Bored Ape Yacht Club: Overview, Market Impact, and Celebrity Influence

Bored Ape Yacht Club has remained a headline NFT brand by pairing celebrity attention with a long-running market boom-and-bust. Launched in 2021 by Yuga Labs as a collection of 10,000 cartoon-like ape NFTs with distinct traits, BAYC quickly became a status symbol as high-profile owners publicized their holdings. A BuzzFeed report in February 2022 revealed identities of two co-founders, prompting the other two core members to do the same on X. On March 11, 2022, Yuga Labs acquired IP for rival NFT collections CryptoPunks V2 and Meebits. The company raised $450 million led by Andreessen Horowitz and was valued at $4 billion by March 2022. Initially priced at 0.08 ETH (about $220), BAYC sold out in 12 hours. As of June 2026, the floor price hovered around 8.80 ETH, down from 128 ETH in May 2022.