What is the Bored Apes Yacht Club? It is a collection of NFTs, a game, and a community. But it is mainly an NFT project that has grown into one of the most successful NFT collections in just a few months.
Have you ever heard of a nightclub in Paris sometime in the last century? No one knew exactly where it was, but the wildest stories were doing the rounds. The lucky one who ever managed to find the door was invariably refused.
At one point, everyone knew about the club. And there was a long line at the door of people who were not allowed in but came again night after night. When the club finally opened to everyone, the place was always packed and may never have closed again.
The same thing seems to be happening with the Bored Apes Yacht Club, just somewhere in the sweltering swamps of the blockchain. Because what seemed to start as a kind of inside joke that many have heard of, but where only insiders knew exactly what it was, the club has now become big business. The lowest price for a bored monkey is close to 25 ETH in August 2021 and a Bored Ape is trading every few hours.
So it’s high time for a visit to the Bored Ape Yacht Club! In this article, you will find a complete explanation of this special NFT project.
What is the Bored Ape Yacht Club?
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of NFTs. You can trade these NFTs, but they are also your membership for the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a swamp clubhouse. NFTs, you may have heard a bit more about this, are Non-Fungible Tokens. These are tokens that are unique and can therefore also be used as a certificate of authenticity. This can be used for digital artwork, such as a portrait of a mad monkey. The NFTs are of the ERC-271 type. ECR-721 tokens are created within the Ethereum ecosystem and are the blueprint for most NFTs.
Where exactly do those monkeys come from? The crypto world is an animal-rich environment. The bears and bulls naturally dominate the vast crypto animal kingdom, until a whale swims by and the tide can turn. Among the more cuddly animals, the Shiba Inu and the crypto kitty stand out. But also monkeys.
“Ape in” is a term used when you fearlessly invest in an (often unknown) cryptocurrency. Apes are thus well-known figures in the crypto world. On the NFT market, you will come across different Apes. For CryptoPunks, the oldest and best-known NFT series, have a number of Apes among their collectibles.
The name Apes and the character of the BAYC are therefore not without reason. The Apes, therefore, look as you would expect from a creative crypto outlaw, rebellious and unimpressed by default.
What are the characteristics of the Bored Apes?
The different Bored Apes have no name but a number ranging from 1 to 10,000. Because a total of 10,000 Apes were made for the Ape Bored Yacht Club. The monkeys are all portrayed up to shoulder height. Each Ape has a unique combination of external features. These features are different in rarity. There are a total of 170 different features. We now briefly summarize these characteristics of the portraits.
Background
color The background of a portrait can be in 8 different colors. These colors also occur to a greater or lesser extent. The color has no further meaning.
Clothing
The Bored Ape Yacht Club has no dress code, except that you dress with the necessary nonchalance and a necessary badass attitude.
In total there are 42 outfits with which the bored monkey can be dressed for the most diverse occasions. For example, there are Apes in a space suit. But a prom dress or black tie is also possible.
Earring
The Bored Ape can choose from 5 earring models. A bit of bling apparently suits Apes, because many Apes wear earrings. The old saying remains “Even if a monkey wears a gold ring, it is and remains an ugly thing”, but if your value is already in the millions, you can of course shine a little.
Eyes
There are 24 different types of eyes. This is not only about the color, but also how the monkey looks from its eyes. For example bored, very appropriate, or angry. Laser eyes, but also a cyborg’s eye are possible.
Fur
The Bored Ape is not a dull mouse and has a fur range of fur options. Notable is the trippy fur. This is probably what a visit to the Apenheul looks like if you have eaten too many psychedelics.
Hats
The Bored Ape generally likes a hat, because many Apes have one. There is also a lot of choices here, from 36 different models.
Mouth/expression
Bubble, smoke, or grin, a monkey can say something without talking.
Who are the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club?
BAYC’s team consists of 4 apes who presumably go disguised in real life in a man-people suit. They manifest themselves under the names:
- Gargamel
- Gorden Goner
- Emperor Tomato Ketchup
- No Sass
Furthermore, little is known about the founders and that only seems to make the stories around the swamp club more exciting. In July 2021, Gargamel and Goner gave an interview to The New Yorker. Both are not the standard tech geniuses (“We’ve been calling ourselves the Beastie Boys of NFTs”) who are normally behind such a project.
