Bored Ape Yacht Club is creating a metaverse

A metaverse worth actually exploring?  Full of new gaming worlds and other cool stuff wander through?  I'm not a gamer, but the Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse ideas in this new trailer actually look fun and interesting.

For a lot of us, the whole idea of a "metaverse," a new virtual world to explore with VR goggles, crossed into our awareness thanks to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.  Here's their metaverse trailer, and it looks lame (and commercial) as fuck.  Bits of it are cool, but not enough to make me want to put on goggles.  

Then there are the metaverses that already exist and are being built as we speak.  The Sandbox is much less corporate, and based more on the decentralized ideas from the crypto world.  The idea is that you can buy a chunk of virtual land, and build whatever you want on it.  A little more pixelated in the video, but lots of weird, creative people building all kinds of VR places.  That sounds more interesting than the Facebook/Meta world.  There is a land rush going on in The Sandbox to buy great pieces of virtual property right now.  But it doesn't have me wanting to put on goggles yet.  The same with Decentraland, the other main main metaverse being bought up and built up right now.  Pretty cool, but it doesn't have me excited to go explore.  Not yet.  I think both of these two will get pretty cool in the future, but they're still a long way from mainstream adoption.  

But Bored Apes...  These crazy guys from Miami put out a series of 10,000 NFT's less than a year ago.  They came out in late April 2021, when crypto and NFT art was surging in its first big wave of popularity.  They came up with this little back story for the Bored Apes.  The year is 2031, and these apes are rich from crypto, but bored, and just like to hang with similar people, in a weird little club out in the Everglades.  The NFT's didn't move right off the bat, at a price of  .08 Eth, about $130-$150 each.  Then word got around the crypto world, and they got snapped up in a couple of days, about two weeks later.  

Crypto Punks were still the OG NFT collectibles then, and the series that all other NFT collectibles/art were judged by.  But the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) community became just that, a community.  Crypto enthusiast business guys bought some, like Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk.  The prices rose into the tens of thousands of dollars each, then hundreds of thousands.   Before long, a few celebrities started buying them.  Steph Curry, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and others, joined the BAYC club.  

The floor price, the lowest price for any NFT in the collection, kept rising.  They came out with another series, the Mutant Ape NFT's.  The BAYC floor price surpassed the Crypto Punks, and kept going.  Now it takes about $300,000 to buy one of these NFT's, basically jpegs tied to the Ethereum blockchain.  

Is this all insane?  Yeah.  But BAYC has kept going.  They just bought out the O.G.'s, Crypto Punks and Meebits NFT series, from Larva Labs.  They just airdropped their own crypto, Apecoin, to NFT owners.  Now they are talking about building a whole new metaverse world, based on these three NFT series.  In less than a year, this wacky idea by the crypto guys in Miami has become a business empire valued at about $4 billion.  WTF is going on?  

Is this a big Ponzi scheme?  I don't think so.  Yes, there are a ton of scammers in the crypto and NFT worlds, just like the "real" art world and business worlds.  You have to due your homework and be careful when buying NFT's or crypto.  But I think what we're witnessing here (if you're actually watching), is a whole new kind of entertainment business model forming, and BAYC is suddenly leading the charge.  Most people thought the internet was a joke,  225-27 years ago.  The retail behemoth, Sears department stores, laughed at little Amazon,com, the tiny online bookselling business, 22 years ago.  Blockbuster video thought Netflix was a joke.  You get the idea.  We're in a period of time where old business and social models are being disrupted, and new ones are forming.  

I think we are seeing a whole new world of  blockchain tech-enabled entertainment businesses being born, and I think those Bored Apes have become the main group to watch to see where this whole new type of entertainment, gaming, and tech business may be going.  

I first heard of NFT's in a magazine article I found on a bus, about 9-10 months ago.  I finally got around to researching NFT's and the crypto world about 4 months ago.  From the start, I just liked the Bored Apes artwork.  Most of the others didn't do much for me, but the Apes had this sarcastic, funny vibe to them.  They were not the coolest NFT's four months ago.  But this group is charging full speed in this new and fast changing world, and I'm keeping an eye on them.  If crypto or NFT's interest you, maybe you should, too.   

Tony Hawk's Last Trick Ever NFT collection just dropped

This is the intro video for Tony's Last Trick Ever NFT drop.  The drop is happening as a write this, it started half an hour ago.  Working with Draft Kings and Autograph, they are dropping 16,600 NFT's, each a digital "container" which can be opened to find out what specific NFT buyers got, on 12/21/2021.  Just for the record, that's a $664,000 NFT drop, providing they all sell, and they should.  Not a bad afternoon's work.  To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second big NFT drop in action sports.

