Non-fungible token (NFT) assets have been extremely popular in 2021 and it doesn’t seem like the NFT hype is going away any time soon. A number of NFT collections have propelled the industry to new heights with huge sales, beating some of the most popular auctions selling physical items. One specific NFT project called Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has seen $542 million in lifetime sales between 8,749 traders. Additionally, on Friday, BAYC’s official Twitter account announced that the project plans to launch a token in the first quarter of next year.
Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Collection Captures $542 Million in Lifetime Sales
There’s definitely been a few artists that have made millions of dollars selling single NFTs to buyers willing to pay for the cryptographic-backed collectibles. For example, Beeple is well known for his work on NFT, and one of his pieces sold for $ 69 million at Christie’s.
Then there are the NFT collections that have also fueled the NFT craze like Cryptopunks, Art Blocks, NBA Top Shot, Cool Cats, Curio Cards, Loot (for Adventurers), and more. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection that has recorded over half a billion dollars in sales to date, and the collection holds the fifth-highest volume of all time according to dappradar.com metrics.
Historical sales activity shows that BAYC’s $542 million in lifetime sales was across approximately 21,481 sales. Statistics from Dune Analytics indicate that today there are 5,586 unique addresses that hold at least one BAYC NFT. One owner owns approximately 103 BAYC NFTs and the NFT called Bored Ape Yacht Club #3749 is the most expensive BAYC in existence.
BAYC # 3749 sold for 740 ethers or $ 2.65 million last month to Whale ETH with $ 10.59 million from NFT. The owner of BAYC #3749 owns 993 non-fungible token assets across 71 collections. Meanwhile, as the BAYC NFT collection continues to see dedicated sales, the project plans to launch a token.
Bored Ape Yacht Club to Launch Token
On October 8, the official BAYC Twitter account discussed the token idea with its 177,600 social media followers. “Good evening, monkeys. You’ve heard a lot of questions around the club: WEN TOKEN? Wen token indeed…First things first: It’s stupid easy to launch an ERC-20 token; it takes minutes,” the BAYC Twitter account tweeted on Friday.
“It’s much more complicated to build a legal token and configure it responsibly and sustainably,” the BAYC account added. “Not to mention thoughtfully craft dope utility and governance, benefit our club members, and bring the BAYC ecosystem to a much wider audience. For the sake of our members and the NFT community at large, we want to do this in a healthy way. The BAYC social media account added:
So given that… WEN TOKEN? Well, the monkeys: we are currently looking at the first quarter of 2022.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club says the team will be leveraging Fenwick & West LLP, a legal firm that works with various blockchain projects. BAYC is also in partnership with Horizen Labs, the team behind the horizen cryptocurrency (ZEN).
The BAYC team also told its fans to watch out for fake tokens and scammers. “We assume that many scammers will try to trick people into buying all kinds of fake tokens. If info doesn’t come from our official @boredapeyc or @yugalabs Twitter, it’s not us. Stay safe, apes. It’s going to be a wild year.”
While BAYC is the fifth largest in terms of sales, leading the collection are projects like Axie Infinity ($ 7.23 billion), Cryptopunks ($ 2.93 billion), Art Blocks ($ 1.92 billion) and NBA Top Shot ($ 692.62 million). Both BAYC and NBA Top Shot have yet to make it into the billion-dollar club in terms of all-time sales.
However, BAYC has a spin-off NFT collection called Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), which is the ninth largest NFT collection in terms of sales of all time with $ 278.19 million. The 278 million dollars in sales was between 9,783 MAYC traders across 11,974 sales.
