BAYC flipped Cryptopunks.Why?
And just like that, Bored Ape Yacht Club flipped Cryptopunks.
Yesterday the floor price (the cheapest NFT on sale) of BAYC (53.9ETH, or $217k) exceeded for the first time the floor price of Cryptopunks (52.69ETH, or $210k).
NFT revelation of the year, BAYC earned its place under the sun via genius marketing and partnerships, brilliant community management and the talents of the community itself, who took on the duties of promoting the collection on all levels: from #ApeSupportApe on the social media to creating music videos featuring Apes.
Cryptopunks have the legacy of one of the oldest NFT collections and give their owners this special flair of early crypto adopter. However, their creators Larva Labs seem to rely solely on community, not doing much themselves.
Moreover, Larva Labs website is still conspicuously missing legal terms related to NFT copyrights: it is assumed that buying an NFT would mean buying the associated rights, but in the current legal environment the company must say it.
BAYC team, on the contrary, explicitly notes that NFT owner has all rights to the underlying art, which they can exploit as they see fit for personal or commercial use.
This approach has led to numerous creative projects by the BAYC community, many of which have been successfully monetized. For example, one NFT owner leased out his Ape to Universal Music for the Kinship band, another one leased their Ape’s image to Myth Division for its upcoming comic book, another one used their Ape in their brewery branding…
With a plethora of projects like branded merchandise, animated movies or video games NFT owners have the possibility to monetize their Apes in all legality, which is not that obvious with Cryptopunks.
We believe that giving out copyrights for an NFT is a natural and logical attitude in the crypto world appreciated for its censorship-resistance. Larva Labs should think about this before the community decides that keeping copyrights to themselves will make them akin to censors.