If you have started checking out this blog again, since I've come back to it, then you know I've been learning about these "NFT things."  On the surface, or to most people my age and older, they sound absurd.  "OK, so let me get this straight, people are paying $3 million in crypto for a jpeg file of a funny looking ape, which doesn't even exist in the physical world?"  Yep.  That's what's happening, on the high end of the spectrum, anyhow. 

OK, very few people are paying millions of $ (actually Ether usually, or some crypto), but tens of thousands of people are paying $40-$2,000 worth of crypto for either "digital collectibles," or digital files of someone's artwork, as well as gaming items.  Yes, that's nuts, in a sense.  But paying $100,000 for a tricked out 1964 Chevy Malibu is also nuts, and people are doing that, too.  People have been paying $1 for songs on iTunes for 20 years now, and those don't exist in the real world.  Gamers have been paying for cool weapons, added features, to skip missions, level up, or to get "skins" in games for years now, as well.  And now most people stream movies and TV shows, we don't own the DVD's or VHS tapes.  So part of our whole technological "progress" in the last 25 years is buying shit that doesn't physically exist.  Most people do that at some level already.

NFT's, aka Non Fungible Tokens, are digital files tied to a blockchain transaction, which can prove one digital file is the "only one," or one of a series.  Among many other uses, NFT's work really well to sell digital collectibles, and for artists to sell a digital version of a piece of art, whether it's digital art or physical art.  

Over the last 3-4 weeks, I've learned the basics of NFT technology, and realized, "shit, this is for real, and it's going to be around for a while" (unless us humans start World War III or something stupid like that).  Then I realized that there's an absurd amount of money being paid for some of these things.  Crypto wealth is not the whole point, but it beats doing a drawing that takes 45 hours, and then shipping the original to someone for $150 plus shipping costs.  That's what I've been doing for 5 years.  Fun, but very unprofitable.  Also, NFT's allow artists and creators to program a royalty payment in the transaction, because of smart contract technology.  So if a piece does sell for a crazy price down the road, the artist gets a cut.  That's real cool, from a creative person's perspective.  

The next thing I realized in my intense research is that only a tiny part of the overall population is into NFT's right now.  But this technology is growing and evolving at light speed, and new uses and ideas are popping up all the time.  This is opening up new markets.  NFT's will be something virtually everyone deals with in 2-4 years, maybe sooner.  So for all those reasons, I'm diving deep into this world.  I've already created my first two NFT's, both at really high prices, just to learn the basics, and get a handle on the process.  I have several more ideas stacking up in my head already.  

Back to Tony Hawk.  He's the biggest name, to average people, in the action sports world.  You can argue, but nearly everyone knows of Tony at this point.  Tony has always been a gadget guy, and an early adopter trying out new tech.  He's also super smart, a good businessman, and has been into buying Bitcoin for "about ten years" according to an interview from last spring.  The price chart I found goes back to 2014, when it was $327 per Bitcoin.  Ten years ago, it was a lot cheaper.  So whatever Tony bought back then, if he kept some, has made a serious return on his money.  It's $47,500+ per Bitcoin now.  

All that NFT talk out of the way, I think Tony's idea of retiring 5 tricks, and getting good video of the last time he pulls each them, then working with Autograph and Draft Kings to make it a cool NFT drop, is a cool idea.  On the business end, they all make a good chunk of money.  For Tony, he can say, "I'm not wrecking myself trying varial 540's or frontside Cabs anymore."  For collectors, I think his NFT's will hold up better than some others, like Simone Biles's NFT's, over time.  But it will take years to see on that.  

I'm writing this post just getting word out that Tony Hawk, someone everyone from the Old School Action Sports world actually knows, or knows of, is doing a cool NFT project.  I hope that will get some other action sport people looking at this technology, and looking for good, solid, legit ways to put it to use.  Like using NFT's to fund a documentary or a new video project, or maybe as a fundraiser for someone after a serious injury, or just to make some decent living money as an artist.  I think there are a ton of really good uses for NFT's, as well as the shady uses some people are trying.  Action sports people are a creative bunch, and I think once the basic idea of NFT's seeps into action sports culture, I think we'll see a bunch of cool NFT's come out, a part of many amazing projects.  That's my hope, anyhow.   

Gary Vaynerchuk explains the basics of NFT's (back in February)

Like millions of people, I'm a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, I've been following his content for maybe 3 years now, I think.  In this video he gives a fairly quick, 8 minute take on where NFT's (Non Fungible Tokens) were, back in February.  

