APE in

Monkey business

Behold, the worst thing in the history of American television, a medium which includes 31 years of Maury Povich’s daytime show:

@Eve6 is not the worst thing on TV. In fact, they’re an awesome Twitter follow. #heartinablendersong

That’s Paris Hilton, a person who is famous for being famous, and Jimmy Fallon, a person who is famous for talking to people like Paris Hilton, discussing the art they bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars that only exists online.

It is quite possible that this represents the moment when it became obvious that non-fungible token (NFT) art jumped the shark, as it aired eight days after the peak on Google Trends:

Although a clip-art rock NFT just sold for seven figures, so maybe we should slow our roll proclaiming their demise.

However, a cryptocurrency, ApeCoin, was released last week which aims to be the centerpiece of an entire ecosystem surrounding the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which will include, at minimum, NFT-based games and a metaverse.

Very quickly (and unsurprisingly), $APE leapt to the top of the trending chart on CoinMarketCap:

And to think, I could have bought $NOTART.

Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t understand the appeal of the BAYC or its mutant offshoot, appropriately named the Mutant Ape Yacht Club. I have no freaking idea why someone paid $2.9 million for this:

I don’t know that I’d pay almost $3 million for an ACTUAL gold ape that shoots laser beams out of its eyes.

. . . but if you’re into schadenfreude (or locating brilliant secondhand art finds), its current offer is under $380K, for a smooth 87% discount.

But this isn’t the same tired OK-boomer argument about “who paid for this when I can right-click and get it for free?” I don’t understand the appeal of BAYC, but I don’t understand the appeal of most art. To reduce BAYC to “monkey JPGs” is more or less the same as reducing the Mona Lisa to “cleverly arranged paint,” or a Picasso to “psychotically arranged paint,” or a Jackson Pollock to “randomly arranged paint.”

For comparative purposes, this “art” was auctioned for €140 million in 2014:

This is either No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) by Mark Rothko, or something my two-year old painted that I magneted to our refrigerator.

. . . and Takashi Murakami’s sculpture My Lonesome Cowboy was expected to fetch somewhere between $3–4 million when it hit the Sotheby’s block in 2008, but instead it raked in $15 million. Do not look at it if you’re at work.

Pictured: the only part I feel comfortable showing you. That’s his hand, not his . . . but yes, that’s what he’s doing. (art-culture.world)

Okay, fine, but only click the last two words of this sentence if you have no qualms about looking at what I can only describe as a semen lariat. (CONTENT WARNING FOR SEMEN LARIAT.)

The price of fine art is ridiculous and has been for decades. In 1987, two paintings by Vincent Van Gogh sold for more than $90 million between them — in non-adjusted dollars. It should, of course, be noted that van Gogh was completely insane.

So in a world where a man two colors short of a full palette who cut off his own ear is one of the most celebrated artists in history and Kanye West’s album cover guy gets $15 million for a masturbating teen superhero, Beeple selling an NFT that took 13 years to create for $70 million shouldn’t be the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard.

I don’t have to understand why people buy into Bored Ape Yacht Club, just as I don’t have to understand why people buy $500 designer T-shirts.

I just know that if the coolest place on Rodeo Drive or the sexiest club in Miami or the hippest brand on Madison Avenue gets tokenized, I’d probably want to buy a piece of it.

And Bored Ape Yacht Club has the #1 brand in the burgeoning metaverse. The only NFT collection with any more clout is the original CryptoPunks, and Yuga Labs — who created BAYC — bought them two weeks ago. Sure, they have Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton staging cringefully awkward interviews to a spectacularly bored audience, judging from the obvious canned applause. But they also have Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa dropping beats available in APE.

But it’s more than getting celebrity influencers. Their decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) sports an all-star lineup for its first board:

You may not know their faces, or even their names, but you know their work.

If that weren’t enough, they had a $450 million funding round led by Silicon Valley firm Andressen Horowitz, which valued their market cap at more than $4 billion. I don’t know jack about why people get into NFTs, but a16z knows what they’re doing. Besides, this is more than just monkey JPGs now: Apes are a commodity and a brand and a lifestyle for the flamboyantly wealthy, just as Gucci and Lamborghini are.

And membership has its benefits. Being in the BAYC netted holders a barrel of APE via airdrop. Depending on when they sold it, members made tens of thousands of dollars:

More money than a monkey can fling poop at.

While the APEverse is in its early stages — and it hasn’t been without blemishes — the rollout has been full-tilt. They are already available on every major crypto exchange — impressive when one considers that Fantom still isn’t on Coinbase. And support is coming from unexpected places:

Who thinks this is a good idea? The Venn diagram of “web3 savvy” and “people who read TIME” has about as much overlap as “professional jockeys” and “NBA stars.”

So while I’m long-term bullish on APE, I haven’t bought yet because of the ridiculous price action, going from $15 to under $10 as holders sold to $15 again as new buyers flooded in.

BAYC owners who were airdropped APE have 90 days to claim it, so potentially they may be waiting for a new ATH to cash out. Regardless, more coins will likely be hitting the open market.

However, ApeCoin’s tokenomics freeze the rest of the tokens for 12 months, and then unlock them gradually over the next four years. Just over one-quarter of the one billion tokens are in circulation, and the APE DAO has no plans of ever minting (or burning) more.

Currently, this gives APE a market capitalization of $3.5 billion, enough to comfortably sit in the top 50.

But it’s destined for bigger things.

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu rocketed into the top 10 cryptocurrencies on the strength of memes and community. And while Elon Musk still tweets, and occasionally this or that business claims they’ll accept payments in DOGE, that’s all they’ll ever really have. APE has those plus a gotta-have-it brand that will attract high-roller customers and keep them long-term, if the six-figure airdrops are any indication.

For frame of reference, ApeCoin’s current market cap is roughly equivalent to that of Hugo Boss ($3.7B). Here’s some other brands that will easily get conquered by the Planet of the Apes (market caps from CNBC):

Nordstrom: $4.3B
Gap: $5.3B
Under Armour: $7.5B
Capri Holdings (Versace/Jimmy Choo/Michael Kors): $8.2B
Ralph Lauren: $8.3B
Levi Strauss & Co: $8.5B
Burberry: $9B
Tapestry (Coach/Kate Spade): $10.1B
Shiba Inu: $13.3B
Prada: $14.7B
Dogecoin: $17.1B

But that’s just fashion. What if APE gets into social gaming? They can rub their hairy elbows with Playtika ($7.6B) and Zynga ($10.2B) or even Caesar ($16.9B).

A future in which APE = DOGE + CPRI + PLTK = 10x.

That’s if you buy now at these prices, which — and I’m no financial advisor — seems like a really bad idea. Let the maniacs get done blowing it up.

Then APE in.

When Taylor realizes he could have bought it on a pullback.

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