Nearly a month before its one year anniversary, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection has gone from an idea that "probably wouldn't work," to a business valued at $4 billion which "real" business people love to hate, and real celebrities own pieces of. This documentary by The Defiant above was made in June 2021, when the Ape NFT's were around $5,000 to $8,000 each. No one had any idea how crazy they would get then. Now BAYC NFT's run $318K and up. For jpeg's of monkeys, tied to the Ethereum blockchain! What sets BAYC apart from the dozens of other NFT projects?
"The art was inspired by our upbringing. We grew up in the cultural melting pot of Miami, where we skated, BMXed, and drank half our 20's away, in the parking lot behind the local punk bar, talking shit about music, movies, and books, our love of Miami, 90's hip hop, 80's hardcore punk, skateboarding, crypto culture." - "NOSASS," BAYC Co-founder (18:40 in the doc above)
Sarcasm, beer, and action sports. One of the main themes of my blogs, for 13 years now, is that people who get into action sports as kids often go on to do really creative stuff later in life. Rodney Mullen gives TED Talks about creativity. Steve Rocco punked the world building World Industries skateboard company, then selling it for $20 million. Chris Moeller went from a Mad Dog to BMX mogul building S&M Bikes and Fit Bikes. My old Huntington Beach Pier friends, Pierre Andre' Senizergues and Don Brown created Etnies/Sole Technology. Spike Jonze has directed some of the most profitable movies in history, and won an Oscar. Mat Hoffman still rips, and runs multiple businesses. Tony Hawk helped create a billion dollar video game series, and is often interviewed on business news channels. The list goes on and on. You get the idea.
You may hate crypto and NFT's, or love them. That's up to you. But this post is to let you know that Bored Ape Yacht Club is yet another highly creative business taking off that has some action sports roots, along with punk, hip hop, and crypto culture. I don't know about you, but it'd be cool to see Tony Hawk, Mat Hoffman, and other BMXers and skaters help them build a part of their metaverse. We'll see what happens.
Just found a cool interview with Nicole Muniz, aka vstrange. She's the CEO of Yuga Labs, creators of BAYC and now owners of BAYC, Mutant Apes, Crypto Punks, Meebits, and probably some other stuff. Cool interview on the creation, first year, and future thoughts for the Apes and Ape friends.
I have a new blog now, check it out:
The Spot Finder #thespotfinder
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