A Dive Into The Rise of Profile-Picture NFTs

Binh Duy Thai

Northeastern University

Introduction

Nowadays, you probably see many Ape and Punk avatars as people’s profile pictures on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or even Linkedin. These pictures are more than just normal JPEGs that you can just download from the Internet, these are blue chip NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.

The NFT rise during 2020 was fueled by the abundance of cash from quantitative easing around the globe and the needs for stay-home entertainment. Global lockdowns have changed people's behavior in every aspect of life including work, communication, and entertainment. Hence, consumer-centric product companies had to follow their users' footprint to the digital space. The entertainment and sport industry in particular had embraced and made waves in the blockchain space to connect fans worldwide with brands, teams, and celebrities using non-fungible token (NFT) technology.

To combat COVID-19, central banks around the world performed quantitative easing to inject capital into the economy. As a result, prices appreciated in many different asset classes. As cryptocurrency prices skyrocketed, the adoption of blockchain technology, particularly decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), initial coin offerings (ICO), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 went mainstream with talented developers, new users, and many speculators flocking into the space.

The emergence of trending NFTs brought along many use cases including digital artwork, music, gamified items, and domain names. However, digital artworks became the most attractive trend for users, traders, and artists – resulting in NFTs becoming a lucrative investment.  

Hence, this research paper will focus on the digital artwork use case of NFTs, particularly profile-picture and avatar applications with blue chip NFT projects including CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Clubs (BAYC), and World of Women (WoW). The paper will give readers an introduction, economics value analysis (for each project), and a forecast of their future impacts.

An Economic Dive Into The NFT Phenomena

The Covid outbreak completely changed the world’s paradigm and disrupted every business. During the global pandemic, governments had to impose containment measures to mitigate the spread of Covid. For example, by initiating lockdown policies, travel restrictions, and social distancing. Due to this unprecedented moment, the world’s economy underwent a massive shock resulting in its supply chain, labor force, and capital markets being heavily damaged.

Lockdowns caused tens of millions of people to lose their jobs, and businesses to go bankrupt or run out of cash reserves. Hence, government financial support was necessary during periods of major uncertainty and financial crisis.

In March 2020, the Federal Reserve announced a plan to use quantitative easing to lower long-term interest rates and the cost of borrowing. The chart below shows the expansion of the four major central banks' balance sheets from 2014 to 2022.

To combat the Covid economic shock, the world’s four major central banks have printed a total of $11.3 trillion dollars in a span of two years to simulate their economies. In other words, they’re printing more money to buy mortgage-backed securities, treasuries, and stocks to keep the economy from freezing up.

The infusion of money into the economy not only ensures the financial market operates normally, but also encourages consumers and businesses to take out loans, invest, and spend more – thus, drive economic activity. However, central bank money printing leads to inflation (or the devaluation of money over time). The visualization below illustrates

the purchasing power of one dollar from 1913 to 2020.

Capital Flowing Into Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency

With massive amounts of capital injection from quantitative easing, smart money tends to flow into the productive asset classes or alternative investments as a hedge against inflation. Investors captured the appreciation in price as capital flows into these asset classes including but not limited to real estate, stocks, and digital assets. The below candlestick chart (March 1st, 2020 to May 24th, 2022) shows the percentage gain of Bitcoin, the S&P 500, Gold, and US 10-year Treasury at approximately 253%, 33%, 17%, and 160%, respectively.

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization and its key feature is a built in scarcity factor. The digital gold has a total supply of 21 million Bitcoins, and its “fresh-Bitcoin” mining rate “halves” every four years. Due to low interest rates in 2020, a future expectation of hyperinflation, and Bitcoin’s scarcity cycle, investors were piling into digital assets including cryptocurrencies, DeFi applications, and NFTs.

Factors That Fueled The NFT Boom

With an abundant amount of capital flowing into the digital verse, the NFT market has successfully made its mark on the world. Use cases like digital artwork, music, gamified items, and domain names are driving more traffic into the space, bringing the NFT market capitalization to billions of dollars.

NBA Top Shot

As the world locked down from Covid, the NBA has embraced NFTs as a way to bring fan engagement to the next level. For example, in February and March 2021, NBA Top Shot – an NFT marketplace developed by Dapper Labs and backed by the National Basketball Association, generated more than $200 million per month in NFT trading volume. This is more than the entire NFT market generated in 2020.

