Rekt Ape Cope Club (RACC) premiered on Open Sea on June 9. Besides gas, it was free to mint, but at the time of writing, secondary sales have already generated north of 100 ETH in trading volume.
The collection counts 10,000 apes that mimic the aesthetic of their bored counterparts, but it’s not the first collection inspired by BAYC, following in the footsteps of Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) and Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC).
The mint of RACC coincides with the kick-off of the BAYC Ape Fest in New York, part of the NFT NYC week that sees thousands of NFT enthusiasts flock to the Big Apple.
Part ape, part goblin
Unlike MAYC and BAKC, RACC rides the wave of free-to-mint NFT collections that promise little to no utility and offer no road map. The trend, which mocks blue chip NFT collections like CryptoPunks or Moonbirds, was initiated by Goblintown, a collection of urine-obsessed creatures communicating in a bizzare jargon. As of this writing, Goblintown had a trading volume of 38,000 ETH and a floor price of 3.28 ETH, or $3,745.
While Goblintown defied a broader NFT culture, which came to value detailed business plans and responsive, experienced management teams, RACC is an explicit mockery of a single collection, Bored Ape Yacht Club, which continues to top Open Sea charts with a floor price of 92 ETH and a total trading volume of 613,000 ETH.
RACC’s creators, who remain anonymous, make no mystery of the fact that the collection is inspired by Bored Ape Yacht Club, describing it as a “degenerative parody on expensive JPEGs and degen culture.”
Community before utility
More generally, RACC shares in a new trend to leverage the current bear market as a background story for new NFT collections, reinforcing the community aspect of the NFT space. Swapping ‘bored’ for ‘rekt’ and ‘yacht’ for ‘cope,’ RACC’s name becomes a storytelling device, evoking the unprecedented volatility of today’s crypto industry and reflecting the dismay of affected retail investors.
In the project’s FAQ section, the RACC team dismisses the idea of roadmap, saying that the collection is a “social club, not a [expletive] startup.” The project goes as far as to decry the entire NFT space, calling NFTs “something you should steer clear of if you don't want to get REKT.”
When Goblintown first came to be, its tagline was strikingly similar. “No roadmap. No Discord. No utility. CC0,” goblins said.
On the other hand, RACC ownership does include access to a private Discord channel, a popular perk in the NFT world. What’s more, all of the collection’s traits were reportedly “drawn by hand from scratch.”
“As a partner, as a team member, I urge everyone to have no expectations whatsoever. That's how you get happy when something happens,” the Rekt Ape Cope Club said in a Twitter Spaces convo as the collection hit 103 ETH in trading volume.
