2021 and 2022 were the NFT years. Whether the coronavirus played a major role in these virtual assets becoming popular is unknown, but things have been a bit quiet around NFTs lately (except for the Netflix movie The Lift, of course). So what happened to all those NFT initiatives? There are certainly many left, but one of the most famous has not shown much of its monkey face lately: what’s up with Bored Ape?
Bored Ape Yacht Club
They look nice, the monkeys from Bored Ape. They all had their own personality that was often shown in some detail in the image. However, having a Bored Ape NFT was much more than just an image. It was a kind of club that you were given access to. A club that included several celebrities. For example, Eminem would have one, but also Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg, Post Malone and Kevin Hart.
It’s not called Bored Ape Yacht Club for nothing: it’s a club for rich people. You had to be rich to get such an NFT: the most expensive Bored Ape went for about 2 million euros and can be recognized by its rainbow coat (and its number of course, it is Bored Ape YC#2087).
NFTs in the doldrums
Many owners are now a lot less happy with their bored monkey: in July 2023 it was reported that the floor price of the monkeys had decreased by 88 percent since the peak in April 2022. There are several explanations for this. The entire NFT business collapsed at some point. There was also Blur: an NFT platform that opened a kind of trading mania in early 2023 thanks to tokenized rewards. You could then farm the Mutant Apes and the Bored Apes, with traders bidding and trading in high volumes with the aim of getting Blur tokens.
Many people have gone along with this, losing members, including Machi Big Brother who sold his Bored Apes collection at a loss of 4.2 million. Then there was Franklinisbored who lost 4 million due to a Ponzi scheme and there were more problems. Also think of one of the founders of Yuga Labs (which is behind BAYC), Wylie Aronow, who quit and then there was an Ape token that has also decreased enormously in value. And those hacks…
Dookey Dash
In the meantime, what we mainly see from Bored Ape is a game called Dookey Dash, an endless runner that allowed people who already owned a monkey to win a ‘golden key’ NFT if they got the highest score. Apparently there will soon be a variant that everyone can play for such a coveted NFT. Yet there are still many monkeys being sold: that does not stop yet. The company is still there and you can still see on the X account of Bored Ape Yacht Club that buyers regularly arrive, who are completely happy with their monkey picture, and especially their status.
