The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has officially revealed their ERC-20 utility and governance token ApeCoin (APE), marking a diversification from profile-picture projects (PFPs) into "culture, gaming and commerce" within the Web3 sphere.
The asset has been developed and launched by the ApeCoin decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a distinguished entity from Yuga Labs, who have established a six-month tenured council committee comprising of Alexis Ohanian, Amy Wu, Maaria Bajwa, Yat Siu and Dean Steinbeck, to oversee the DAO development.
ApeCoin's official Twitter account stated Thursday that the members of the BAYC ecosystem will be granted a 90-day window of opportunity to claim their allocation of 10,000 tokens commencing March 17 at 12:30 pm UTC.
Token claim is now open. If you own a BAYC Ecosystem NFT, go here: https://t.co/NLOB0m4cqf Reminder: the claim period will be open for 90 days, and tokens associated with an NFT can only be claimed once.
— ApeCoin (@apecoin) March 17, 2022
A number of prominent exchanges such as Binance US, FTX, Gemini and OKX, among others have already pledged to list, and enable public trading of the asset on their platforms.
Despite this, others have profited from the market euphoria with the launch of similarly named tokens like APECoin.dev. The project in question has amassed a market capitalization of over $1.5 million with a price of $0.145. In response, CoinMarketCap has published a red warning tag on the page advising that the token is not affiliated with the official BAYC project, and should not be interacted with.
Related: Bored Ape NFT holders to receive ApeCoin — ‘The Dogecoin of NFTs’
Cointelegraph spoke to Insight, a Bored Ape holder and NFT journalist, for an expert perspective on the community’s expectations for the release.
“This airdrop will be unprecedented there is no doubt”, he stated, “but historically in the space, we have watched these airdrops pump and slowly fizzle out as the engagement dissipates. That being said, with the momentum of BAYC and their positioning in the NFT space as the number 1 collection, I believe things may be different.”
“I don’t think we will see the emotional attachment that holders have for the ape NFTs themselves, but either way this is HUGE for both ape holders and the space as a whole.”
As a consequence of the asset's launch, the average price of the BAYC collection rose significantly across the last seven days from 76.11 ETH on March 11 with a total volume of 913 ETH, to an average price of 110.15 ETH and a volume of 9,583 ETH in the hours preceding launch on March 17.
In a parallel trend, the floor price also witnessed a growth spurt, before falling sharply upon the ApeCoin launch from around 108.69 ETH to 78 ETH at the time of writing.
Additionally, the floor price of the accompanying collections Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Bored Ape Kennel Club has experienced major fluctuations, currently sitting at 15.85ETH and 5.8ETH, respectively.