Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token (NFT) owners can buy new items from Yuga Labs, but they can only use the newly launched ApeCoin — the native cryptocurrency of the Ape ecosystem — to buy the items. ApeCoin, which has shot to fame since its launch less than two weeks ago, is already beginning to see use cases crop up. However, it is rather odd of Yuga Labs to acquire more ApeCoin through merchandise sales since it already holds a sizeable share of the tokens — 16 percent of the total circulation to be precise.

According to an announcement on the BAYC Discord server, spotted by those over at The Verge, the Bored Ape store opened Monday night, March 28 at 12pm EDT (9:30pm IST) and close on Wednesday, March 30 at 11:59pm EDT (9:29am IST). The store will feature merch based on both Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club.

All items will be exclusive to NFT holders of the respective collections. The transactions will only be payable by using ApeCoin, a first for Yuga Labs merchandise. Yuga Labs said the items will all be limited-time drops and several items including Bored Ape Yacht Club blankets and Mutant Ape Yacht Club football jerseys will be limited to one per holder and first come, first served in limited quantities.

Transactions of the merch store with ApeCoin will be done using the Coinbase Commerce checkout — a digital payment service offered by cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase.

In all, there are a total of 1 billion ApeCoins that will ever be circulated. Of this number, 14 percent has been reserved for “launch contributors,” 8 percent for the founders of BAYC, and 16 percent for Yuga Labs. BAYC and MAYC holders have also been allotted a claim to 15 percent of the total circulation, while the rest will form part of the ApeCoin DAO’s “ecosystem fund”. According to a statement during the launch, the token holders will be able to vote on all community decisions. All other special decisions will be left to the DAO council.

ApeCoin has gained in value over the past week and is currently trading near the $14 (roughly Rs. 1,065) level. APE was down 4.66 percent at $14.42 (roughly Rs. 1,095) over the last 24 hours at the time of writing. The coin is currently ranked 43rd by market cap at $4.01 billion (roughly Rs. 30,530 crore) and has a fully diluted market capitalisation of $14.4 billion (roughly Rs. 1,09,550 crore).

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