- APE price reached its highest level since April, surging more than 15% in 24 hours to surpass $1.66.
- News of the ApeChain launch helped ApeCoin rise more than 100% over the past week.
ApeCoin (APE), the governance and utility token of the ApeCoin Web3 ecosystem, climbed to its highest levels since early April. The APE token associated with the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) ecosystem hit an intraday high of $1.66, marking a weekly gain of more than 100%. The last time ApeCoin traded at similar levels was in April, when Bitcoin led a market rally above $73,000.
Why is ApeCoin’s price surging?
Part of APE’s recent rise followed a sharp weekend rally in BTC, which moved above $69,300. Another key catalyst appears to be the launch of ApeChain, a layer-3 chain built on Arbitrum One. Yuga Labs, the developer behind BAYC, announced ApeChain’s debut on October 20. Earlier, in December 2023, Horizen Labs and OffChain Labs proposed the ApeChain concept. The new blockchain network brings NFTs, trading, and decentralized applications to APE token holders. An ApeChain bridge is now operational, allowing holders to transfer APE to ApeChain and earn staking yields. Supported assets include APE, Ether (ETH), and stablecoins. Integration with LayerZero on the ApeChain mainnet also delivers cross-chain transfer capabilities and interoperability benefits to the community.
At the time of writing, the APE token traded around $1.53, up about 15% over the past 24 hours. Despite the recent gains, APE remains roughly 94% below its all-time high of $26.70 reached in April 2022.
Since falling to a low of $0.482 on August 5, 2024, when most cryptocurrencies plunged alongside BTC, APE/USD has surged more than 215%. Still, a breakout from the ascending triangle pattern could provide bulls with fresh momentum and potentially drive further upside.