Each NFT has a unique serial number that guarantees the authenticity and indicates the rarity of the Moment – NBA highlights videos that are embedded into NFTs. There are only a limited number of Top Shot NFTs being made to create scarcity. As a result, financial value is created upon the rarity of the NFT. This initial boom fueled the emergence of NFTs in the upcoming months.

“The First 5000 days”

A collage of 5,000 NFTs created by Beeple, is the most expensive NFT ever sold to a sole owner for $69.3 million at Christie's auction house.

Axie Infinity

A play-to-earn blockchain game, offering in-game NFT buying, selling, and breeding, reached a transaction volume of $1.8 billion in August 2021 with 2.8 million traders.

Blue-Chip NFTs

Similar to blue chip companies on the stock market, blue-chip NFT are well-established NFT projects backed by accredited organizations and investors. Generally speaking, they have price stability, high transaction volume, utilities, and a strong community of HODLERs and promoters. Examples of blue chip NFT projects on Ethereum blockchain are CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Azuki, Doodle, and World of Women (WoW).

The Rise Of Profile-Picture (PFP) NFTs

The NFT craze has attracted billions of dollars from new investors, traders, and speculators. Many of them are celebrities from every industry including Rob Gronkowski, Stephen Curry, Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon, Jay-Z, Post Malone, and Justin Bieber.

These celebrities have become the backbone of the profile-picture NFT phenomena because they have a robust group of supporters and followers worldwide, especially on social media. As these celebrities change their avatar to an NFT; it automatically draws attention and curiosity. Hence, generating free marketing for these PFP NFT projects.

Understanding The Rise Of Profile-Picture NFTs

To understand the rise of blue chip profile-pic NFTs, we need to understand the idea of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and how these ideas are linked to the NFT.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are issued and exist on a public distributed database by what’s commonly referred to as a blockchain. Blockchain allows metadata to be transferred immediately, and completely transparent with no third-party involved. Any identity can access the database to view its immutable record of transactions, prove ownership, and transfer cryptocurrencies via the private keys associated with their crypto wallet. 

Likewise, NFTs are issued on a blockchain, and are encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos to store metadata. An NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, gaming items, and videos. Unlike cryptocurrency, NFTs are not fungible, meaning each NFT has a digital signature that makes them unique and not interchangeable with another NFT. 

For example, one Bitcoin is equal to another Bitcoin, one Ethereum is equal to another Ethereum; but one Bored Ape NFT is not equal to one CryptoPunk. As a result, from a collector point of view, owning an NFT is equivalent to owning a unique, one-of-a-kind digital asset on the blockchain.

Why Do People Buy NFTs?

1 Digital Status Symbol

As the NFT ecosystem rose to billions of dollars in market capitalization, owning these blue chip NFTs have become a symbol of status. Displaying an NFT on your social media has become a digital flex because blue chip NFTs are very expensive.

Famous celebrities like Jay-Z, Odell Beckham, Serena Williams, Steve Aoki, Gary Vee, Logan Paul, Jason Derulo, and Mark Cuban are displaying their CryptoPunk or Bored Ape on Twitter, which has recently become a new trend. This famous wave of holders plays a significant role in the popularity of CryptoPunks. Having these blue chip NFTs as your profile picture shows that you’re either an early adopter or you probably spent a huge trunk of money to acquire it. People are inherently impressed and jealous of people who can afford expensive and rare items. 

2 Ownership  

Homo Sapiens as a race tend to collect almost anything (a trend that started as early as 105,000 years ago). Collecting has always been one of the human instincts; from seashells, stones, coins, baseball cards, posters, CDs, arts, and stamps.

There are several psychological motivators for collecting. Some do it as an investment to make a profit, some do it to gain status or prestige, while some simply do it for the pleasure and to learn more about the object. For example, an antique collector enjoys the thrill of the chase for the object at any price point. If the transaction happens, the collector has successfully added a new item to his collection; thus ego boosted and pumps them up to qualify for “bragging rights.” Similarly, an NFT is also considered a collectible and thousands of people are jumping on the NFT train to own a piece of the digital asset.

