Yuga Labs is officially the largest brand in NFTs, but it might soon be the greatest name in the metaverse, according to its $450 million investment round this week.
Yuga’s newest fundraising round, spearheaded by VC heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, increased the company’s worth to $4 billion. But what Yuga intends to accomplish with all that money might be just as dramatic: change the still-formative metaverse universe.
They possess Yuga’s distinctive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, like hundreds of others, the cheapest of which is today worth $300,000. Yuga managed an “airdrop” of a specific cryptocurrency token called ApeCoin, issued by a decentralized autonomous organization, earlier this month, making an already massive firm even greater (DAO). Despite being technically distinct from Yuga, Bored Ape NFT holders received thousands of free ApeCoin and found themselves with an asset they could trade for tens of thousands of dollars in the real world. On its second day of trade, ApeCoin jumped by as much as 90%. Yuga wants to take the inevitable next step and allow the Bored Apes to hang out with each other in the sequel. And what better place to do so than in the metaverse?
Where does ApeCoin Stand?
ApeCoin DAO received a one-of-a-kind NFT bearing a blue rendition of the Bored Ape Yacht Club logo from Yuga Labs. This NFT transfers to the ApeCoin DAO all intellectual property rights and privileges associated with the logo. The ApeCoin DAO will make the final decision on how the IP will be utilized. So far, ApeCoin DAO has opted to give all of Yuga Labs’ early investors the IP. Yuga Labs, Yuga Labs’ founders, and the VCs that supported the project received a large portion of the 1 billion total ApeCoin tokens from the DAO on Thursday. Owners of Bored Apes received tokens as well. On trading marketplaces, the coins reached a high of $40 per coin before settling at $12.20.
VCs’ tokens are worth about $1.7 billion at that price, significantly more than they have spent in the project thus far. That’s on top of their ownership share.
