NFTs — you either hate ‘em or love ‘em — or have no idea what they are (Primer: What are non-fungible tokens — NFTs?).

The crypto world is focused on a token launch and metaverse announcement from Yuga Labs — the creator of the world’s most valuable NFT collection.

Too culturally relevant to ignore

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is the world’s most valuable NFT collection, which gives its holders access to exclusive events, a tool to flex online and up the chance of riches. There are 10,000 unique apes — of varying rarity and many valued in the millions.

In the past month, the BAYC creator, Yuga Labs, made several big announcements:

• Raised $450M this week on a $4B valuation — from top investors including A16Z.
• Acquired the assets of popular NFT projects, CryptoPunks and Meebits.

With the cheapest BAYC NFT selling for nearly $300K, Yuga wants to be more accessible with its next big project: the Otherside — an “interoperable gaming metaverse”.

Yuga Labs is turning into a metaverse gaming company — incorporating its NFT collections into a single game.

Today’s metaverses are “boring”

At launch, Yuga is selling 70K plots of digital land — each estimated at 1ETH (~$3K today) — part of Yuga’s metaverse game which is launching in April.

• While gameplay is unknown, users will be able to collect and trade resources in its in-game economy.
• High-quality metaverse games take time to develop — and many out now have disappointed.

Other metaverse-related tokens fell in 2022 — with popular metaverse project Decentraland’sMANA

transaction volume steadily decreasing from its November peak.

Yuga wants to succeed where these other metaverse projects are failing — combining “storytelling, pop culture, taste and fun in the right amounts” — and its trailer release has the community excited.

How Yuga makes money: Upon launch — Yuga will sell ~70K plots of land — expected to earn $200M.

• It will earn a transaction fee from its marketplace’s secondary transactions (reselling).
• It expects $137M in sales in 2021 and $539M in 2022 — 66% from virtual land sales.

Investors: The crypto token for Apes

On Mar. 17, Yuga Labs launched ApeCoinAPE

— which trades on the largest exchanges (i.e. FTX, Coinbase) — and the token is still fluctuating from lots of early selling pressure.

Holding Apecoin doesn’t give Yuga Labs ownership — instead, it gives holders:

• Governance — voting rights and proposing ideas to the project.
• Access — exclusive games, merch, events and services.
• Utility — used as in-game currency for its upcoming metaverse.

ApeCoin is a bet on Yuga’s metaverse and staying culturally relevant. Like other metaverse stocks, blockchain gaming and NFT-related tokens — ApeCoin is bound to be highly volatile.

Diving in: Here’s the full pitch deck outlining Yuga Lab’s vision.