The new Metaverse from Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs has taken the cryptocurrency world by storm, bringing in more than $310 million at the highly anticipated NFT launch this weekend.
BAYC and APE ecosystem record NFT sales
On Saturday, April 30, Yuga Labs mint the first round of Otherdeeds NFTs, making 55,000 NFTs available for pre-validated wallets. Sold at 305 APE levels at the time of the minting, NFT brought in over $310 million into Yuga’s coffers, considering the price of a single APE was $20. It is widely believed that Otherdeed NFTs will represent land in the Otherside Metaverse.
Other lands could only be purchased for ApeCoin (APE) and their real price was unknown until recently. This, predictably, increased the price of APE. The Otherside is a highly anticipated Metaverse world that will bring together a collection of NFTs from various high-profile NFT favorites, notably Bored Ape Yacht Club, but also Meebits, Cool Cats, CryptoPunks, and more.
APE price dropped right after the sale
Developed by Yuga Labs in partnership with Animoca Brands, as we also reported on Cryptokoin.com. Otherdeed NFTs were sold for a fixed price, although there were originally plans to launch the project via the “Dutch auction” method. However, this plan was ultimately canceled to avoid a “gas fee war of historic proportions” while it was expected to be one of the largest NFT mintings in history. Over $177 million in gas fees was consumed during the minting, and there was so much demand for NFTs that at one point Etherscan collapsed.
Only those who pre-registered before April 1 and met the KYC requirements were eligible to participate in the minting process. “Deeds” of land in the Metaverse could only be purchased with ApeCoin (APE), which was launched in March by ApeCoin DAO, an organization not affiliated with Yuga Labs. ApeCoin fell as low as $16.2 after the sale and wiped out more than $23 million from Yuga’s earnings in the first few hours. At the time of writing, Otherdeeds is trading at the base price of 7.9 ETH on OpenSea and APE is down 24 percent at $17.2.
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