If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know I’ve been in crypto for almost five years now. Honestly, I can’t believe I survived this long. Actually, I do know how I survived this long: BAYC is the reason You see, I came in during early 2021 & go to BAYC for 0.4E At that time, my only crypto exposure was NBA Top Shot but being in BAYC allowed me to gain much more exposure & network in crypto instantly. It was a cheat code Not to mention, BAYC also showed me what it feels like to be in a club AND use your NFT as key to that club. BAYC was the key to the discord, to the bathroom, to merch drops, to fun games, to claiming airdrops like doggos, mutants, & $APE Things that happened next were unexpected. You got big web3 companies, celebrities, and web2 brands aping in BAYC became too big. You can argue that this is the biggest any brand from web3 came to be And then it went downhill from there You can say that some of it are attributable to Yuga like Otherside mint, $APE tokenomics, HV-MTL The Forge experience, and having a web2 corporate CEO take the helm for a while But a lot of it is attributable to the overall NFT market bleeding non-stop since Blur introduced the concept of hyperfinancialization of NFTs. Plus, a lot of people who came in during NFT bull for FOMO are probably all leaving I hear you, @SexyMichill. And I respect your take I too for one may have been overly critical of Yuga at times for being silent for a long while til we get to ApeFest. And it’s hard to feel down when we see other teams like Pudgy Penguins killing it and being loved by the entire crypto twitter. I may have been vocal but I know they’ve always been building. Building what exactly? I didn’t know what until ApeFest But ApeFest showed us that the team has probably seen the criticisms and are starting to turn the page around for BAYC: - Clubhouse construction starts next year - BAYC anime with @machibigbrother is coming - BAYC remains as the most premium avatar in Otherside - ApeFest remains as the best event in all of crypto The team is cooking recently imo and I hope they sustain this with more communications and more executions for BAYC brand But going back to the point of this long post… How did BAYC make me survive being in Crypto for almost 5 years now? 1️⃣ BAYC gave me a brand people can recall. Jay Baby became one of the most well known apes out there 2️⃣ BAYC gave me wings. Having BAYC since 2021/22 is a clout people can build on and I think I did 3️⃣ BAYC gave me family. I may not always been seeing things eye to eye with the Yuga team but my closest friends from web3 are all from ape community. This makes it easier for me to survive in web3 the past 4yrs 🫶🦍

TLDR: BAYC is good for my early network, brand & clout building BAYC is family 🫶🦍