In May this year, Gucci started accepting 12 cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Litecoin (LTC), "meme" cryptocurrency coins Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE), and five U.S. dollar stablecoins (GUSD, USDC, USDP, DAI and BUSD) - in selected U.S. boutiques for in-store purchases.
At the beginning of August, the high-end Italian fashion house announced it was the first major brand to accept also payments in the Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated ApeCoin (APE) in its stores in the US.
Payment infrastructure will be provided by BitPay, a firm that has helped big names such as AMC Theaters accept crypto payments and also meme coins - dogecoin and shiba inu. This week, after BitPay announced it was supporting two more cryptos, ApeCoin and Euro Coin, Gucci announced it would have started accepting APE.
Launched in March, ApeCoin is a token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, loved by many NFTs fans, including many celebrities. At the time of writing this post APE is priced $6.95 due in part to positive developments in the affiliated Otherside metaverse project (yet APE is still down compared to its all-time high of $26.70 at the end of April 2022).
The total supply of ApeCoin is permanently fixed at 1 billion tokens. No minting capability is exposed through the contract interface, thus the total supply will never increase. Similarly, the contract interface does not expose any token burning capability, so the total supply will never decrease. Supported by an engaged decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and governance community, the Ethereum-based token has currently got a market cap of roughly $2.06 billion and it is the 33rd largest asset in crypto.
This is not the first time Gucci launches a project with Bored Ape Yacht Club holders in mind: Gucci has been into NFTs since 2021 when it launched its first NFT, a 4-minute film inspired by its "Aria" collection, sold at an online auction hosted by Christie's. This year, the fashion house launched "SUPERGUCCI", a three-part NFT collaboration with Superplastic, creator of animated celebrities and digital vinyl toys, and, more recently, the "Gucci Grail" NFT collection, developed with digital artist Wagmi-san and targeting owners of existing blue-chip NFT projects such as Bored Apes, Pudgy Penguins and World of Women.
To engage with the digital community, the fashion house also launched the Gucci Vault Discord server, an online community where you can read news, information on future drops and rare vintage selections, and purchased virtual land in blockchain-based real estate platform The Sandbox to develop a digital property.
The main consequence of this announcement is a boost in exposure for the ApeCoin project, while crypto aficionados seem to have welcomed the opportunity to pay with cryptocurrencies at Gucci stores (Twitter personality NBATopShotEast claimed to be the first person to pay for Gucci items in ETH at the brand's Wooster Street location in New York City in July).
Cryptos are still subject to major crashes, besides, as you may remember from a previous posts, there's pros and cons in jumping on the crypto bandwagon for a fashion label (prices must be constantly monitored and updated as their value rapidly changes and refunds may be tricky for the same issue; besides, when it comes to cryptos there are also environmental and money-laundering concerns and tax implications...). Yet many people remain fascinated by digital currencies and Gucci seems keen on experimenting with them, maybe envisaging a future ruled by cryptos (as we foresaw in an early post in 2017...). So which fashion house or brand will be aping Gucci next and accept ApeCoin?
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