It started with two friends, in their thirties, one was a writer and the other had started day trading in crypto during a period of being sick at home. They did have a clear idea about the creation of an NFT series. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a vision of the future: What do you want as a bored crypto millionaire in the year 2030? Hang out in a swamp club and “get weird” of course!
Emperor Tomato Ketchup and No Sass, the other two founders, are also friends of Gargamel and Goner. They were involved in the project for the technical knowledge of blockchain technology.
When did the Bored Ape Yacht Club start?
The Bored Ape Yacht Club itself opened quite recently, on April 30, 2021. The Apes were launched with a Fair Launch. This means a sale without pre-sales or preferential treatments. All Apes of the collection available for sale were released at once. The Apes were sold through the club for a fixed price of 0.08 ETH.
After the release of the Apes, the team started building and expanding the clubhouse. The club is still evolving and new facilities are being added all the time.
Roadmap
In the BAYC you can find the roadmap that the team has set out for the club. Many goals have already been achieved:
- One of the first and most important for the success of a project: the mothers of the founders have now got their investment back.
- Release of the caged monkeys, 5 caged monkeys. These are handed out to ape holders at an airdrop.
- The launch of its own YouTube channel (which you may be listening to right now)
- Opening of the exclusive BAYC merch store with tees, hoodies, and other goodies, available exclusively for Apes.
- Bored Apes liquidity pool, where you can contribute assets to serve as collateral for others and thus generate passive capital, is active.
There are also some plans in progress:
- The clubhouse will be made interactive and you will have access to a “Mystery Note” with a clue, with which you can participate in a treasure quest where you can win ETH and an Ape.
How to buy a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT?
How do you get an Ape and with that access to the Yacht Club? Pretty soon after launch, all Apes sold from the Clubhouse were sold out. They are currently still traded via the NFT trading platform OpenSea. This is the largest and most versatile trading platform for NFTs.
To trade Bored Apes or other NFTs on this platform you need an OpenSea account. This is easy to create by creating a username and password with your email address. Your Metamask wallet is linked to your account. This wallet is suitable for ETH. With Ethereum (ETH) you can purchase the NFTs and pay the gas fees for the transaction. You can also store your NFTs here. ETH can be bought on any platform, for example, Binance.
What is this NFT: a work of art, game, or clubhouse membership?
The Bored Apes are real collector’s items and are appreciated for their graphic qualities. But it’s not just a collector’s item. A Bored Ape is a character that gives you access to everything the Yacht Club has to offer.
This club is still under construction, so more and more new things are added all the time. As a club member, you can obtain and collect all NFTs that are tradable. In the short time that the Yacht Club has been open, interesting projects have already passed by.
Bored Ape Kennel Club
As a Bored Ape member, you obviously need some badass (or very cute) road dogs as an entourage. In June 2021 Bored Ape Kennel Club openedBored Ape members could get a dog there for only the payment of the ETH gas fees. There was a limited time to claim a dog.
The dog is an NFT that after claiming it is really your property and that you can keep or sell. If the dogs are resold through OpenSea, the team will receive 2.5% royalties on the first sale. The proceeds of these royalties all go to an animal rescue.
The actions were a great success because almost all dogs have been claimed. In August 2021, 9600 dogs will be tradable on OpenSea. The lowest price offered at the time is 3.98 ETH.
An Ape is therefore not only an NFT in itself, but also gives access to actions and NFTs that also become collectible items in themselves.
Mutant Ape Yacht Club
Since August 2021, the Apes are also mutating. And judging by the preliminary results, they turn into even more valuable NFTs. Apes can now be administered a serum with all the consequences that entail. The results of these movements on the NFT market are particularly spectacular.
The serum is an NFT that is distributed to all Apes in an Airdrop. There are different types of serums, each of which has a different effect on the Apes. The types of serum differ in rarity. As an Ape holder, you can use the serum for your Ape, or sell the serum. It remains to be seen what the Ape holders will do. At the end of August, some serums will already be offered at OpenSea via the Bored Ape Chemistry Club.
