Bored Ape Yacht Club Ethereum NFT Sales Surge as ApeCoin Price Pops, Then Drops

ApeCoin, the Ethereum token built for the expanding Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT ecosystem, launched this morning and rapidly rose in value before shedding much of its initial momentum.

The token, which Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders can claim for free, initially hit a peak of $39.40 per token according to data from Coinbase and CoinMarketCap. However, it quickly sank and has been hovering below the $10 mark over the last few hours.

However, not every data source agrees that there was such a sizable top—and a massive drop to match. CoinGecko, for example, shows an all-time high of just $10.36 for APE. In any case, data sources are more closely aligned now, with CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap both showing a current price of around $7.50 for the token.

Sales and price points of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection also both jumped significantly yesterday following the announcement of ApeCoin.

According to data from Floor Prices, the cheapest-available Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT listed on secondary markets Wednesday morning was about 91.9 ETH, or about $248,000 at the time. Overnight, hours after the ApeCoin announcement, the floor price had jumped to 105.9 ETH, or more than $292,000 as of then.

Along with that 15% increase (in ETH) in a matter of hours, the cheapest-available Mutant Ape Yacht Club similarly rose 15% from 20.3 ETH to 23.3 ETH during the same span. Listing prices alone do not paint a full picture of demand for an NFT collection, but Bored Ape sales indeed also shot through the roof yesterday.

More than $45.5 million worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have been sold over the last 24 hours, per data from CryptoSlam, with the majority of that action coming after ApeCoin’s launch was announced yesterday afternoon. That’s a 1,316% rise in trading volume over the previous 24-hour span.

Meanwhile, Mutant Apes generated $30.5 million worth of sales in the same span, up 558% from the previous 24-hour window, with the companion Bored Ape Kennel Club dog NFTs up 825% at a total of $12 million. All told, that’s $88 million worth of NFTs from the wider Bored Apes franchise sold in the past day.

Interestingly, the floor prices for all of those collections sank dramatically over the last couple hours. That may be because Bored Ape holders have claimed their respective ApeCoin tokens and now are trying to sell the connected NFTs, which will not yield tokens for any new owners who purchase them on secondary markets.

For example, the cheapest Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT currently on the market as of this writing is priced at just 86 ETH, while the cheapest Mutant Ape is listed at 16.5 ETH. That’s still a lot of money, but it removes the premium added since the ApeCoin announcement—and then some.

An NFT acts like a deed of ownership to a unique digital item—in this case, one-of-a-kind profile pictures that feature illustrations of disinterested apes with randomized attributes. The NFT market soared to $25 billion in trading volume in 2021 alone, with the Bored Ape Yacht Club emerging as a top project following its April launch.

ApeCoin is designed to power an ecosystem of apps and services designed by Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and recent purchasers of the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT properties. It’s a decentralized Ethereum token, however, so other companies and projects can also adopt the token and use it.

Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape owners are eligible to claim preset amounts of the token, although Kennel Club owners do not get ApeCoin if they only own the NFT from the collection. That said, people who hold both a Bored Ape or Mutant Ape and a Kennel Club NFT get bonus tokens from ApeCoin DAO.

The token was released this morning for NFT owners to claim, and is also available via leading crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and FTX. At the current price of around $7.50, a Bored Ape NFT holder is eligible to claim nearly $76,000 worth of ApeCoin, while Mutant Ape NFT holders get about $15,300 worth.