Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible tokens are rising again, offering hope for a broader revival in the battered NFT market as speculative appetite returns across crypto.
Floor prices, or the lowest value for the flagship Yuga Labs collection, have risen from around 5 ETH to 10 ETH over the past month, while apecoin (APE), the ecosystem’s governing token, has also risen from below $0.10 to around $0.16 with a sharp increase in trading volume.
The rebound comes as memecoins and other high-risk cryptoassets outperform more defensive sectors such as decentralized finance (DeFi), suggesting that retailers may be returning to the market after months of subdued activity.
For Yuga Labs’ newly appointed CEO, Michael Figge, the rally reflects more than short-term hype.
“It’s clear from the numbers that for some time, in terms of blue-chip digital collectibles, it was oversold,” Figge told CoinDesk in an interview. “You had this huge compression in price, but if you actually look at an overlay graph, unique holders were actually up.”
Figge, who has held various senior roles at Yuga Labs since 2022 before taking over as CEO last month, argued that NFT prices had been disconnected from user participation during the prolonged downturn.
“A cynic would say that prices doubled and the unique number of holders did not double,” he said. “But it’s really just recovery from a period when things fell out of proportion.”
Survival beyond hype
The recovery also comes alongside a broader reassessment of digital art and onchain ownership beyond short-term price speculation. In an essay last week, pseudonymous collector and NFT market analyst “Van” argued that while the speculative mania surrounding NFTs largely collapsed after 2021, the institutional adoption of blockchain-based art remains quietly in the background. “Speculation died, but the medium survived,” the essay said, pointing to acquisitions and exhibitions by institutions including MoMA, Center Pompidou and LACMA over the past four years.
The move higher has coincided with renewed momentum in speculative corners of the crypto market. CoinDesk’s MemeCoin Select Index was among the best performing digital asset sectors last week, outperforming DeFi tokens as traders rotated back to higher beta bets.
Some market participants also point to growing stress in DeFi as another possible driver behind renewed NFT demand. A series of recent foreclosures and falling yields across lending protocols have weakened confidence in the sector.
“With a well-planned hack, you can lose it all,” Figge said. “That needs to be solved in DeFi, but it’s definitely made people rethink the idea that that’s the only use case. NFTs offer something different – they’re tied to communities that continue beyond just price action.”
Signs of renewed activity are also emerging in the NFT financial markets. Earlier last week, a $2.8 million NFT-backed loan tied to a CryptoPunk circulated widely on social media, with the lender set to earn about $138,000 in interest over 90 days in what traders described as one of the largest NFT-backed loans to date.
The broader NFT rebound has extended beyond BAYC. Pudgy Penguins, another major collection, has also surged in recent weeks as traders speculate that OpenSea – the marketplace synonymous with the 2021 NFT boom – could restart activity through a long-rumored token launch.
‘Back to Basics’
Still, Figge acknowledged that speculation remains central to the market.
“It would be naïve to say that financial speculation is not a big driver,” he said. “Whatever happens in this cycle will rhyme with the last, but it will never be quite the same.”
Yuga Labs, meanwhile, has shifted its focus back toward community-building efforts, including more than 30 in-person meetings worldwide over the past month.
“A lot of what made Bored Ape work in the first place — the social layer — hasn’t really been serviced in recent years,” Figge said. “We’ve gone back to basics.”
