Bored Ape Yacht Club has launched its own cryptocurrency

ApeCoin (APE) it’s the name of the token linked to the NFTs of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

On March 17th, Yuga Labs – the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) – launched a governance and utility token called ApeCoin (APE) via an airdrop.

ApeCoin is “an ERC-20 governance and utility token used to empower a decentralized community building at the forefront of web3. APE is a token made to support what’s next, controlled and built on by the community. It will serve as a decentralized protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse” said the company in a statement.

As explained on its official Twitter account, ApeCoin is owned and operated by the ApeCoin DAO, a decentralized organization where each token holder gets to vote on governance and use of the Ecosystem Fund. Holding ApeCoin is the only requirement for membership in the ApeCoin DAO. The DAO is supported by Ape Foundation, which was created to act as the legal steward of ApeCoin and administer the decisions made by the ApeCoin DAO community. ApeCoin holders can propose and vote on AIPs (Ape Improvement Proposals) that can impact the DAO and determine how the Ecosystem Fund will be used. Although APE is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization - Apecoin DAO - around one third of the total 1bn of APE tokens created (38%) will be attributed to Yuga Labs and launch contributors.

The airdrop claim – consisting of 150 million tokens or 15% of the total supply of ApeCoin , amounting to a staggering value of more than $800 million – has been made available to anyone who owns one of their NFTs (Bored Apes and Mutant Apes, as well as BAKC dogs paired with either BAYC or MAYC).

After the airdrop, the result of the APE sales led to a dramatic price drop by 80% – rising from $ 39.40 to just $ 6.48 and then rising again – as the trading on the coin was unsurprisingly quite volatile. It is also reported that an unknown user took advantage of the way the ApeCoin airdrop worked to glean $1.1 million worth of it for themselves. The minimum price for a Bored Ape NFT dropped briefly to 79 ETH (about $ 220,000) after the airdrop, but has since climbed back to 90 ETH (about $ 250,000).