Gucci Goes APE: Luxury Brand Adds Bored Ape Yacht Club Token as Payment Option

Got a stash of ApeCoin (APE), the Ethereum-based token of the expanding Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem? Now you can spend it at luxury fashion brand Gucci, which today announced that select U.S. stores will accept it as payment alongside other coins.

Gucci’s expanding crypto payments support comes via a partnership with BitPay, which was revealed in May. Today, BitPay announced that it has added ApeCoin and Euro Coin (EUROC) to its platform, with Gucci the first retailer to bring ApeCoin support to certain U.S. boutiques.

It’s “yet another step in the House’s exploration of Web3,” Gucci tweeted this morning. The brand did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt about why it added ApeCoin, as well as how its crypto initiative has performed to date.

In May, Gucci revealed in an interview with Vogue Business that it would begin accepting top coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Litecoin at select stores. Payments are made by scanning a QR code with a crypto wallet via BitPay’s service.

The luxury brand has made other plays in the Web3 space this year, as well. In January, Gucci partnered with vinyl toy maker Superplastic to launch collaborative NFTs, and then revealed a Gucci Vault location that will be part of the Ethereum metaverse game, The Sandbox. The brand has collaborated with NFT art platform SuperRare on digital exhibitions, as well.

Gucci also worked with 10KTF, a pseudonymous “digital tailor” who creates apparel designs that can be placed atop popular profile picture projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, World of Women, and CrypToadz.

ApeCoin launched in March as a digital token to power metaverse applications built around Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club, such as its upcoming Otherside game. Owners of Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFTs received a free allotment of ApeCoin worth tens of thousands of dollars at launch, and it was quickly adopted by crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.

APE is up 3% today to $6.87 as of this writing, according to CoinGecko. It has been a highly volatile asset: It’s up 52% over the last 30 days but still down 74% from its all-time high in April.

Gucci’s ApeCoin embrace comes two days after jewelry brand Tiffany & Co. revealed an NFT project based around another Yuga Labs-owned project, CryptoPunks. In that case, existing CryptoPunks owners can purchase one of just 250 Tiffany NFTs for 30 ETH (nearly $50,000) to redeem it for a handcrafted physical pendant of the pixelated avatar.