On Tuesday, August 2nd, the luxury fashion retailer Gucci announced it would accept the Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated ApeCoin in the selected US-based stores. The new initiative aims to offer Ape holders a totally beneficial opportunity to claim their status IRL, by offering exclusive BAYC-inspired garments for sale.

To bring the idea to life, Gucci has joint efforts with the provider of crypto payments BitPay. By taking over $APE, Gucci becomes the pioneering luxury brand to accept this cryptocurrency as payment, alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. It’s worth noting that 70% of US-based Gucci’s boutiques are accepting over 10 cryptocurrencies so far.

Being on the frontline of the web3, including blue-chip partnerships with the market leaders like Superplastic, and producing NFTs of its own, Gucci once again claims itself as the most breakthrough luxury fashion brand so far. Moreover, such great support from Gucci marks a significant milestone for the $APE token. With only about half a year since the launch, ApeCoin has all the chances to compete with such cryptos as Ethereum or Solana, given the big-scale PR campaign.

“We added ApeCoin and Euro Coin because customers of our luxury merchant partners asked for it,” BitPay CEO Stephen Pair announced, adding, “they asked, and we delivered.”

Thus, Gucci once again proves that the physical and digital worlds are closely intertwined. Probably, we are supposed to observe an exclusive Gucci x BAYC collaboration in the shortest possible time. Let’s wait and see.