Apes seem to be the biggest thing in the cryptosphere. Celebrities are spending millions of dollars on pictures of bored-looking apes (BAYC), developers are naming projects after the dangerous primate (ApeCoin, ApeX, ApeMove, ApeXit), and even cryptocurrency exchanges are following the trend (ApeSwap). The obvious question here is, “Why?” Come with us while we look into it.
Why does everyone seem to be crazy about apes?
To understand the cryptocurrency world, you need to read about the different coins, their pros and cons, and news about them. Even if you know a lot, it might be hard to talk to a crypto enthusiast if you don’t know their language.
Words and phrases like “HODL,” “FOMO,” “WAGMI,” “whale,” etc. are used a lot in the cryptoverse. If you don’t know the words people use in podcasts and forums, ideas might seem strange to you. Ape or “acting like an ape” is another of these slang terms.
Defining apeing
Apeing is the act of buying new tokens without doing much research on the project beforehand. People sometimes do strange things out of fear of missing out on possible benefits, even though this is never a good idea. Because investors want to be the first to invest in a new cryptocurrency project, they don’t do the technical and fundamental research they should.
The phrase became well-known during the “DeFi summer” of 2020, when coins started showing up at a very fast rate. Many of these coins came out of the blue, but a small group of investors backed them, which sent their prices through the roof.
Also read: “SAFU” is a cryptocurrency slang term that comes from a Binance investor protection program called “SAFU.”
As these stories spread on social media, other investors tried to copy this strategy. They would put money into projects that were brand new and not well known without doing much research. This way of investing was called “apeing” because people thought it was “low IQ.”
Slang is hip
Even though the strategy itself doesn’t work very well, the name stuck. If someone wanted to know which new coins you were investing in, they would ask, “What coin are you into?” Like most slang words, “ape” and “aping” quickly became popular among users. Trends are very popular in the cryptoverse, so it was almost like a trend.
Even if a cryptocurrency project doesn’t do anything useful, it usually gets a lot of attention from users because it’s named after the latest events and trends. The story is similar to works that were inspired by apes. Investors like the name, which also makes them more attractive. They could make money off of the trend and get more people interested in the project, which led to money in the end.
Yacht Club Bored Ape
Some of these projects based on apes have done very well financially. Think about the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s NFTs. These computer-made pictures of sad apes have sold for millions of dollars and caught the attention of famous people like Madonna, Snoop Dogg, and Eminem. The success of the BAYC led the company that made it, YugaLabs, to start another NFT line called the Mutant Apes Yacht Club. One of the pieces of art in this collection sold for $3.9 million.
ApeCoin
ApeCoin is the name of the native cryptocurrency used by the DAO, which is in charge of running the BAYC. Since it started trading in March of this year, it has grown to a market cap of $1.6 billion and had a trading volume of over $158 million the day before. Anyone who buys ApeCoin can join the ApeCoin Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). When you join, you can vote on ideas for upcoming projects and help decide how the DAO’s money is spent.
ApeSwap
This is another well-known and successful cryptocurrency project. ApeSwap is one of the best decentralized exchanges in use right now. It is an exchange for cryptocurrencies, a platform for staking, and a protocol for DeFi. It is currently worth more than $90 million and has seen more than $17 billion worth of trades go through the platform.
The word “ape” or “apeing” has probably been used before, and it won’t be the last time. Even though HODL and FOMO have their own projects, they haven’t done as well as the sites that are based on apes. You can be sure that in the future, any memorable phrases or important international events will also be used as the names of cryptocurrency projects. Also, investors will line up to back such projects, no matter what their technical foundations, use cases, or fundamentals are (or lack thereof).
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