3 To Profit

The value of an NFT is determined by the buyers, traders, speculators, and how much someone is willing to pay for it. A CryptoPunk might be worth $100 million dollars if there’s a buyer who’s willing to pay that price for it. As long as there are more buyers/bidders willing to pay a higher price, the value of the NFT will appreciate. However, if there are no buyers, you cannot liquidate your NFT. As a result, NFTs are often seen as a high risk, high reward investment opportunity.

4 Belief

Simply, a reason someone is buying an NFT may be because they’re a believer in the underlying technology. For example, a believer in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFT technology.

Exploring CryptoPunks

In June 2017, a collection of 10,000 24x24-pixel 8-bit style avatars called CryptoPunks by Larva Labs was released and became one of the first NFT projects on the Ethereum blockchain.

CryptoPunks are 10,000 uniquely generated characters under the ERC-721 standard. Originally, these punks were for free to claim by anyone with just an Ethereum wallet. Now, some of these CryptoPunks are sold for hundreds, and millions of dollars, or even priceless. If you want to own a punk, OpenSea – an NFT marketplace allows you to buy, sell, and bid for these CryptoPunks.

Top CryptoPunks NFT Sales

Factors Contributing To CryptoPunk Prices

1 Legacy

CryptoPunk is one of the first NFT projects launched on the Ethereum blockchain, and in fact the first Profile Picture NFT project. Hence, owning a piece of Ethereum’s history is something very special.

2 Supply

It’s known with certainty that only 10,000 CryptoPunks will ever be created on the Ethereum blockchain. Similar to cryptocurrencies, the law of supply plays a significant role in driving up prices. At the time of writing this paper, there’s nobody currently selling their CryptoPunk on OpenSea. With this culture of HODLERs, it would take a lot of money to acquire a CryptoPunk as there’s a limited supply of Punks on the market.  

Rarity (Types & Attributes)

Each punk is unique; it has its own types and attributes. There are five punk types: Male, Female, Alien, Zombie, and Ape. Notably, Aliens, Zombies and Apes are more expensive than Male and Female types since they’re available in small quantities.

Moreover, each CryptoPunk has specific attributes, the rarer the attributes the more expensive the CryptoPunk. There are 87 total attributes and each CryptoPunk can have up to seven random attributes. Notably, the more attributes the Punk has, the more expensive it is.

There’s only one CryptoPunk with seven attributes, and the owner is not selling it. Interestingly, eight no-attribute CryptoPunks are also currently not for sale as they’re a

one-of-a-kind CryptoPunk.

Visa Bought A CryptoPunk

On August 19, 2021, Visa, the financial services giant, bought a $150,000 CryptoPunk (#7610) for its corporate art collection.

Moreover, to support the NFT-commerce ecosystem, Visa even published an NFT whitepaper to pinpoint the rise of NFTs and its role in the future of commerce. As a result, following the news of Visa’s purchase, 90 CryptoPunks were sold which totaled around $20 million. According to data from CryptoSlam, August 2021 sales nearly reached $700 million with the majority purchases happening after Visa announced its CryptoPunk purchase.

CryptoPunks Future

From a free minted NFT project, CryptoPunks has attracted billions of dollars within a span of five years. CryptoPunks with its historical significance and scarcity makes it a digital status symbol. The owners are either visionary as they got into the project very early or wealthy enough to buy the CryptoPunk through auction. Thus, the social ramifications of possessing a CryptoPunk are extremely advantageous to the holder. Additionally, with Yuga Labs recently acquiring the IP of CryptoPunks, Punks are now associated with the growth of the Ape ecosystem and community. This allows CryptoPunks owners to experience the perks and utilities of the Ape community. Lastly, as long as the digital antique narrative stays true for CryptoPunks, the price should go up over time.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)

BAYC, launched by Yuga Lab, is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs stored as ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

At the minting price of only 0.08 ETH, about $200 per ape at the time, BAYC has become a multi-billion dollar blue chip NFT project ranked number two with a volume of 661K ETH on OpenSea, after CryptoPunks with 990K ETH. 

The most expensive Bored Ape (#8817) was sold for $3.4 million at the auction house Sotheby’s Metaverse marketplace.

Despite the bear market and crypto winter, BAYC’s price floor remains at a whopping price of 75 ETH, $110K.

