Ethereum NFT Breakdowns · 02
Bored Apes.
From $190 To $354,000 And Back.
Ten thousand apes at eighty dollars of ether, a four billion dollar valuation eleven months later, and a celebrity ape that now takes bids in the low thousands.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 Ethereum NFTs minted in April 2021 at 0.08 ETH, roughly $190 each, which sold out in twelve hours. Yuga Labs raised at a $4 billion valuation in March 2022. The floor peaked at 128 ETH in May 2022.
Mint Price
About $190. Sold out in twelve hours.
Peak Floor
May 2022, about $354,000.
Yuga Valuation
March 2022, an a16z led round.
Case Dismissed
The class action was thrown out.
The Rise
Twelve hours to sell out, eleven months to a four billion dollar valuation.
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April 2021
Ten Thousand Apes At Eighty Dollars Of Ether
Ten thousand NFTs at 0.08 ETH, about $190 each, sold out twelve hours after launch. Four friends made it: Greg Solano, Wylie Aronow, Zeshan Ali and Kerem Atalay, working as Gargamel, Gordon Goner, No Sass and Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Source: Wikipedia.
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March 2022
A Four Billion Dollar Valuation And A Token
Andreessen Horowitz led a round valuing Yuga Labs at $4 billion. ApeCoin launched on 16 March 2022 as a separate DAO token, structured to sit outside Yuga rather than inside it. Source: Wikipedia.
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April 30, 2022
Otherside
The metaverse land sale launched with Animoca Brands. It is the moment the project stopped being a picture collection and started being a company with a roadmap, which is also the moment it acquired everything a company can be sued over. Source: Wikipedia.
The Turn, And What It Cost
A doxxing, a hack, a regulator, and a floor that fell ninety percent.
February 2022, BuzzFeed Named The Founders
BuzzFeed News published the real identities behind Gargamel and Gordon Goner, and chief executive Nicole Muniz confirmed them. Pseudonymity in this category lasts exactly until somebody with a newsroom decides it should not. Source: Wikipedia.
25 April 2022, The Instagram Hack
The project’s Instagram account was compromised and used to drain wallets. About $3 million of NFTs were stolen. Source: Wikipedia.
October 2022 To September 2025, The Regulator And The Class Action
The SEC opened an investigation in October 2022 over whether the tokens were unregistered securities. A class action followed on 8 December 2022 alleging unregistered securities and undisclosed celebrity promotion. The class action was dismissed in September 2025. Both are reported here because the accusation travelled much further than the outcome did. Source: Wikipedia.
The Floor, And One Ape In Particular
The floor peaked at 128 ETH in May 2022, about $354,000, and was 13.395 ETH by May 2024, roughly $40,000, a fall of about ninety percent. Justin Bieber bought his ape in 2021 for about $1.3 million; by early 2026 the highest bids on it were around $2,800. Source: Wikipedia.
The Art
Five pieces of Bored Ape artwork, including the brand illustration the collection uses to look like a world rather than a grid. I do not know the licensing on these files, so they are published as collection imagery and nothing here claims who made each one.
The Grid, And The One In The Middle
A hundred apes around one gold fur ape in laser goggles. Gold fur is one of the rarest traits in the collection, and putting it in the centre of a wall of ordinary ones is the entire pitch of a generative collection in a single image.
Twelve Apes
Same head, same posture, different hat, fur, eyes and background. Everything that separates a $190 ape from a six figure one is in the layers, and the layers were decided by a script before anyone bought anything.
Five, Close Up
At this size the drawing is doing work the thumbnail hides: the line weight, the bored eyes, the specific slack in the mouth. The expression is the brand, and it never changes across ten thousand of them.
The Club
A dock, a neon sign, a dog and a fishing rod. The yacht club in the name was never a yacht club, it was a bar in a swamp, and the brand art has always been more specific about that than the price commentary ever was.
The Boardroom
Apes in a boardroom with their own portraits on the wall behind them. Read it however you like. It was drawn by the project, not about it.
What It Teaches
Three things worth taking off this one.
The Celebrity Buyer Is The Exit, Not The Signal
By the time a name everyone knows is buying at the top of the range, the people who needed a buyer have one. A $1.3 million purchase bid at $2,800 four years later is the clearest single number in this whole category.
A Company Can Be Sued. A Picture Cannot
The moment this became a business with a token, a land sale and a roadmap, it also became a defendant. The class action was dismissed, which is the right outcome to report, but the four years of it were a cost the holders paid in price and attention either way.
The Mint Price Is The Only Number Everyone Could Have Had
Eighty dollars of ether, open to anyone, gone in twelve hours. Every price after that required somebody else to agree with you. That is true of this collection and it is true of every one that has copied it.
Collection facts sourced from Wikipedia, CoinDesk and the Infinite Node Foundation, with every figure carrying its date and its publication in the row it appears in. Where a claim is an allegation it is attributed to the person or outlet that made it rather than stated as fact. Where a fact could not be sourced, and the Pudgy Penguins illustrator is the case here, the page says so instead of filling the gap. Prices and floors are dated snapshots, not live figures. Nothing on this page is a price forecast.
The Other Breakdowns
Same shape every time: what happened, what it cost, and what it teaches.
Common Questions
A collection of 10,000 Ethereum NFTs launched in April 2021 at 0.08 ETH each, roughly $190, which sold out in twelve hours. It is run by Yuga Labs.
Greg Solano, Wylie Aronow, Zeshan Ali and Kerem Atalay, who worked pseudonymously as Gargamel, Gordon Goner, No Sass and Emperor Tomato Ketchup. BuzzFeed News published their identities in February 2022 and the chief executive confirmed them. Source: Wikipedia.
It peaked at 128 ETH in May 2022, about $354,000, and was 13.395 ETH by May 2024, roughly $40,000. That is a fall of about ninety percent. Source: Wikipedia.
A class action was filed on 8 December 2022 alleging unregistered securities and undisclosed celebrity promotion, and the SEC opened an investigation in October 2022. The class action was dismissed in September 2025. Source: Wikipedia.
No. It is a breakdown of a collection. NFTs have no cash flows, the floor can fall a long way, and Cody Wise is not a licensed advisor.
The Rise Is The Easy Half.
The Turn Is The Lesson.
Every breakdown on this site publishes what went wrong at the same weight as what went right, with a date on each of them.
Not financial advice.