For a fleeting, brilliant instant The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) was flipped by the CryptoPunks on Sunday morning, marking the first time since March that the seasoned NFT collection’s floor price exceeded that of the primates that are so wanted by celebrities.
The Bored Apes swiftly reclaimed the top slot, which they’ve essentially held the entire year, similar to the last brief flip. Nevertheless, since June, CryptoPunks has been gaining ground on the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and if the current pattern holds, CryptoPunks may soon recover the lead—and keep it.
The competition between BAYC and CryptoPunk
In June 2017, Canadian software developers John Watkinson and Matt Hall of Larva Labs developed the CryptoPunks. The ERC-721 standard and other notable collections, such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which debuted in April 2021, are commonly recognized as having been inspired by the collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain.
Celebrities were instantly drawn to The Apes, and owning one became a mark of A-List status. By year’s end, the CryptoPunks’ floor price for a BAYC NFT had been reversed, and they held the top spot for practically all of 2022.
In April, as the game’s creator Yuga Labs prepared to introduce its Otherside metaverse, BAYC prices reached all-time highs, with a $429,000-floor price.
The much-discussed rivalry is primarily symbolic, of course, as Bored Ape developer Yuga Labs now controls both collections after purchasing the rights to the CryptoPunks in March.
Furthermore, the most recent flip was not caused by growing CryptoPunks values. Everything fell apart due to the bear market in cryptocurrencies.
According to NFT Price Floor, both Apes and Punks have actually lost value in the last 30 days. When measured in USD, Apes are just depreciating faster, falling 28% vs 16% for Punks.
Nevertheless, CryptoPunks have gained some traction. To manage the collection, Yuga Labs lured Noah Davis away from Christie’s in June. Earlier this month, holders of CryptoPunks were formally given commercial rights to the collection.