The Bored Ape Yacht Club has 10,000 NFT Apes that look Bored, but it doesn’t look like there are many boating opportunities. One Bored Ape NFT holder and yacht owner wants to change that by starting a decentralized yachting club.
The Bored Yachts Club wants to build a decentralized, NFT-gated yachting platform that lets members charter real ships anywhere in the world and donate the rental fees to charity. The project will start with “Lady Amanda,” which is the only yacht that club founder Jad Comair owns. Eventually, though, the goal is to get more yacht owners involved and let them give money to causes of their choice.
Comair is the founder and CEO of Melanion Capital, a French investment company that made a Bitcoin-themed ETF for businesses in the cryptocurrency sector in 2021. He says that he started investing in the most popular cryptocurrency much earlier than most people, in 2014.
He said, “Thanks to Bitcoin, I was able to buy my first yacht.”
How can apes be bored partying on a super yacht?!?!
— Bored Yachts Club (pic.twitter.com/4E3I3KYsmC
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) (@JohnBlackeyeNFT) August 21, 2022
In the past few years, digital goods like Bored Ape profile pictures, digital art, and collectibles have become more and more popular. An NFT is a blockchain token that shows who owns something. Only in 2021 did $25 billion worth of trades happen on the market, making it one of the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s biggest successes to date.
As a collector of fine art, Comair was interested in NFTs. He said that he felt a connection to the celebrity-filled Bored Ape Yacht Club as a form of digital identity, in addition to the possible business opportunities.
Yuga Labs gives owners of Bored Ape NFT a broad license that lets them use their own art in all kinds of projects and works. Others have used their apes to make things like clothes, toys, and packaging for food and pot, as well as themed fast food restaurants. Comair decided that his Ape would be the fake captain and mascot of a real yacht.
He thinks that the Ape (#634), who is also known as John Blackeye, will help get NFT members to join his Bored Yachts Club, where an NFT drop will happen later this year (most likely on Ethereum). Each of the 8,200 NFT passes will give access to a platform where you can rent yachts. There will be three levels of benefits for each pass.
The Bored Yachts Club and Yuga Labs are in no way connected, and anyone can buy and use one of these NFT membership passes even if they don’t have a real Bored Ape NFT. Even though Comair’s ownership of Ape came before the idea of a decentralized platform for yacht rentals, the vibe is right and the theme pairing worked out well.
He said that the neighborhood was called Bored Ape Yacht Club. “In my opinion, there were some yachts missing.”
The “Lady Amanda,” which is 30 meters long and is run by Comair, sails around the Mediterranean with water toys on board. Members of the upcoming NFT club will be able to bid on rental windows, with all the money going to the yacht owner’s favorite charity, or they can let the community decide how the money is used to help causes.
Comair hopes that the platform will help more yacht owners from all over the world fill their empty charter windows (when the boat isn’t being rented) and help charities at the same time.
He said about the yacht rental business as a whole,“It’s amazing how much emptiness you have in this whole industry.” The plan is to bridge the gap between the boats that are empty and the people who can’t use them.
He says that he wants the Bored Yachts Club to do more. He hopes, for example, that it will make yachting more popular and maybe bring “disruptive technologies” to the market. He went on to say that there is no Tesla of yachting.
Comair sees the Bored Yachts Club as a possible first step toward a “crypto city” connected to a marina. This is because boats can operate in international waters without being governed by laws on land. But Comair’s plan has a nautical twist, which is different from similar crypto city plans that have been seen in different ways elsewhere.
At least in the short term, the plan is to open a real yacht club with a Bored Ape theme and NFT gates. He thinks that the planned YachtCoin token could help both yacht owners and brokers make money, in addition to helping charities. He thinks this because token prices could go up and NFT pass royalties could go up.
The original Bored Ape Yacht Club’s journey led to the metaverse, but the Bored Yachts Club has its sights set on a different place. Comair said that at the end, instead of a metaverse, there is a “yachtverse” where sailing is more fun than video games.
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