BAYC: 0xBC4CA0EdA7647A8aB7C2061c2E118A18a936f13D

The team behind BAYC - Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs created the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Gordon Goner, Gargamel, No Sass, and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, who handled the technical parts of BAYC, make up the team's core four pseudonymous members.

On March 11, 2022, Yuga Labs got the intellectual rights for the competing NFT collections CryptoPunks and Meebits. As a result, Yuga Labs now owns the namesake brands and their respective logos.

In March 2022, it was reported that the Yuga Labs team had raised $450 million in a fundraising round spearheaded by the venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz, giving it a $4 billion valuation.

History of BAYC 👀

At the height of the cryptocurrency bull market in 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT was established. With other well-known NFTs like CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks, BAYC has thrived.

In an unprecedented event, Sotheby's, one of the biggest auction houses in the world, ended its online auction for 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs for $24.4 million in September 2021. Then, a BAYC was worth 0.08 ETH, equaling $220 at the time of debut. By mid-October 2022, it had risen to a "floor price" of 76 ETH, or around $100,418. It was sold out in less than 12 hours.

BAYC's current floor price stands at 61.2ETH, and here's a graph reflecting the NFT collection's price fluctuations and floor price for Q1 2023:

Celebrities who purchased the NFTs at inflated prices have shown interest in BAYC. A few prominent celebrities who proudly display their BAYCs as PFPs are Jimmy Fallon, host of "The Tonight Show," NBA champions Steph Curry and Shaquille O'Neal, musicians Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Justin Bieber, and star soccer player Neymar Jr.

Why own a BAYC?

A variety of benefits are associated with owning an NFT of the BAYC ecosystem. Still, the main one is the sense of community and the benefits of having one.

Celebrities began to use BAYC in the months following its minting. Steph Curry, a Basketball star, notoriously paid over $180,000 for his Ape and used it as his Twitter profile photo. Celebrities and crypto aficionados found the community's exclusivity quite appealing. In this way, the apes are both generative art and membership cards.

Those interested in NFTs as investments must also go for this one for their portfolio enhancement. Bored Apes has sold a variety of items that made headlines too.

Recognizing the Benefits of Bored Ape Yacht Club

Whether the Bored Ape collection is worth millions of dollars has been hotly contested, and some others think the exorbitant prices are just the result of speculation. Yet, the collection's value has increased due to its rarity, celebrity endorsements, and utilities and benefits.

- Rarity

The variety of BAYC's distinctive features and accouterments are utilized to calculate its value. In a collection with a given number, an NFT's "rarity" describes how rare it is. In the BAYC collection, each Ape may have four to seven different characteristic categories among the more than 160 traits that make up the whole collection.

BAYC #8817, the most expensive Bored Ape in the collection, was sold at auction for $3.4 million in October 2021 on Sotheby's Metaverse. An extremely uncommon variant of the NFT, BAYC #8817 has the Solid Gold Fur characteristic, Silver Hoop Earrings, and Wool Turtleneck.

- Endorsement by Celebrities

BAYC has persuaded several companies and celebrities to purchase items from its NFT collection.

Adidas is one of the companies adding to the excitement over the NFT collection. In collaboration with Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gmoney, and PUNKS Comic, Adidas unveiled "Into the Metaverse," a native digital collectible. Following the collaboration, BAYC tweeted a picture of a Bored Ape sporting an Adidas jacket.

Among those already stated, other famous personalities who own BAYC include billionaire Mark Cuban, well-known DJ and Twitter personality Steve Aoki, Twitter musicians Post Malone and Mike Shinoda, and producer and composer Timbaland.

- Perks and Benefits

Compared to other NFT collections, utilities of the Bored Ape NFTs are one of its distinguishing qualities. Owners of Bored Apes get exclusive access to a closed Discord community where they may communicate, socialize, and form bonds with other Bored Ape owners, even famous celebs owning these. Moreover, ape holders get access to "The Bathroom," where they can post a drawing on a virtual bathroom wall every 15 minutes, which serves as a community board.

Future metaverse games and events, ApeCoin, ApeCoin DAO, and other services have helped make BAYC appealing. In general, owning a Bored Ape is regarded as a prestige symbol by many people, which is another important factor contributing to its increasing price since its release.

More Than Just an NFT Collection, BAYC!

ApeCoin was introduced by BAYC in March 2022, and the BAYC ecosystem has since adopted it as its official currency. Holders of BAYC NFT received ApeCoin quickly after it launched. As said, with ApeCoin, holders can participate in the governing process and engage the Bored Ape ecosystem. Members of the ApeCoin DAO will preside over further progress on the team's road map, which includes creating blockchain games, holding virtual gatherings in the metaverse, and launching tangible goods.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club and blockchain gaming company Animoca (creator of The Sandbox) collaborated to produce a play-to-earn game using the BAYC NFT in December 2021.

Legal Issues

• The investigation by the SEC: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into Yuga Labs because of its worries that the NFTs are unregistered security offerings, according to a story from October 2022. With the demise of FTX, Yuga's investor, the need to regulate cryptocurrency and NFTs became a larger issue.
• Class Action Lawsuit: A class action lawsuit was brought on December 8, 2022, against the parent firm of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Yuga Labs, stating that their product is an unregistered security that was advertised using false, undeclared celebrity endorsements. Many celebrities who marketed NFTs are named in the class action, including Yuga Labs' business partners Moonpay and Guy Oseary, as well as Diplo, Snoop Dogg, Post Malone, Kevin Hart, and others.

Next what, for BAYC?

Yuga Labs has both on-chain and off-chain aspirations for its Bored Ape Yacht Club brand. Yuga Labs unveiled Ape Coin, its cryptocurrency, in March.

The Bored Apes are assimilating themselves into fashion outside of the real world. Adidas collaborated with several NFT brands to develop its first NFT project, Into The Metaverse. Adidas and BAYC will soon collaborate on both digital and tangible clothes.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club name has also appeared in other fields. Literally speaking, a temporary burger joint in Los Angeles was recently transformed into a permanent eatery. Apes vs. Mutants, a mobile game, was released in January for both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store. Super Plastic's Bored Ape figurines will also be arriving soon.

Full commercial rights come with owning a Bored Ape NFT, and holders utilize these rights in various inventive ways. One Bored Ape owner built a history for his gorilla on Twitter, transforming him into Jenkins, a valet who works for the Yacht Club. The New York Times best-selling author Neil Strauss wrote a biography of Jenkins, now represented by a legitimate agency. Three bored apes and one mutant Ape make up the band that Universal Music Group signed.

Here's a sneak into the latest activities for the collection:

Bottom Line

The BAYC has developed into something more than a PFP NFT. Via the numerous utilities it has included and plans to add to its collection, it has established a new benchmark and tempo for other NFT collections. In addition to tangible products associated with the Bored Ape line, Yuga Labs has produced blockchain-based products too.