Gucci announces acceptance of ApeCoin as payment, $APE surges 5%, but has dropped over 70% from its peak

Luxury fashion brand Gucci is further embracing cryptocurrency by becoming the first mainstream brand to accept ApeCoin through BitPay. Gucci officially states that this is one of their strategies to explore the Web3 space.

In fact, Gucci has been strategically positioning itself in the crypto space.

Cryptocurrency Payment Pilot Program

In May of this year, Gucci announced the launch of a cryptocurrency payment pilot program in five physical stores located in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Las Vegas. The cryptocurrencies accepted include:

• Bitcoin
• WBTC
• Ethereum
• Litecoin
• Dogecoin
• Shiba Inu Coin
• Bitcoin Cash
• US Dollar Stablecoin

At that time, Gucci stated that by the third quarter, cryptocurrency payments would be expanded to all company-owned stores in North America, but there have been no further updates as of now.

Accepting ApeCoin and Collaborative NFTs

Similarly, Gucci has chosen to enable ApeCoin payments in select boutique stores.

Now accepting @ApeCoin payments via @BitPay, select Gucci boutiques in the USA expand the range ofcryptocurrencies available for in-store purchases, yet another step in the House's exploration of Web3.

— gucci (@gucci) August 2, 2022

In February of this year, Gucci collaborated with Superplastic to release a series of collaborative NFTs called "SuperGucci" and announced the purchase of land in The Sandbox, but did not disclose specific details.

In June, Gucci purchased 150,000 SuperRare RARE tokens to join the autonomous organization SuperRareDAO and collaborated with them on the NFT project "The Next 100 Years of Gucci", demonstrating Gucci's high level of activity in the Web3 space.

ApeCoin (APE) had only about a 5% increase at the time of writing, with a current price of $6.85, down more than 70% from its historical high in April.