Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 NFT portraits each depicting an ape in various guises. Within months of their release in April 2021, prices exploded, and at one point they were the most valuable series of crypto collectibles.
Bored Ape Yacht Club was created by Yuga Labs, an American company that in March 2022 also acquired the NFT projects CryptoPunks and Meebit.
As unique collectibles produced by generative art, each ape is a combination of predefined traits selected by an algorithm. Some traits, such as certain facial expressions and items of clothing and jewellery, appear less frequently than others. This means some apes are particularly rare and highly desirable. For example, only 115 apes have a cross earring, just 108 have cyborg eyes and no more than 49 have a dagger in their mouth.
Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were initially priced at 0.08 ETH, around $190 at the time. Sales were initially slow, but after a popular NFT trader named Pranksy shared one on his Twitter account they sold out within 12 hours.
Prices on the secondary market climbed as celebrities began to endorse Bored Ape Yacht Club. The rapper Eminem bought BAYC #9055, the record producer Timbaland bought BAYC #590 and the television presenter Jimmy Fallon bought BAYC #599.
By early 2022, the floor price — the lowest amount a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT could be acquired for — was around the equivalent of $300,000.
Owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have access to an online clubhouse, members-only events and merchandise — including drops of other NFTs minted by Yuga Labs. They also gain the commercial usage rights of their ape’s appearance.
In September 2021, a bundle of 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs sold at auction for $24.4 million. The following month, a single NFT, BAYC #8817, which features a rare solid gold fur trait, sold for 819 ETH — the equivalent of $3.4 million. This price established a new record a single edition from the series and helped Bored Ape Yacht Club eventually overtake CryptoPunks as the highest-valued NFT collection.