What Is The BORED APE YACHT CLUB And Why Did I Invest?

Mr. Fox breaks down how he made over $15 000 through the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Just over four weeks ago my Twitter feed became flooded with cartoon pictures of Bored Apes (yes, Bored Apes). These pictures were selling for thousands of dollars, and the people buying them were more excited about them than for any other project I had seen in the crypto world. I quickly looked into these Bored Apes and found that they aligned very well with a lot of the things that I believed were going to happen in the crypto world in both the short and long-term, so I bought one for $1 500 USD. 44 days later, that $1 500 is now worth $18 480 (at the time of writing).

Let me tell you how it happened, and what the Bored Ape Yacht Club is.

The first question you probably have is, what is a Bored Ape? Here are some examples:

There are and only ever will be 10 000 Bored Apes and each one is totally unique.

What determines the value of an Ape? Basically, it is how the Ape is designed. An Ape that looks similar to a lot of other Apes (for example, it shares the same colour Fur with many Apes, it is wearing the same clothing as many other Apes, and is wearing the same hat that a lot of other Apes are wearing) will sell for a lot less than an Ape who looks very different from the rest. The rarer Ape, the more it is worth. The Ape I own - as you can see above - gets a lot of his value from the Hip Hop clothing it wears; only 1% percent of Apes also have that clothing.

And no, you cannot change the Ape to make it more rare. What you see is what you get.

What stops you from screenshotting those Apes up there and calling them your own? You could write an entire book on the technology behind it, called Non-Fungible Tokens (which I will help break down in future), but all you need to know is that the people in crypto have found a way to show who the true owner of these pictures are, and it is impossible to find a way around that.

Ok, so interesting concept you’re probably thinking, but who really cares?

Well, the answer is this. What you see is a drawing of an Ape, what people in the crypto world see is a digital avatar. Crypto people look at these Apes and see a new way to show themselves online. They can make these Bored Apes their profile pictures on Twitter and Discord, which are the places where they do most of their work. Everybody will recognize them as a Bored Ape, and what’s more, there are 9 999 other Apes, which now automatically means they have 9 999 other people on the internet that they can connect with and be supported by. Because that is how the Bored Ape Yacht Club works. Ape see Ape, Ape support Ape, as we like to say.

Ok. Let’s recap for a sec. There are 10 000 Bored Apes. Some are more rare than others. And people use them as their profile pictures. You’re still not convinced they should be worth more than a few bucks.

What if I told you that there is a future down the line where millions, if not billions, will put on Virtual Reality headsets and plug into the digital world now known as The Metaverse. Every person here is pseudonymous (hence the name, Mr. Fox), and they have no links to who they are in the physical world. People will have jobs here, there is land that is bought, sold, and built on, you can go the casino or watch a movie with friends, and everybody is represented by their own digital avatar.

And there is that term again - digital avatar. Bored Apes may simply be cartoon pictures right now, but the bet of the owners of these Apes is that when The Metaverse is ready, they will be the skins that they walk around in.

Let’s connect some dots. If there are supposed to be millions, if not billions, in the Metaverse, and there are only 10 000 Apes, then what would make having an Ape a pretty massive status symbol. And if you have a rare Ape, forget about it. If we take this idea of the Metaverse one step further, imagine how valuable it would be to have 9 999 allies in this entirely new virtual universe. The answer is incredibly.

Whether or not I think The Metaverse sounds like a terrible idea and whether or not I think it will be a horrible step for humanity is not important. What is important is that it is going to happen, and buying a Bored Ape is a great way to prepare for it.

Ok. Let’s recap once more. There are 10 000 Bored Apes. Some are more rare than others. People use them as their profile pictures. And people are betting that they’re going to be extremely important in the pseudonymous digital universe known as The Metaverse. You’re starting to see the bigger picture, but you’re still not convinced their prices are warranted. $15 000 seems like a pretty big bet for something that might not even happen.

Let’s talk about what benefits you actually get from being a part of the club.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is exactly as it sounds, a club made up of Bored Apes. The ‘Yacht’ part comes in as a joke - the Bored Apes think their investments will do so well that they will all end up on Yachts. But other than what you can get from your Ape, what does the Bored Ape Yacht Club and its creators give Ape owners?

To be clear, you’re not allowed in the Bored Ape Yacht Club if you don’t own a Bored Ape. Through crypto technology that isn’t important for you to understand right now, you cannot get past the intro page of the BAYC website unless you are detected as an owner.

Being a part of the club comes with a lot of awesome stuff. When Bored Ape Yacht Club merch drops, you get a chance to buy (you can find merch being resold on eBay for thousands). When they do a Treasure Hunt on the site for $10 000, you get a chance to play. And when they come out with new additions to the club, like the Bored Ape KENNEL Club, you reap the benefits. Yep, every Ape owner was given one digital dog that is from what is now known as the Bored Ape Kennel Club for free. This was basically free money, as now the cheapest you can get a Doggo for is roughly $3 000. It pays to be a Bored Ape.

Last recap. There are 10 000 Bored Apes. Some are more rare than others. People use them as their profile pictures. Many are betting that they’re going to be extremely important in The Metaverse. And you get a lot of really cool ($$$) things from the club. The ideas described here are in reality far more complicated than I have made them out to be, but it was my goal to simply give you an understanding of what this whole things is about, and I hope I did that. If you want to look through some Apes, go to OpenSea and search for the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

So, to answer one of the first questions, how did I make as much as I did?

I was early, and I was right. Many digital avatar projects have come and gone, but the Bored Ape Yacht Club has proven itself as a giant among the space that is here to stay. Demand for a Bored Ape is truly wild and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. I have made so much because so many people want an Ape.

How can you find projects like this and keep up with these concepts? a) do what I do and make crypto your primary focus, spending a lot of your day reading through Tweets, Discord servers, and articles. Or, b) you can just subscribe to this newsletter where I break all of the important stuff down for you in English and send you all of the new projects I’m looking at.

And down the Rabbit Hole we go.

Mr. Fox