For weeks, their images of monkeys have been populating the social networks of celebrities like Justin Bieber or Paris Hilton.
The identity of the founders of the "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BAYC), a collection of several thousand images of monkeys sold in NFT ("Non Fungible Token “, or in French, “non-fungible token”), was revealed on Friday by the American site Buzzfeed.
Until this weekend, two of the project's creators were known by the pseudonyms Gordon Goner and Gargamel, hidden on Twitter behind their own colored-background monkey image.
Gordon Goner and Gargamel are actually Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, two Americans aged 32 and 35 a priori far removed from the world of tech: both studied literature and one previously worked as an author and editor, says buzzfeed.
Now, the two literary are at the head of a digital empire valued at 2.8 billion dollars.
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Although unknown to the world of tech, the two friends knew how to set up their business like professionals: they imagined, together, a universe populated by ultra-rich monkeys living in a club nestled at the bottom of a swamp (the 'yacht club' being so ironic), and hired two engineers, known as No Sass and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, to handle the 'code' part of the project.
They also recruited an artist to draw the famous monkeys today sold for gold on the crypto market, via NFTs.
$1.3 million for an image
NFTs, a new crypto flagship, work like a certificate of authenticity affixed to a digital object – in this case, a work of art.
If the content of the digital work can be copied, this NFT remains the only "original", whose ownership is made unique with blockchain technology.
What an historic moment for the club: the @Sothebys auction of 101 Bored Apes has closed at over $24m.
Congratulations and THANK YOU to the whole ape community.
To the buyer, I think we speak for everybody when we say: WELCOME TO THE CLUB.
☠️🦍⛵️ pic.twitter.com/NKxHekC0ny
— Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) September 9, 2021
Upon their launch in April 2021 for around $200 in Ethereum (one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the industry), the 10,000 images of “Bored Apes” exploded in popularity, allowing the founders to take home nearly $2 million just on the first sale.
In January, these digital drawings sold for an average price of around $250,000, which would further inflate the portfolios of Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow: they earn a 2.5% commission on each resale of Bored Ape.
The advertising provided by the stars is probably not for nothing.
Singer Justin Bieber, for example, paid 1.3 million for his.
The famous heiress Paris Hilton even promoted it on the set of comedian Jimmy Fallon's "The Tonight Show".
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A post shared by Justin Bieber (@justinbieber)
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow and rapper Snoop Dogg also have their own images, which they were quick to expose on Twitter recently - sparking both intrigue and mockery from many netizens, accusing these stars of inflating a speculative bubble, or, worse, a massive scam.
These NFTs also serve as a "membership" to an exclusive club bringing together all the owners of the monkeys in question, explain the creators on their dedicated site.
"We want your
Bored Ape
to be your digital identity," defended Gargamel, one of the project's creators, to the New Yorker last year.
The owners of the drawings can then decline them ad infinitum: some have thus created a YouTube channel dedicated to said monkeys, while others use them as logos for their craft beer brand.
Billions of dollars of investment?
Because for Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, the "Bored Apes" are also the mark of a new philosophy of the web (often called the "web3"), based on anonymity and far removed from today's web, dominated by social networks where one displays, most often, one's own image and one's real name.
Got doxed so why not.
Web2 me vs Web3 me.
pic.twitter.com/jfmzo5NtrH
— Garga.eth (@CryptoGarga) February 5, 2022
After the revelation of their identity on Twitter last Saturday, the two men felt that they had been "doxed", that is to say victims of a disclosure of personal information without their consent.
In response, they ultimately chose to reveal their faces, alongside their monkey version from their own collection.
“I was “doxed” without my knowledge.
Too bad, “ironically Gordon Goner on Twitter.
Got doxxed against my will.
Oh well.
Web2 me vs.
Web3 me pic.twitter.com/uLkpsJ5LvN
— GordonGoner.eth (@GordonGoner) February 5, 2022
The investor does not seem to have lost confidence, and for good reason: according to the Financial Times, his company, Yuga Labs, could benefit from an investment of up to 5 billion dollars from Andreessen Horowitz, a powerful Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
The fund has previously bet on other companies that have become big names in tech, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb.