Gucci, an Italian high-end luxury fashion house based in Florence has become the first major brand to accept payments in the form of the Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated ApeCoin.
The high-end Italian luxury fashion brand has announced that it is expanding its’ crypto payments support by accepting ApeCoin as a mode of payment.
Gucci has become the first in its league to include ApeCoin as a payment option for its products. The high-end brand has partnered with BitPay to facilitate ApeCoin payments. While not all Gucci stores in the US would be accepting ApeCoins, the service will be rolled-out in select outlets.
The Ethereum-based token would be distributed among four main groups, as detailed below:
- 62% Ecosystem Fund: went to the BAYC/MAYC NFT holders and treasury/resources
- 16% Yuga labs + charity: The company behind BAYC and continuing contributor to the APE Ecosystem and will assist in the creation of products and experiences for the ecosystem.
- 14% Launch contributors: The companies and people that assisted in making this project a reality
- 8% BAYC founders: The notable dignitaries who put the Ape in ApeCoin, the four founders of Yuga Labs and BAYC
Gucci customers in the United States will be able to purchase items in-store with APE, while the payment infrastructure would be provided by BitPay, a firm that has assisted huge brands such as AMC Theatres to accept meme coins, dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) to be used for payments in the past.
Gucci takes the crypto plunge despite a global bear market
Despite the continuing crypto bear market, the fashion brand has taken a significant plunge into the crypto sector this year.
In January 2022, Gucci teamed up with Superplastics, the world’s leading creator of animated celebrities, limited vinyl toys, and digital collectibles to launch SUPERGUCCI NFTs (Non-Fungible Token), and is exploring the world of fashion, the metaverse and many other offerings of the digital space.
The following month, Gucci Grail was rolled out by Gucci and NFT collection aimed toward holders of leading NFT projects such as the BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club).
In May 2022, the luxury brand announced plans to accept 12 crypto assets as payment methods within 111 stores in North America. The list of cyrrpto assets included Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Litecoin (LTC), and five U.S. dollar stablecoins.
The Apecoin community
ApeCoin is an ERC-20 governance and utility token used inside the APE ecosystem to enable a decentralized community building at the forefront of web3.
The aggregate supply of ApeCoin is indelibly fixed at one billion tokens. No minting capability is revealed through the contract interface; thus, the total supply will never not increase. Similarly, the contract interface does not expose any token burning capability, so the total supply will certainly not decrease.
APE was launched in the wake of much expectation earlier this year in March. Its associated decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and governance community has ever since remained extremely engaged and has overseen important decisions such as the vetoing of a proposal to port APE from Ethereum to a brand new blockchain in June.
In the month of July, the DAO voted in favour of numerous notable proposals, which included offering APE funding for the Bored Ape Gazette to position itself as a 24-hour news site and exploring the feasibility of hosting an NFT conference and festival. Furthermore, the project is rolling out APE stakes in response to strong demand from the community.