Throughout its limited history, the internet has brought us many interesting things. Some have stayed strong throughout the years, and conversely, others have not.
I have never been the type to fall into internet trends. Yes, yes — as tough as it is to believe, I have never tried my hand at planking, Kylie Jenner lip challenge-ing, or consumption of an entire spoonful of cinnamon.. But when I heard about NFTs, I became interested. Why? Because this “internet trend”, as some people call it, was immediately different from all of the other viral things.
For my entire life, I have certainly been the artsy type. Although I am a huge tech nerd, when it really comes down to it, music and visual arts pique my interest equally, or even more so. Since 2016, I have been investing in cryptocurrencies. It (of course) started with Bitcoin, then Ether, and then snowballed from there. As a Computer Science student at the time, the technology was just so interesting to me. Each of these coins (or tokens in some cases, if we are getting technical), is built on an entirely decentralized platform — the blockchain. It was such a new and interesting idea and I just immersed myself in it. My CS friend and I even started having “Solidity sessions”, where he would come over, and over Trader Joes’ microwaveable appetizers, we would learn how to program smart contracts.
Blockchain technology has been a gift to the world, and I try to immerse myself in any new trend or innovation that comes about through it. It is precisely due to this reason why I first looked into NFTs. I would wager that if you own an NFT right now, you are still an early-adopter; but, NFTs started in 2017 and I only found them in 2020, so I still consider myself a little bit late to the party.
CryptoPunks are something that I did not understand at all when I first joined the community. Why would someone pay $20,000 (at the time) for a pixelated portrait? As I read more about them though, I began to understand the value in not only them, but all NFTs. These were not just glorified profile pictures (well, some were), but they were actually highly sought after pieces of art. Each NFT collection relied on marketing, strategy, and understanding from their community. Blood, sweat, and tears, as it were. The fact of the matter is that when people get excited about owning an NFT from a specific collection, it rubs off on others.
I wanted a CryptoPunk so badly, but just couldn’t justify the price, so I told myself that I would diligently scout the world of NFTs and catch the next CryptoPunks early. This couldn’t be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
ENTER: Bored Ape Yacht Club
It was a stormy night when I was browsing OpenSea and saw BAYC for the first time (sounds dramatic, but actually true). I had previously seen them coming up on the charts, but hadn’t thought much about them. Sure, they looked cool, but a lot of NFTs look cool. At this point, I had seen so many “unofficial punks” rise to the top only to plummet once the collection finished that I was jaded.
I still clicked on the BAYC website and went into the Discord server. That was when it clicked for me. I watched the community for not even ten minutes, then made my way back over to OpenSea. That was all I needed to see. The quality of the project was immaculate, their website was great, they had a full roadmap laid out, and they communicated with their community. The devs also seemed more than capable of building out further features and incentives to owning Apes. The community was excited, building games, collectibles, etc. that are exclusive to Ape owners, so I got excited too.
I looked around that night, assessed what it means for an Ape to be rare, and kept browsing the apes, waiting for the perfect one to grace my computer screen. It wasn’t until the next day that Ape #7585 showed up, piquing my interest immediately and causing me to buy. This ape has seven traits, two of which are 2% rarity and one of which is 3%. Seven trait apes are not the easiest to come by nowadays without paying a higher price, so I am extremely happy with my purchase.
I think about it sometimes; it seems crazy to have spent that amount of money on a virtual ape. But I just have to trust in my instinct that this collection could actually be the next CryptoPunks. It surely seems to be catching an insane amount of steam, with celebrities buying them, and the president of TIME even tweeting about the collection (shown above).
As Bored Elon said on Twitter:
In fact, I think I will go buy one more right now. ;)
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Don’t forget to check out the project:
And Follow me on Twitter:
