Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are now worth a minimum of $200k

The price of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT has rocketed to a 50 ETH ($207k) minimum following a surge of interest and purchases in the incredibly popular collection.

Data from OpenSea shows that that the collection has traded more than 23k ETH ($95m) in volume in the past seven days, an increase of 391%, whilst the floor price – the lowest price an NFT can be bought for – has gone from 32 to 50 ETH in the same time period.

The number of owners also continues to increase – 5,800 unique owners now own at least one BAYC NFT, making it one of the most fairly distributed collections in the NFT space. Additional data from AssetDash shows that the collection now also has a proposed market cap in excess of $2bn.

The reason for the latest BAYC ‘bull run’ has many layers, which include a spate of high-profile celebrity purchases, increased exposure to a mainstream audience and the growing theme of community within NFT projects.

Crypto payments provider MoonPay has been instrumental in the push for mainstream adoption of the apes by facilitating high profile purchases for musician Post Malone and popular TV host Jimmy Fallon.

Following their purchases, they changed their profile pictures to their apes on Twitter to reveal their initiation into the BAYC community. Together, both have a collective 58m audience on Twitter.

It was also revealed that MoonPay purchased a further seven apes for a total of $1.3m – indicating that many more celebrities were keen to join the community.

From there, collectors began to ‘ape in’ to the project and join the ever-expanding BAYC community on Twitter and Discord before adopting their ape as their PFP (profile picture).

The surge continued following the reveal of KINGSHIP, “the First-Ever Group Consisting of NFT Characters from BAYC”, which was launched by Universal Music Group’s ’10:22pm’ label.

Further catalysts include the project’s founder, Yuga Labs, registering a trademark application for the word mark ‘APE’ and prominent music producer Timbaland introducing ‘Ape-In productions’ on Twitter.

Popular ‘sister’ project – Mutant Ape Yacht Club – has also seen a similar run, with 16.5k ETH ($68m) in volume in the past seven days, an increase of 485%. The floor price of the project has gone from 4.5 to 7.5 ETH in the same time period.