The rising demand for the Bored Apes is traceable in part to the increased demand for NFT among celebrities.
The 10,000 pieces strong NFT collection named the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) has now crossed the $1 billion mark in sales. The ape avatars were initially created as tickets to an online social club. However, in 2021, it enjoyed tremendous growth. Consequently, the total sales of the non-fungible token hit $1.03 billion on January 4 according to data from CryptoSlam.
In December, it briefly surpassed the floor trading price of CryptoPunks before reversing again. BAYC crossed the milestone after over $55 million in sales after the turn of the year. Now, according to OpenSea, the collection has an all-time trading volume of 265K ETH. This makes it one of the ten most expensive NFTs sold.
These ten thousand Bored Apes are currently held by about 6000 holders.
What Is Responsible for Increased Bored Apes Yacht Club NFT Demand
The rising demand for the Bored Apes is traceable in part to the increased demand for NFT among celebrities. In 2021, celebrities such as Stephen Curry, Martin Garrix, Post Malone, Diplo, and DK Khaled, all purchased out of the Bored Apes Collection. Eminem also joined the train this January. The rapper purchased Bored Ape #9055, a gold-adorned ape, for $462,000.
There are suggestions that the prices of the collection are overhyped. And that purchasing it is more of a class statement than an interest in real art. The growing interest in celebrities has lent further credence to this rumor.
Nevertheless, the spike in demand has led to multiple partnerships including one with Adidas signifying the latter’s venture into the Metaverse. The company also partnered with Animoca brands in December to launch the BAYC Play-to-Earn game.
A Trail of Controversy
The rise in demand has not been without its fair share of controversies. Most recently, BAYC had to defend its reputation after racist accusations.
Additionally, there have been questions about the security of the NFTs. Most notably, OpenSea reportedly froze some NFT assets after a collector lost NFTs worth $2.28 million to a phishing scam. Some accused the holders of not practicing smart security techniques. Others accused the marketplace of acting out of order asking how a decentralized marketplace can freeze accounts.
At the time of writing, a BAYC NFT is worth about 70 Ether which is equivalent to $266,000 according to OpenSea.
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