Why are Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs so expensive?
$300,000 for a jpeg, you have to be joking, right? Right?
Value is in the eye of the beholder. But why people are willing to pay over $300,000 for a single bored ape? What makes these NFTs valuable?
In this text I’m going to talk about value, Veblen goods, NFTs and the future we live in. Fasten your seatbelts.
NFTs in early 2021 — the boom
Though first NFTs came to be already in 2014 (see my previous text on short history of NFTs), the mainstream awareness didn’t come until 2021. The tipping point was the sale of Beeple’s Everydays for $69 millions, putting Beeple in the top 3 most valuable contemporary artists. That was the result of 10 years of work, engaging with community, giving away so much for free, and building in public.
After Beeple’s sale, the whole market went crazy, not only 1 of 1 art or generative art (ArtBlocks), but also profile pictures collections like CryptoPunks or Hashmasks.
Bored Ape Yacht Club was launched in May 2021, already after the heights of NFT-mania (which lasted up to April 2021 roughly) and… it wasn’t bought out right away. It took over a week to sell (or mint) all the apes for the price of 0.08 ETH, and the final push came from Pranksy — one of…
