Looking to join the elusive Bored Ape yacht club? Know what you are spending your money on!
Earlier this month, the owner of Bored Ape non-fungible token (NFT) number 3547, Maxnaut, made a disastrous error by listing the NFT for 0.75 Ethereum (ETH) instead of 75 ETH, which was how much Maxnaut wanted to sell it for. In doing so, Maxnaut lost US$250,000. The NFT was picked up really quickly, with the buyer paying a heavy gas fee of 8 ETH.
Maxnaut’s loss garnered significant media attention, with many news sites reporting on his blunder. But even before that, Bored Ape NFTs were popular. The project was launched in April 2021 and, within 12 hours, they were entirely sold out. The most expensive Bored Ape (that is, Bored Ape #8817) was sold for US$3.4 million. Bored Ape NFTs’ popularity and value only rivals that of Cryptopunks (which are some of the most expensive NFTs ever sold). Bored Apes’ popularity begs the question—Why are these NFTs so expensive? What is hiking up their value? Let’s take a look at the reasons one by one.
Uniqueness
Much like Cryptopunks, Bored Apes are also rare collectible collections of 10,000 digital avatars. Each Ape is a unique combination of 170 characteristics, including expression, headwear, clothing, etc. While each individual Ape is different, some are rarer than others. In fact, some traits, like golden fur and laser eyes, are so rare that less than one percent of all Apes have them. This, in turn, drives up the price of the Apes.
All Bored Ape NFTs were originally up for sale for 0.8 ETH and within 12 hours of being listed, NFT enthusiasts quickly grabbed them up. Today, the floor price of an Ape NFT is 68.5 ETH.Â
Yacht membership benefits
Each Bored Ape comes with a yacht club membership. Membership gives ape NFT holders access to community events. Members also get access to a special Discord server and a private digital area called “The Bathroom” that members can use as a graffiti board. Bored Ape holders also get commercial usage rights for their NFTs. This means that not only can they re-sell the NFT at a higher price point, but they can also sell any kind of spinoff products based on the NFT they own.
This membership puts you in a common club with high-profile celebrities, like Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone, Mark Cuban and Shaquille O’Neal among others. Bored Ape Yacht Club members don’t necessarily limit their interactions to the internet. In November 2021, they organized a party on an actual yacht off the coast of Manhattan.
Exclusive content
Another part of Bored Ape NFTs is access to exclusive content. Bored Ape’s website has a detailed roadmap of what they seek to do as they meet their various sale percentage quotas.
One of the exclusive content benefits that they have already provided their NFT holders includes airdropping five “Caged Apes” (tokens that were held back from sale).
Another one was that, in June this year, every Bored Ape holder was allowed to mint a canine companion NFT for free. With this, the Bored Ape Kennel Club was born. The club raised US$1 million in charity for animal shelters from secondary sales of canine companions.
The developers have been consistently innovating with the NFT project to keep themselves relevant. They have created 20,000 mutant Apes, of which 10,000 are preserved for the Bored Ape owners, and the others are an attempt to bring new members in. Current Bored Ape holders must combine their Ape NFTs with a serum NFT to create mutant apes. Different serums (M1, M2, M3) have been airdropped to different Ape holders and each can create different mutant Apes. The M3 serum creates the most exaggerated mutant Apes.
To sum up, across the factors mentioned above, we can see the presence of active community engagement, which eventually contributes to the popularity and high prices of Bored Apes. Their community not only gets special perks but also interacts among themselves. With that and the membership of a privileged community—no wonder why everyone wants to nab a Bored Ape NFT.
All images courtesy of Bored Apes’ Website