Factors Contributing To BAYC Prices

1 Limited Supply

Like CryptoPunks, Bored Ape has a limited supply of 10,000 unique NFTs aping on the Ethereum blockchain. As of writing, the cheapest Ape is selling for ~72.6 ETH (~$116K). Thus, owning a Bored Ape is quite far reaching for the majority of the world population

2 Rarity (Types & Attributes)

The collection features animated apes that are procedurally created by an algorithm with each Ape uniquely generated. An Ape is made up of seven possible traits: background, clothes, earring, eyes, fur, hat, and mouth.

Each Ape has their own unique traits, hence indicating its own rarity and price. The

rarer the traits, the more expensive the Ape.

For example, this Ape’s traits are the following: background - Purple, clothes - Bone Necklace, eyes - Bored, fur - Cheetah, mouth - Tongue out, and each trait’s rarity are: 13%, 2%, 17%, 4%, 2%, respectively.

3 Yuga Labs

Founded in April 2021, Yuga Labs is a blockchain company that operates in the field of NFTs, digital collectibles, and cryptocurrency. Upon the success of BAYC, the company released many other projects such as Mutant Ape Yacht Clubs (MAYC), Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC), Ape Coin, and ‘OtherSide’ Metaverse.

Recently, the company has raised $450 million which values the company at $4 billion in a funding round from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors including Animoca Brands, LionTree, Sound Ventures, Thrive Capital, FTX, and MoonPay.

Bored Ape Kennel Club

On June 18, 2021, Yuga Labs launched a spinoff collection for Bored Ape holders called Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC). BAKC NFTs were offered for free (minus the cost of gas) to BAYC owners as a membership perk for supporting the APE ecosystem.

Inspired by the Dogecoin meme, Yuga Labs released this collection of 10,000 unique Shiba Inu NFTs with 170 different possible traits for the APE community. With each BAYC NFT owned, members can adopt a BAKC NFT. According to OpenSea, at the time of writing, BAKC’s price floor is 6.95ETH (~$10K) and total volume is ~108.8K ETH (~$154.5M).

Moreover, the BAKC collection has a 2.5% royalty fee generated from secondary sales on OpenSea for the first six weeks. The collected fee is donated to several non-profit animal shelters via The Giving Block; the first organization is WrightWay Rescue.

Mutant Ape Yacht Club

On August 28, 2021, Yuga Labs launched the Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), a collection of up to 20,000 Mutant Apes NFT created from the combination of a Bored Ape and mutant serums. There are three types of mutant serums: M1, M2, and M3 (Mega Mutant). A total of 10,000 Mutant Serums (7,500 M1 serums, 2,492 M2 serums and only 8 M3 serums) were airdropped to existing BAYC holders. M1, M2, and M3 Mutant Serums are featured in the image below.

A Bored Ape infected by M1 or M2 serum would retain the same traits as the original ape, but with a uniquely mutated version.  

An M3 infected Bored Ape is very special because there are only eight of the M3 serums, hence making them extremely rare and expensive. For example, Mega Mutant #30005 was sold for 2,300 ETH, $3.9M in August 2022.

The creation of Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) aims to strengthen the BAYC community by attracting new buyers and giving the HODLers a chance to re-enter the BAYC family. Many of the BAYC diamond-handed members achieved life-changing financial goals such as paying off debts, loans, or buying their first home as Bored Apes' price skyrocketed.

Fun fact, Yuga Labs even created a game, “The Mutant Arcade”, following the release of the Mutant Ape Yacht Club.

ApeCoin (APE)

ApeCoin (APE) is an ERC-20 native cryptocurrency of the Ape community created by Yuga Labs. ApeCoin has a total supply of 1 billion APE tokens. There’s no burning or extra minting mechanism in the APE protocol. Hence, APE tokens cannot suffer from inflation and deflation.

As of this writing, ApeCoin is trading at $4.76 with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion dollars with only 31% tokens outstanding. Remarkably, the coin's all-time-high price even hit $26.7 toward the end of April 2022.

Though, under the same category of ‘meme coins’ and ‘shit coins’, APE does have some actual utility within the APE ecosystem. The token can be utilized under projects like Bored Ape Yacht Clubs (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC), and ‘Otherside’ Metaverse.

