A Bored Ape Yacht Club spinoff is now the hottest NFT collection after 500% trading jump

• The trading volume of Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs has surged by about 500% over the past seven days.
• The average price of a Mutant Ape increased from about $32,000 to about $50,000 during that time.
• The series is a spinoff of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which have garnered high-profile, celebrity backing.

Non-fungible token traders are clamoring for a spinoff of the famed Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.

Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT trading volume on the secondary market surged about 500% over the past week to nearly $71 million, according to CryptoSlam data cited by Decrypt, which said it's most popular tracked project during that period.

In addition, the average price of a Mutant Ape NFT rose to about 12.3 ETH from 8 ETH (from about $32,000 to about $50,250) over the last seven days.

There are 20,000 total avatar images available in the project, in varying degrees of rarity. And one of the Ethereum-based NFTs -- a Mega Mutant Serum NFT -- sold for about $3.6 million worth of ETH.

The Mutant Ape spinoff series is mimicking the success of the Bored Ape NFTs, which have enjoyed high-profile backing from the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Steph Curry, and Post Malone. Last week, the floor price Bored Ape Yacht Club briefly surpassed that of the extremely coveted CryptoPunks.

The NFT market has boomed in 2021, with an estimated $22 billion in trading volume year to date, propelled by the ongoing cryptocurrency surge from the last two years.