Doge meme hits $220M valuation, as Sotheby's Bored Apes auction is tipped to fetch $18M

The original Doge meme NFT has soared to a valuation of around $220 million following its successful fractionalized token sale this week.

Ludicrously high prices for in demand NFTs are the flavor of the week, with Sotheby’s new Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT auction predicted to fetch up to $18 million.

Earlier this week Doge meme owners PleasrDAO fractionalized the NFT into 17 billion ERC-20 tokens named $DOG, and auctioned off 20% of them on SushiSwap-owned Miso on Sept. 1.

The $DOG tokens snapped up in the auction can now be traded via decentralized exchanges such as SushiSwap and Uniswap. The auction generated 11,942 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) worth around $44.6 million from a total of 1,769 buyers.

Given the total supply of $DOG tokens —  which are priced at 0.0000035186 WETH ($0.013 USD) at the time of publication — the nominal value of the Doge NFT is now around $220 million.

But some say that's an underestimate. According fractionalized token platform Fractional, the implied value of the $DOG NFTs is a whopping $398 million. The firm hasn’t specified how that figure was calculated.

Whether $220 million or $398 million, it’s a stunning return for a picture of a dog bought for just 1696.9 Ether, worth $4 million, back in June.

PleasrDAO has said 55% of the remaining tokens will be maintained by the DAO and the other 25% will go into a fund that will support projects in the $DOG community.

Apes are not a bore for Sotheby’s

Meanwhile Sotheby’s is currently hosting an auction of 107 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that is expected to fetch between $12 million to $18 million.

The 107 NFTs have been bundled into one collection and put up for sale by the project’s creators Yuga Labs, who are also auctioning off a bundle of 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs that is expected to pull in between $1.5 million to $2 million.

Bidding for the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection had reached $4.5 million at the time of publication, and the auction is set to close on Sept. 10. Bidding for the Kennel Club NFTs hit $480,000.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have become widely popular of late, and Cointelegraph reported on Sept. 2 that NBA star Stephen Curry joined in on the action by snapping up one of the NFTs for 55 ETH, worth roughly $207,000 at the time of writing.

According to data from CryptoSlam, the Bored Ape NFTs generated a record $295 million worth of sales on secondary markets in August. Despite it only being the beginning of September, the NFTs have already reached $10 million worth of secondary sales so far.