Almost all of the Bored Yacht Ape NFT collection – a popular collection of cartoon drawings featuring over 107 monkeys – has now sold for more than 24 million dollars.
According to a recent tweet from Sotheby’s, the art merchant hosting the meme-inspiring NFT collection, 101 of 107 Bored Yacht Club NFTs have now sold for roughly $24.4 million. Similarly, 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs sold for another $1.8 million in their “Ape in!” auction. This marks the largest sale of their ape NFTs until now.
CryptoPotato reported on this NFT collection just days ago, at which time the entire set was bidding for $19 million. Minted this year, each NFT represents an ERC-721 token and was minted for as low as 0.08 ETH (now $281) each.
The collection is fairly straightforward. Each image features the same monkey in the same position, but with a varying combination of backgrounds, accessories, and facial expressions each time.
One of these apes was even purchased by NBA superstar Stephen Curry, and he featured it as his Twitter profile picture, doing more to boost the hype around the collection.
While some Twitter users consider the sale to be “embarassing” or outright dumbfounded that such images would be bought at an exorbitant price, most have shown ecstatic support for Sotheby’s sale. Many of such supportive commenters are using images of these apes in their own Twitter bios, calling this a “historical moment for the whole NFT space.”
Despite the opinions of naysayers, NFTs have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to draw people’s interest – and their money.
Recently, simple NFTs of randomized numbers on a black background began selling with a starting bid of $6.5k each. Even simple images of rocks have proven that they can sell for over $100K when in the form of an NFT.
However, the question remains of whether the current NFT craze is a truly game-changing cultural phenomenon or simply a market bubble.
On the one hand, it is understandable that people would be willing to pay any price to purchase certain NFTs that reach cultural fame, either through spreading as a meme or being promoted by a famous influencer.
Alternatively, many may be buying simply out of price speculation, and some NFTs may be outright scams. Data even suggests that there could be wash-trading within the NFT space in order to create the illusion of high demand for certain projects.