Bored Ape exclusive NFT holding bar opens in London
Rain hammered down on Londoners on Wednesday night as they trudged stoically through sooty puddles and the roar of traffic. But I slipped through the flow of outbound commuters in the opposite direction, having been offered the chance to peer into the world of an exclusive club near London’s Victoria Station.
This club has a high barrier to entry, around $100,000 (£89,108) for the ‘membership card’, dwarfing anything Mayfair and Pall Mall have to offer.
Those allowed into the VIP event are the privileged holders of a digital illustration of a cartoon monkey, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, which in the crypto world gives access to an advanced clique of wealth, influence and insider knowledge.
The scramble to join the club, whose members include Eminem and Paris Hilton, has seen each cartoon monkey illustration rise in value to a high watermark in September 2021 of $2.25 million before collapsing amid the “crypto winter” at its current price of 100,000 dollars. keywords.
Check: Crypto live prices
In the crypto ecosystem, first impressions are deceiving, on the surface each illustration is just a silly monkey drawing, but behind each cartoonish face is a unique piece of code locked on the blockchain, a “smart contract” that only its owner can access.
This code is what makes the illustration an NFT, a unique resource.
Let’s explore what life is like inside the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and whether it’s worth the membership.
The interior is dark, lit by plasma screens flashing NFT artwork, particularly Bored Apes illustrations, and the less prestigious Mutant Ape derivative.
I immediately stand out, as most of the people I first meet are dressed in outfits that feature the white Bored Ape skull logo.
The dance floor at this venue, which has been described as “the world’s first Bored Ape Bar”, is packed with groups who own an NFT with a price tag that could buy a house right in my hometown.
I see many heads locked tightly in conversation, perhaps about crypto projects I should know about, so I make my way through the throng with an ambition to engage the first person I make eye contact with. However, I am distracted by a complimentary glass of wine from one of the many smartly dressed waiters.
Refreshment in hand, I meet a BAYC holder, Lannie Leewho traveled to the event from China.
To get into these exclusive BAYC events, you have to own an NFT that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and so my first question to this crypto entrepreneur was, “Is it worth the money?”
Lee is the co-founder of Mecca Lab and Hangout Metaversea decentralized Metaverse that enables players to build and monetize gaming experiences.
Read more: Crypto: What is ApeCoin?
She said that apart from access to exclusive clubs, BAYC holders “earn” a lot extra in the form of airdrops of connected NFTs and even BAYC’s native cryptocurrency apecoin (APE-USD).
Lee added, “Holding just one Bored Ape NFT allows community members to earn a lot extra as the ‘brand’ grows. Airdrops include thousands of dollars of the apecoin cryptocurrency, virtual land in the Bored Ape metaverse, called Otherside, and Mutant Ape NFTs .”
Bored Ape holders are able to “mutate” their normal Bored Ape with an additional free digital resource, called a Mutant Serum NFT. This makes the illustration look like it’s dipped in toxic sludge.
These mutant serum derivatives sell for around 11 Ether (ETH-USD) each, roughly $18,000.
During the release of the Bored Ape apecoin cryptocurrency, BAYC holders were eligible to claim up to 10,094 apecoins, around $40,000 at today’s prices, while holders of the derivative Mutant Ape NFT were eligible for 2,042 apecoins.
The audience is international with members of the BAYC community having flown in from countries such as Spain, USA, China, Japan and Mongolia.
And the music? Let’s just say it’s not a country. The pulsating beats are provided by DJs from Dcentralized, a web3 dance music collective.
The night’s headliner was Spottie WiFi, a multi-million dollar selling “CryptoPunk rapper” who put up sharp lyrics about the crypto space.
Spottie WiFi, aka Miguel Mora, has collaborated with hip-hop stars including Bun B and is a forerunner of what he calls the “NFT Music Revolution”.
Spottie told me that he and other artists use NFTs to deliver their music to fans without the gatekeeping of traditional music industry middlemen like record labels, publishers, streaming platforms.
He said: “The Web3 community means that artists don’t need millions of fans; they only need a few hundred to make a decent living. In fact, it’s the centralized platforms and middlemen like Spotify (SPOT) and TikTok that need millions of users, not the artists.”
My next encounter was with a German NFT aficionado, who had recently purchased a Bored Ape NFT and was at his first BAYC event.
Read more: What are zombie cryptocurrencies? 10 ‘undead’ crypto tokens left on the shelf
“The special use case of Bored Ape NFTs is that it gives access to an exclusive private club where you get inside information about the crypto ecosystem. I’m here to learn, there are some smart people in this room”, he said.
As in many sectors of the crypto space, he did not want to be “doxxed,” meaning to have his identity revealed.
Attendees at BAYC meetings are known for their combination of wealth and insider knowledge of the latest developments in crypto.
This view was confirmed by another BAYC member, who also wished not to be “doxxed”. He had dark glasses, a mask, a glowing green hat and a bright red clown nose. The disguise included an accompanying NFT avatar with similar attire.
He said: “Look at the smart people in this room, they have realized the potential of web3.
“Look, I’m an example of what web3 can do for people. I was a teacher for 20 years. I invested early in Bored Ape and CryptoPunk’s NFT series.
“Now I work for the CEO of Vaynermedia Gary Vaynerchukthis is the great leveler, a level playing field where people don’t care about class, gender, ethnicity or sexuality.”
Sang Vu, a crypto influencer who is also an advisor to London’s vibrant DLT Hub, said: “Here we have a unique and diverse concentration of early adopters in the web3 sector.
“They are composed of investors and collectors who are passionate about NFTs as a new art form. But for them it is more than just art, it is a sense of belonging and access to a like-minded community of individuals, and possibly an antidote to the crisis of loneliness that has intensified due to the coronavirus shutdowns.”
The organizers of the event, Vishaal Hindocha and Samit Max Patel, are both Bored Ape NFT holders, giving them intellectual property rights to use the monkey image and name as branding for the venue.
Hindocha said: “My business partner and I are the proprietors of Bored Apes, which is what we used in the logo for the venue.
“Mutant Apes are on display in the bar area and the collection is valued at $4m to $6m.”
But would-be hackers should think again, as the NFTs displayed are only digital representations, and the real value lies in the ownership of the smart contract code securely distributed on the Ethereum blockchain.
By most accounts, BAYC is the most successful NFT art collection to come out of the NFT retail frenzy. BAYC’s current market cap is valued at around $1.1 billion, according to CoinGecko.
Read more: Crypto may be at risk of the EU’s new “kill switch”
But this NFT series has now become a “decentralized brand” where holders of each NFT also have intellectual property rights to exploit the name and the recognizable cartoon monkey as they wish.
So NFT holders can create anything with the monkey’s face and name, such as a bar, clothing line or even an animated series of movies. This is one of the main drivers of value, increasing demand for one of the 10,000 BAYC NFTs in existence.
Yuga Labsthe developer foundation behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club series, did not immediately respond to Yahoo Finance UK’s request for comment.