In the NFT statistics, the Mutant Ape Yacht Club has overtaken the top spot within 24 hours with 2391 trades and a trading volume of USD 73.7 million. The Mutant Apes are now being offered through OpenSea with unprecedented success. Two Mutant Apes have already traded above USD million within 24 hours of the serum instructions drop on August 28, 2021. It seems that the Bored Apes have mutated into bulls and the question is where their run will end.
BAYC Bathroom
What’s a clubhouse without a leaking toilet? The Bathroom of the BAYC is a work of art in the making. Because this is where members can leave a message, literally on the graffiti wall of the toilet. As befits a shabby swamp club, you can place your signature here in any form. This makes The Bathroom an NFT work of art in itself.
Ape for life
But a membership is more than a way to score lucrative NFTs. The Bored Ape Yacht club has a strong community that really functions as a club. These are people who really believed in the idea of crypto apes.
The Apes initially met mainly on Discord, but the clubhouse is planned to become increasingly interactive and become a virtual meeting place for Apes.
The question is, of course, how strong the group and community spirit is as the success of the apes increases and the values continue to rise.
Access to New Worlds
The Bored Ape, despite its name, is an adventurous creature. One of the strengths of the Bored Yacht club is that while the club itself is exclusive, it is also open to new worlds. For example, Decentral Games, a blockchain casino, now also offers games in partnership with the BAYC.
In addition to the virtual worlds that the Apes are conquering, the Ape also wants to get its place in the real world. In the few months that the Apes have been active, the yacht club has made a trip to Taipei and Hong Kong where the Apes presented themselves in an art event.
In addition, collabs are done with street art artists and labels, such as street fashion label The Hundreds. Ice tea brand Arizona “has also aped in.” They also announced a partnership with the Bored Apes in the summer of 2021.
How much does a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT cost?
Although NFTs are a new phenomenon, the art trade has of course been around for centuries. Rules that apply to trading often also apply to trading in NFTs.
How do you know if an NFT like a Bored Ape is a good investment? For example, the demand for NFTs is important for value. If no one is interested in a work of art, it will of course be nothing. This certainly applies to NFTs. This interest must also be permanent, in 10 years your NFT must still have value, otherwise, it will be of literally no use to you. The question is how this will develop further. NFTs are being used more and more inventively and trading and awareness are increasing.
The Bored Apes don’t seem to worry about a lack of interest at this point. Buyer interest only seems to increase from launch.
Record upon record is broken with this NFT. The Bored Apes are the fastest rising NFTs in 2021, with some of them having a price doubling of 1000% (!!! 3 zeros, no typo) within a few months. The average price for an Ape in August 2021 is almost USD 75,000.
Top 3 Bored Ape NFTs
We list the preliminary top 3 here for you:
#9361
This Ape with a cyber eye was sold for USD 1.6 million on August 26, 2021.
#1734
Ape #1734 with golden fur was sold on August 23, 2021, for 1.4 million dollars.
#3749
The Laser Eye Ape changed hands on August 11, 2021, for $1.29 million.
Who are the collectors and traders of the BAYC?
Who are actually already members of the yacht club? When it comes to a work of art or collection, it is always good to know who has owned a work of art. For example, if a screen print by Andy Warhol hung above the fireplace with David Bowie, this is certainly good for the value. Because of course, it’s nice just to be able to say as a buyer: “When you’re on the toilet, just look at that Warhol, he once hung above the fireplace at Bowie’s.”
This is of course also the case with NFTs. A project becomes interesting for many people if interesting people think so too. The Yacht Club already has some celeb members. For example, basketball player Tyrese Haliburton an Ape, and Miralem Pjanić, a former Barcelona football player, is also a proud owner of an Ape.
Haliburton bought the Ape from Pranksy and this is also interesting. Because Pranksy is another well-known NFT collector. The interest of figures like Pranksy is also an important indicator of the value of an NFT going forward.
Conclusion
The idea of the BAYC as a dilapidated but magical place for creative outlaws somewhere on a blockchain, which perhaps only exists in dreams under the influence of the necessary mind-altering substances, is of course no longer correct.
If you keep an eye on the NFT market, you know that the Bored Ape Yacht Club is becoming a millionaire’s club. Although things can still go either way with the NFT market, the Yacht Club does not seem to have to close its doors for the time being. In any case, it is already one of the most talked-about projects of 2021.
