Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Is The Next Big Thing Because Of WallStreetBets

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Last Updated on 16 November 2021 by CryptoTips.eu

Jeroen Kok

Jeroen is one of the lead copywriters on Cryptotips.eu and discusses all recent events in the crypto market. This includes news updates, but also price analyzes and more. He developed his passion for cryptocurrency during the bull run in 2017. He has learned a lot since then. The combination of cryptocurrency and creative writing is perfect for Jeroen and an excellent way to share his knowledge with a wide audience. Find me on LinkedIn / [email protected]
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The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the next big thing in NFT right now. Famed music magazine Rolling Stone just launched their first big NFT collection in collaboration with the Bored Apes on OpenSea (still the biggest NFT collectibles marketplace). Reddit users are outbidding each other to get into crypto’s hottest new market.

Why all this you will ask? Well, it all goes back to January 2021, a whole lot of boredom and WallStreetBets.

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Sotheby’s

Normally auction houses like Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams are known for selling Van Gogh paintings or even an occasional Rembrandt, but lately, they are also putting up computer screens showing a JPEG image of an NFT for sale. On the phone are anonymous bidders calling from their yacht or their mansion to get their man in the room to do the bidding. Whether the piece of art is from Beeple or any other hot NFT artist doesn’t really matter as price go up whenever Ethereum does. The hottest thing in the market right now is Bored Apes.

Already in September 2021, the international auction house Sotheby’s sold a bundle of 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs for a cool $24.4 million, making it one of the biggest art deals ever for what apparently are simply JPGs of well apes looking bored. So how did we get to this point?

Well, back in January 2021, Gabe Plotkin was looking at a computer screen showing an incredible chart. It looked to him that the price of GameStop, a group of brick and mortar stores selling computer games, had gone ballistic. Problem for Gabe was that his hedge fund, called Melvin Capital, had shorted the stock for a massive amount, and he was now on the hook for some $5 billion if the value of GameStop would keep rising.

Apes and Retards

Reason for all this mayhem was a bunch of youngsters on Reddit who were most of all bored (because of the pandemic and the closure of all bars, restaurants and nightclubs), and who called themselves ‘apes and retards’. They grouped together on a forum called WallStreetBets and had figured out how a short squeeze works.

In order to celebrate their epic quest of taking down a Wall Street hedge fund, the term ‘Bored Apes’ became a household name on social media. Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Discord all know who were the ‘bored apes’. A bit later, an NFT collection was born. Now, ten months after Plotkin looking at that computer screen, ‘Bored Apes’ NFT’s are being sold on Sotheby’s. Thanks to the skyrocketing value of Ethereum and the growing interest for NFT art, the prices are going ballistic as well.

All that because of a short squeeze and one Wall Street trader who thought the market couldn’t turn against him.