How to purchase and safely store a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT | BAYC
How to purchase a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and not get ripped off.
You were watching the news and you noticed that Britney Spears, Jimmy Kimmel and Post Malone all had new social media avatars. What is strange about these avatars is that they are pictures of bored apes. At first you wondered what the hell it was. You may have heard it was an NFT or you may have heard its a membership club. It is both. Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. There are about 6000 members and the minimum amount to purchase your very own Bored Ape NFT club membership is 65 Ethereum. At the time of this article, Ethereum is about $3700. That leaves a price floor of $241,000 US Dollars.
For the price of a home in most countries, you can now be the proud owner of an Ape that looks kind of bored. Why are people going crazy over the apes? They are awesome drawings and Bored Ape Club has put on cool events. They airdropped Kennel Club dogs. They airdropped a mutant serum so that you can create a mutant from your original ape. There are 20,000 mutant apes and the price floor on those is close to 12 Ethereum right now.
You gotta have one now right? There are only 6000 owners in the world and right now before the price hits millions, you can join the worlds elite crypto enthusiasts and celebrities by buying your own token. It's just that easy. Skip a lifetime of kissing ass and no more need to social climb. You made it. You are there. At some point when owners don't want to sell, these things going shoot the moon. They could also shoot to zero so please don't do this with any money you need for anything reasonable. This is a big bet and I am not a financial advisor. I am pretty risk tolerant and I like to do stupid things with my money. Don't be like me. But if you do want to be an idiot, here are the simple steps.
Now that you have heard my little update, you want to know how you the average rich person with a quarter of a million dollars post tax and liquid can be one of the lucky 6000 people to be able to use a Bored Ape Yach Club Avatar as your proflie picture and be legit. Imagine all the surprised people on Facebook when they learn that you are not just a computer nerd but also a total money making machine and a baller.
So the first thing you need is a lot of money preferably with no taxes owed or interest. To be safe, lets say you need $300,000 in case the price of Ethereum goes up or the price of the Bored Ape goes up. Your next task is to acquire Ethereum from a reputable source. I am in the United States so my reputable source is the publicly trade Coinbase and the Matt Damon sponsored, stadium naming, and Cronos building, Crypto.com.
I have had the most success with the combination of Chase and Coinbase Pro.
1. Open up a Chase account and fund it with $300,000
2. Wait about a 2 weeks for the funds to clear. They will probably freeze your account and make you come in for more paperwork. If you can use an established account it would be much better.
3. While you are waiting for the funds to clear at Chase, now is a great time to open up a Coinbase Pro account.
4. Verify yourself with Coinbase so that you are able to trade without restrictions and move money around.
5. Add your Chase Bank account to Coinbase Pro under deposits
6. Initiate a Deposit of $100,000 using Coinbase Pro selecting Chase as your source. Select USD as the currency to deposit.
7. Repeat 2 more times. Depositing a total all $300,000.
8. Place a limit order for Ethereum using the $300,000 and buy as much Ethereum as you can. If you can wait for the price to go down, you will get more Ethereum for the 300K.
9. Download Metamask to your computer and create a new Metamask browser software wallet.
10. Write down the 12 word backup recovery somewhere ultra safe and never show it to anyone.
11. Where did you put those seed recovery words?? Go put them somwhere safe right now. Its literally $300K if someone gets a copy. Never type the words into your computer. Write it by hand. If you made a copy burn it.
12. Using your computer browser that has Metamask app installed, go to receive funds an get your Ethereum address. You will need to copy that address exactly and use it when you go to Coinbase pro and select withdraw Ethereum.
13. Here is the direct link to the BAYC on OpenSea https://opensea.io/collection/boredapeyachtclub
14. Connect your Metamask Wallet to OpenSea and search for the Bored Ape that you want. Not all apes are for sale, so you may want to click on the "Buy Now" button under status so you know which apes you can actually buy. The current floor is 65 Ethereum but you may want to spend a little more to get one you are happy with.
15. Find the Bored Ape you like. There are many different features and each feature can be common or rare. You may want to try and get apes with rare traits or you can just buy what you like.
Unfortunately, this 15 step instructions is actually way harder to do in real life than it sounds and I think it sounds pretty confusing when I read through it.
There are a lot of pitfalls. You can send money to the wrong address. You can buy a fake bored ape that looks like the same thing but was put up as a copy. You can click on a fake website that steals all of your Ethereum before you actually can buy an Ape.
You need to watch out for fake Bored Apes and people trying to steal your money at very turn. T
There are fake versions of the websites and fake NFTs. There is even a fake Uniswap you need to avoid if you are looking to swap some coins for Eth.
Here is an example of a fake. https://opensea.io/assets/0x6dfcb04b7d2ab2069d9ba81ac643556429eb2d55/2833
All of them are real NFTs, but it is not associated with the Bored Ape Yacht club in anyway. What gives most of the NFTs value is their association with something or someone famous. One of the most popular projects right now is VEE Friends where you get access to a Gary Vaynerchuk's trade show/party for three years and you get to keep a cool drawing that Gary did personally. That has value built into the token. Many tokens are just simple pieces of art created by up and coming artists.
OK, you are throwing caution to the wind, you are rich, you have tons of Ethereum. It is time for the magic to happen. When you click on the buy button on OpenSea it will create the beginning of a transaction. Depending on which wallet software you are using, the amount of gas and tip for the transaction may be completed and it may be left blank. This is where I got stuck for a a few hours. I didn't want to be one of those guys who pays thousands in gas in stead of $20. I was using the Trust Wallet to purchase and it wasn't populating gas. After a bunch of research I was able to put in amounts that were reasonable. I think it was $100 for the mining and a $20 Tip. I am sure I overpaid by using Open Sea and by paying too much gas but I didn't want anything to go wrong.
I was able to figure out how to buy NFTs using Open Sea using trial and error. There were some errors and not all money got spent the exact way that I had intended. It is very very easy to make a quarter of a million dollar irreversible mistake.
We can help you purchase NFTs using your own funds. We can help you figure out how to load funds into your wallet. We can help you purchase NFTs once you are ready. In general, if you want to learn how to do something in the crypto space, we can probably teach you and walk you through it. We are US based and have easy to understand Midwestern accents. We are also able to communicate is Spanish.
If you are rich and want to prove it, we can help you buy the NFT and place it everywhere that it needs to be. Its like the American Express black card for millennial.
Now lets talk for a moment about storage. It looks like you need to use Metamask wallet to gain access to the bathroom where you can write on the wall. Metamask is a good wallet, but it isn't a hardware wallet. It is on your computer and anyone can pretty much tell that you own crypto when you go on a website using the browser with Metamask.
You may want to a computer that yours exclusively for Metamask, NFTs, Defi, and general crypto business. You can turn it off and detach it from the Internet when you aren't using it. Hot wallets like phones come with so many features and conveniences. The only problem is that most of us keep our phones on all day and all night. If someone was to hack our phone or do a sim swap and a restore, they may be able to find our private keys.
A hot phone should be left off when you aren't using it and it should be left in the house somewhere secure. The last thing you want to do is drop it and wonder if its locked.