A Bored Ape Ethereum NFT Owner Launches a Real-World Yacht Club

The Bored Ape Yacht Club offers a lot of disinterested monkeys – 10,000 of them, to be exact, i NFT form — but a suspicious lack of boating opportunities. Now a Bored Ape NFT holder (and yacht owner) plans to change that with the launch of a decentralized yacht club.

The Bored Yachts Club hopes to create a decentralized, NFT-gated yachting platform that allows members to charter real vessels worldwide, with proceeds going to charity. The initiative will begin with “Lady Amanda“ the single yacht of club creator Jad Comair, but the aim is to bring in more yacht owners over time while allowing them to manage funds for purposes of their choice.

Comair is the founder and CEO of Melanion capitala French investment company that launched a Bitcoin-themed ETF focused on crypto industry companies in 2021. He told Decrypt that he personally started investing in the leading cryptocurrency much earlier, in 2014.

“Thanks to Bitcoin, I was able to buy my first yacht,” he said.

An NFT is a blockchain token used to represent ownership in an item, and digital goods such as Bored Ape-style profile pictures, digital artwork, and collectibles have proliferated over the past couple of years. The market gave way 25 billion dollars in trade volume in 2021 alone, and Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the industry’s greatest successes to date.

As an art collector, Comair gravitated toward NFTs, saying he found belonging to the celebrity-studded Bored Ape Yacht Club a form of digital identity — along with potential business opportunities.

Yuga Labs grants Bored Ape NFT holders a broad license to use their own artwork to create derivative works and projects of all kinds. Others have used their monkeys to create things like clothing, toys, food and marijuana packaging, and even themes fast food restaurants. Comair chose to turn its Ape into the fictional captain and mascot of a real yacht.

He hopes that Monkey (#634)which he refers to as John Blackeye, will help entice NFT fans to buy into the Bored Yachts Club, which will hold an NFT drop later this year (most likely on Ethereum). Each of the 8,200 NFT passes – which will span three different levels of benefits – will provide access to a platform servicing charterable yachts.

There is no official tie between Bored Yachts Club and Yuga Labs, and participants do not need to own an actual Bored Ape NFT to purchase and use one of these NFT Membership Passes. The ideal of a decentralized yacht charter platform predates his Ape ownership, Comair said Decryptbut the mood fits and the thematic connection proved to be confusing.

“The name of the society is the Bored Ape Yacht Club,” he said. “In my opinion, some yachts were missing.”

“Lady Amanda”, Comair’s 30 meter long vessel, is packed with water toys and sails the Mediterranean. Members of the upcoming NFT club will be able to bid on rental windows, with all proceeds going to a charity of the yacht owner’s choice – or they can get the community to choose how the funds are directed.

Comair’s hope is that the platform will attract more yacht owners from around the world, which he said could help fulfill the dual purpose of allowing them to fill up empty charter windows (when the boat is not chartered) while supporting charities in the process. .

“It’s amazing how much emptiness you have in this whole industry,” he said of the yacht charter business. “The idea is to fill this gap – you have empty boats and people who don’t have access to these boats.”

He says he has bigger ambitions for Bored Yachts Club. He hopes it could raise the profile of yachting, for example, and possibly bring “disruptive technologies” into the industry. “We don’t have the Tesla of yachting,” he added.

Furthermore, given that boats can operate in international waters outside of land-based jurisdictions, Comair sees the Bored Yachts Club as a potential stepping stone to a sort of “crypto city” attached to a marina. We have seen such crypto city plans are unfolding elsewhere to varying degrees, but Comair’s vision has a nautical twist to it.

In the short term, at least, the idea is to launch a true Bored Ape-themed, NFT-gated yacht club. A YachtCoin token is planned to follow, and between potential token price increases and NFT pass royalties, he believes there is potential profit for both yacht owners and brokers – in addition to the charitable element.

And while the original Bored Ape Yacht Club’s path has led to metaversevia the upcoming launch of The Otherside gameBored Yachts Club has another destination in mind.

“Instead of a metaverse at the end,” Comair explained, “you have a ‘yachtverse,’ where you basically enjoy sailing instead of video games.”