Moreover, APE token holders can participate in the ApeCoin DAO through casting votes, making governance decisions, and roadmapping. Similar to other cryptocurrencies, APE can be bought, sold, and traded on many crypto exchanges including Phemex. As the APE sphere and BAYC community grows, ApeCoin’s value will increase accordingly.

‘OtherSide’ Metaverse

On March 18th, 2022, a trailer was released by Yuga Labs announcing its newest project, ‘Otherside’ Metaverse.

The project, created in partnership with Animoca Brands – a gaming developer company, aims to be a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) where Yuga Labs’s NFTs including BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, CryptoPunks, and Meebits can interact. Players can also own virtual lands, harvest resources, and explore artifacts using the native currency, APE.    

The ‘Otherside’ Metaverse started its minting process toward the end of April 2022. Within 24 hours, the sale of ‘Otherdeeds’ – the virtual real estate in ‘Otherside’ metaverse, raised a total of $561 million. It costs 305 APEs to mint a ‘Otherdeed’ land plot NFT and the ApeCoin was at $20 at the minting time; making each plot of ‘Otherside’ land cost around $6,100.

Due to massive demand from the minting process, the gas price on the Ethereum network skyrocketed. $175 million (63,062.39 ETH) worth of gas fees are now simply burnt due to the deflationary protocol of the Ethereum blockchain.

According to Etherscan data, some people ended up paying anywhere between 2.6 ETH (or $6,500) to 5 ETH (or $14,000) in gas fees.

Fortunately, Yuga Labs announced that they’ll be refunding those affected. Notably, this shows that the APE community is very strong and a lot of people are willing to pay any price just to be a part of this community. 

Acquired CryptoPunks & Meebits IP

Most importantly, Yuga Labs recently acquired the IP of CryptoPunks and the Meebits NFT collection from Larva Labs. This means the company now owns the brand, art copyright, IP rights, along with 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits. Now the CryptoPunks and Meebits brand is part of the APE ecosystem.

4 Ape NFT

Among the NFT space, apes are the most iconic. As the predecessor of the human race, apes are deeply connected to us. Hence, making Ape NFTs one of the hottest NFT trends. There are many NFT projects that feature apes as their NFT such as Solana Monkey Business (SMB), CyberKongz, Degenerate Ape Academy, and Baby Apes.

5 Celebrities & Brands Aping

Several celebrities have purchased a Bored Ape including late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon, NBA star Steph Curry, American Rapper Post Malone, YouTuber Logan Paul, NBA Legend Shaquille O’Neal, singer Justin Bieber, rapper Eminem, Rapper Snoop Dogg, DJ Steve Aoki, among others. The presence of these influential people from all different industries has created an insurmountable amount of hype for these Ape NFTs.

Not only displaying Bored Apes as their profile picture, celebrities are endorsing their Ape NFT on every platform.

• Recently, rapper Eminem and Snoop Dogg co-released an official music video featuring their Bored Ape NFTs.
• Moreover, during an episode of The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton shared their new Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs on national television.
• Adidas Originals has a Bored Ape named Indigo Herz as the spokesperson for their metaverse and IRL wearables initiative.
• Candy brand Mars is releasing limited-edition M&M’s candy featuring Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT imagery on it.

6 For The Community

Bored Ape owners can participate in exclusive clubs and meetups (within the BAYC community). For example, Ape holders can access ‘The Bathroom’ to create an art experiment for the community and the cryptosphere. Other perks include first access to new NFTs, airdrops, upgrades, and governance. 

The Future Of Apes

Yuga Labs has been very successful with all of its NFT projects, and it’s currently valued at roughly $5 billion. By staying consistent with its roadmap, providing charity donations, utility upgrades, and other membership bonuses, Yuga Labs has gained tremendous support from their community.

The Apes community has made its mark in the Web3 space with the launch of ApeCoin, ApeCoin DAO, and its virtual land collection. As their ecosystems grow and develop, so does their influence and significance within the blockchain space. More mainstream partnerships similar to Adidas will help the community ‘Ape’ faster to the masses. Though Yuga Labs has just begun their journey in the crypto space, the universe they’re building is going to be incredibly exciting.

