#Apecoin ApeCoin (APE): Application and Price Potential
ApeCoin is trading around $0.15 today, with a market cap of approximately $145-150 million, leaving it in a relatively small segment of the crypto market. (CoinMarketCap)
Its most important future application is ApeChain, where APE is the native gas token and is used to pay for transactions. (ApeChain Docs)
If successful games, DeFi applications, NFT markets and Otherside are developed on ApeChain, APE could gain real demand through the use of the network.
With a current supply of 1 billion tokens, a price of $1 would mean a market cap of around $1 billion and $2 around $2 billion. (CoinMarketCap)
Because of this, a return to $1–2 would require a significant increase in usage and capital in the ecosystem, but would not require APE to return to the ranks of the largest cryptocurrencies.
A price of $5 would represent a capitalization of approximately $5 billion, while $10 would mean about $10 billion.
A return to the former high of around $26.7 would represent a cap of approximately $26.7 billion and would require a much larger ecosystem than APE currently has. (Binance)
That is why the key indicator for APE is the future growth of the number of users, transactions and applications on ApeChain, not just the popularity of BAYC.
If ApeChain becomes a significant gaming and Web3 ecosystem, the current capitalization leaves room for multiple value increases, while weaker network usage would limit demand for APE.
The essence of the APE story, therefore, is the transition from an NFT/brand token to an infrastructure token whose price in the long term should be linked to the actual use of ApeChain.