With my current, sketchy lifestyle, it's been nearly impossible for me to take in large amounts of information, for most of the Covid period.  As a homeless guy who actually does some kind of "work" every day, like art and content creation, I struggled to get any decent amount of time online to learn.  The little bit of time I had, 1-2 hours a day, was mostly keeping in touch with people social, and quick blog posts, content creation. So I didn't listen to much of what Gary, and many others, were doing, for several months.  

Over the past few months, in the limited amount of media I did consume, I started seeing the term "NFT" in relation to artists and musicians.  I knew it was somehow tied to Ethereum, but didn't have time to dig into it, and learn anything about it.  

NFT stands for Non Fungible Token.  Let's start with "fungible."  Money, for example, is fungible, one dollar is worth as much as any other dollar.  You can pay for lunch with dollar bills, coins worth a dollar, a dollar in your debit card account, or a dollar in your Apple Pay account.  Any dollar is worth the same, that's what fungible means.  That's a big part of the point of money.  

Now one big problem for creative people, of any kind, in the digital age, is that we all can share digital files.  A book, a song, a piece of art, a photo, a video clip, whatever, we can all make copies, and share the copies, and millions of copies could end up being made.  Nobody gets paid, and most are pretty much worthless.  Creative people, and businesses, lose lots of money because of this.  

So someone figured out how to take a digital file, let's say a scan of one of my drawings, and "mint" it, tying it into a blockchain, mostly the Ethereum blockchain.  Because there is only one file tied to the blockchain in that transaction, and anyone can check that, suddenly it's "scarce."  It's an original.  When you do that, mint a digital file into the blockchain, that's called a Non Fungible Token, of NFT, for short.  You can make NFT's out of art, photos, music, video clips, contracts, things like ID, any digital file.  And people can prove, "that's the REAL one."  You need to make them out of your own work, that you own, or else you get into copyright trouble. 

This started among tech geeks in 2016-2017, and different projects started to happen.  Crypto Kitties was one of the first.  Crypto Punks, a group of 10,000, unique, 24 bit characters, was another.  That one was actually tied to Bitcoin.  Another early big one was Bored Ape Yacht Club, funny looking apes in clothes, all with different features.  The Crypto Punks were given away, for something like 11 cents in fees.  People did what people do, they collected them, traded them, and started selling them, and an aftermarket developed.  Even though these are just files, the blockchain tie makes each unique, and potentially valuable, and this year they've been selling for downright ludicrous prices.  

One of the 10,000 Crypto Punks sold for $530 million.  Again, they were free, with an 11 cent service charge, in 2017.  One of the Bored Apes sold for $3.4 million.  A Crypto Kitty sold for over $3.4 million.  Digital graphic designer Beeple, (who says he's not an "artist") sold a compilation of 5,000 of his digital sketches, for over $69 million in March.  You get the idea.  If you think the real estate market is crazy, it's tame next to the high end of the Crypto Art/NFT market.  

The NBA did an NFT project called Top Shots, and raked in over $100 million.  Gary Vaynerchuk did a launch of 10,000 NFT's, based on his own doodled characters.  He made about $20 million, instantly formed a huge community of his followers, and then sold 5 of the original sketches in a Christie's auction for $1.2 million. So that's the insane side of the NFT boom, the 2021 NFT Art/Collectibles market.  

On the much more sane side of things, a whole bunch of artists and musicians have minted NFT tokens of their work, and put them up on several market sites, kind of like eBay for NFT's.  Most sell for $40 to maybe $300, plus some fees, when they sell. They pay (almost exclusively) in Ether (Ethereum crypto).  You have to buy crypto, get a wallet, and then sign up to the marketplaces, to create, buy, sell, or trade NFT's.  But there's a lot of that going on.  

NFT's have a whole bunch of other potential, as well.  Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank guy, is stoked on NFT's.   He sees a future where they may be the standard type of concert or sports event ticket.  You may get bonus, digital stuff, with your game or concert NFT.  They could be used for ID's, passports, and things like that some day.  You can take your NFT into vitural worlds, there are actually virtual art galleries displaying NFT's right now.  You know that Metaverse thing Mark Zuckerburg is talking about, these are part of that concept.  

So that is a basic look at the emerging world of NFT's.  I've been digging into this world for about a week now, to see if it makes sense for any of my creative work.  We'll see where that leads.  If any of this interests you, watch the video above, check out the links, and you can find a ton more info on YouTube.