Profile of Bored Ape Yacht Club, an NFT collection that sold for $2M+ in April, spawned a collector community, and has since seen ~$100M in trading activity
New YorkerKyle Chayka
Context & Ripple Effects
This New Yorker profile captured Bored Ape Yacht Club at its inflection point: an NFT collection whose single April sale topped $2M and which had already generated roughly $100M in trading activity around a collector community rather than any underlying utility.
What followed traces the arc of the whole 2021-22 NFT boom. An investigation later unmasked founders "Gargamel" and "Gordon Goner" as Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow (BuzzFeed News), ending the project's signature pseudonymous mystique, while artist Seneca's account of being the lead designer on the originals with relatively little compensation exposed how little of the value flowed to its creator.
First-order effects
Bored Ape holders are sitting on assets whose price floor is set almost entirely by community status and trading volume — roughly $100M of it at the time of the profile — not by cash flows from the token itself.
The project's anonymous-founders structure means early buyers took counterparty risk no traditional collectible market carries: their $2M+ purchases depended on pseudonymous operators with no disclosed track record.
Second-order effects
Once Solano and Aronow were identified by name, the community's trust model inverted overnight — accountability arrived, but so did legal exposure and scrutiny that anonymity had shielded them from.
The value locked in ape ownership pushed Yuga Labs toward monetizing the community directly, culminating in the March 2022 launch of [[a:977005|ApeCoin ($APE) with a 1B supply and an ApeCoin DAO council including Alexis Ohanian and Amy Wu]].
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, NFT collections mature from art drops into brand-operating companies with tokens, DAOs, and named leadership — collapsing the original distinction between collector club and startup.
Seneca's undercompensation points toward a structural correction in creator economics: attribution and equity for the artists behind generative collections becoming a negotiating norm rather than an afterthought.
The trend: Pseudonymous NFT art projects are consolidating into named, token-issuing media brands — trading community status into corporate structure.
I got featured in the New Yorker today talking abt NFTs 😍 #pinchme 2021 will be remembered for many as the year of one way tickets to NFT land. The answer to below is simple: the future of culture 👊🏻 https://twitter.com/...
Bored Ape Yacht Club's initial batch of N.F.T.s brought in more than two million dollars. The collection has since seen almost a hundred million dollars in trading, with the cheapest apes often going for almost fourteen thousand dollars. https://www.newyorker.com/...
Tbf we went a long way, I helped set up a MetaMask and they now know about @robnessofficial, @artnome, @artblocks_io, @MattKaneArtist, @OoakosiM, punks, @verticalcrypto @MeebitsDAO @katecursed, @MyCurioCards & ofc rare pepes among many others ❤️ mom liked @AvaStarsNFT as avatars …
‘In the 3 months since launch, Bored Ape owners have put the cartoon primates on lines of craft beer, created animated YouTube series, designed skateboards, wrote novels & launched a publication called the Bored Ape Gazette to cover the community’ https://www.newyorker.com/...
>50% of all 10k Bored Apes are now held by unique wallets This is unheard of for a pfp project at scale 3 months young, @BoredApeYC distribution is real https://www.newyorker.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Bored Ape Yacht Club is a combo gated online community, stock-shareholding group, art collection, streetwear brand, hedge fund, and a user-generated universe of intellectual property. Ty @chaykak for this explainer on ape avatars cropping up everywhere! https://www.newyorker.com/…
And here it is; the (very well written) “main stream media”, long-form piece on @BoredApeYC. Was waiting for this. (Nice contributing quotes from @DrewAustin). https://twitter.com/...
My @NewYorker column from yesterday: Bored Ape Yacht Club is a NFT-driven private social club for social media and a hint at the future of decentralized culture https://www.newyorker.com/...