World of Women (WoW)

World of Women (WoW) is a profile picture NFT collection featuring 10,000 digital artworks representing women from multicultural backgrounds. Each WoW NFT is algorithmically generated under the ERC-721 standard with 189 different possible attributes. The collection’s goal seeks to empower, represent, and advance female diversity within the crypto space.    

Top sales generated from the collection with the highest sold for 260 ETH (~$650K). 

Factors Contributing To WoW NFT Prices

1 Supply

There will only be 10,000 World of Women NFTs created, and by owning a WoW NFT you own the underlying artwork and its intellectual property. According to OpenSea, the project currently has a floor price of 2.2 ETH (~ $3K) and an average price sale of 2.55 ETH (~ $3.7K).

Though the price of a WoW NFT is lower than other blue chip NFTs like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape, a minimum of 2.2 ETH (or $3K) for an NFT is not affordable by everyone.  

2 Rarity (Attributes)

Similar to other NFTs, WoW NFTs have 189 possible attributes. The rarer the attributes, the more expensive the NFT. According to Raritytool, a platform that tracks the rarity of NFTs, these are the top 27 World of Women NFT ranked according to the rarity of their attributes.

3 Empowering women

World of Women has emerged as the first female-orientated project in the NFT space to help strengthen the Women’s rights movement. As we already know, male professionals dominate the tech industry, especially the Web3 space. The launch of World of Women will act as a catalyst to attract more females and diversity into the cryptosphere. As crypto gains more adoption, the World of Women NFT will play a very important role in the Women’s rights movement timeline and the Web3 space.  

4 Celebrity Owners

Celebrities like Eva Longoria, Shonda Rhimes, Napheesa Collier, Reese Witherspoon have supported the World of Women project and use the PFPs on their social media accounts. Other celebrity holders of WoW include Gary Vee, Von Miller, Steve Aoki, and Logan Paul.

Collector Gary Vee has a total of eight World of Women NFTs; while Logan Paul has 31 WoW NFTs. These types of movement in the NFT space undoubtedly attract buyers to the WoW community, creating a good reputation for the project.

5 Perks

Firstly, holders of WoW NFT have all the IP rights of their NFTs. Moreover, holders are eligible for exclusive monthly airdrops, invitation to gala events and concerts, and private access to exclusive channels. 

6 Partnership

In March 2022, the World of Women website announced a new partnership with The Sandbox to establish the WoW foundation with $25 million funding over a period of five years. The foundation will provide mentorship, free online lessons on Web3 through The Sandbox.

The Future Of WoW

Though the World of Women universe is less than a year old, it has grown to be a blue chip project in the NFT ecosystem. Going forward, the project will act as an inspiration hub for women around the globe to build, create, and expand the Web3 space.

Conclusion

NFT technology has successfully gained its popularity in recent years especially among artists, investors, and traders as its market capitalization has grown tremendously. The financial aspect of the technology has played a very important and significant role in attracting new users, retail investors, institutions, and even nations to the Web3 sphere.

Profile-Picture NFTs is currently the most popular use case of the technology with big blue chip projects on the Ethereum blockchain such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and World of Women. Celebrities all over the world have dominated social media with pictures of CryptoPunks, BAYC, and WoW as their profile picture. 

Owning these NFTs is like basically owning a piece of the Ethereum blockchain and its history, while being exposed to the intellectual property aspect of the NFT as the supply of these NFTs are limited. Furthermore, besides the lucrative financial gains, there are many perks when it comes to owning blue chip NFTs such as invitations to private parties, free NFT airdrops, token allocation, governance, and being a part of the NFT movement.

Although the Crypto and NFT market has been taking a huge hit, the technology stays true and it is here to stay. As we are still in the very early stage of blockchain technology adoption, there will be new use cases and features implemented for the profile-picture NFT. Like we’ve seen with Bored Ape Yacht Club’s development of tokens, short films, merches and even the Metaverse. The BAYC ecosystem is not just plain old avatars anymore. With the merger of Yuga Labs and CryptoPunks, the future of BAYC, CryptoPunks and profile-picture NFT will be a very promising future with creative roadmaps rolling out. In the next Bitcoin cycle, demands will grow and the rush will happen again like we’ve already witnessed in past cycles. The value of these NFTs will be reflected and once again populate the media all over the world.  

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