The company behind the “Bored Ape” series of NFTs has raised over $285 million in cryptocurrencies by selling tokens that represent land in a virtual world game that it claims to be developing.
Yuga Labs, a startup based in the United States, produced the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs last year, which are blockchain-based tokens that represent a set of 10,000 computer-generated cartoon apes.
Bored Ape prices soared to hundreds of thousands of dollars as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – crypto assets that represent digital data such as photos, video, or items in an online game – grew in prominence.
Yuga Labs sold “Otherdeeds” NFTs in an online sale on April 30 that it said could be swapped for plots of virtual land in a future Bored Ape-themed online world dubbed “Otherside.”
The “Otherdeeds” could only be purchased using ApeCoin, the project’s connected cryptocurrency that launched in March.
Otherdeeds were available for purchase for 305 ApeCoin each, and the company announced on Twitter that they had sold out.
calculations based on the price of ApeCoin on cryptocurrency platform Coinbase at 1210 GMT on Sunday, the sale netted 16,775,000 ApeCoin, valued at roughly $285 million.
Although the corporation stated that the ApeCoin would be “locked up” for one year, it was unclear how the monies would be distributed.
The sale demonstrates that speculative, high-risk crypto assets tied to online virtual worlds continue to be in high demand. Because NFTs are mostly unregulated, scams, forgeries, and market manipulation are prevalent.
While many people are perplexed by the concept of paying real money for land that does not exist, some virtual land NFTs have already sold for millions of dollars.
According to its website, the Otherside metaverse will be a multi-player game environment that is currently in development.
Yuga Labs will not reveal how many people were working on Otherside or when it would be released.
Yuga Labs’ Otherdeeds sale comes after the official Instagram account of the Bored Ape Yacht Club was hacked and a phishing link was released, allowing scammers to take victims’ NFTs.
