Bored Ape Yacht Club Launch

2021

Date: 23 April 2021 · Place: Ethereum mainnet, contract 0xBC4CA0 · Figures: Yuga Labs founders: Wylie Aronow (Gordon Goner) · Greg Solano (Gargamel) · Kerem Atalay (Emperor Tomato Ketchup) · Zeshan Ali (Sass) · Tags: PFP, Yuga Labs, Identity NFT 01. 0.08 ETH And A Bathroom On 23 April 2021 the BAYC contract goes live. 10,000 procedurally generated apes, each with traits from 170 possible attributes, mintable at 0.08 ETH (about $190 at the time). The founders are four anonymous twenty-somethings posting under pseudonyms borrowed from cartoons. The collection sells out in twelve hours. The pitch is membership, not art. Each ape is a key to The Bathroom, a collaborative pixel canvas where holders draw together. Within six months it is also a key to ApeFest in New York, a $200M land sale (Otherside), and a Times Square billboard. 02. Identity As Property As Speculation By August 2021 the floor is 5 ETH. By April 2022 it is 153 ETH ($430,000). Jimmy Fallon shows his ape on The Tonight Show. Snoop Dogg, Stephen Curry, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Eminem all buy in. The ape PFP becomes the most concentrated signal of crypto-wealth identity since the laser-eye trend. BAYC is the moment the NFT discourse pivots from is this art to is this a country club. The answer turns out to be both. Yuga Labs raises at a $4B valuation in March 2022. 03. The Counter-Wave BAYC's success makes right-click save as a battle cry within weeks. Critics observe the apes can be jpeg-copied for free. Holders counter that the point is not the image but the cryptographic proof that you paid for it, an argument that resolves itself in 2022 when the floor collapses. Sources • Bored Ape Yacht Club smart contract, Etherscan (0xBC4CA0...d623) • The New Yorker, 'Why Bored Ape Avatars Are Taking Over Twitter' (July 2022) • Yuga Labs Series A announcement (Andreessen Horowitz, March 2022)