Bored Ape’s Yuga Labs Raises $285 Million In Cryptocurrency From The Sale Of Virtual Land

Yuga Labs, the company behind the popular NFT collection Bored Apes, has raised about $285 million worth of cryptocurrency from the sale of virtual land. The company sold tokens that represent land in a virtual world game it is working on.

This sale shows that there is an increasing interest in NFTs from both individuals and corporate investors. Yuga Labs first made it to the spotlight after creating the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs which are a set of 10,000 computer-generated cartoon apes based on blockchain technology. Since they appeared on the NFT scene, the Bored Apes collection has each raked in thousands of dollars and has driven its maker, Yuga Labs, to become one of the most relevant NFT companies.

Yuga Labs recently raised $450 million in seed funding at a valuation of $4 billion. The funding round held in March was led by Andreessen Horowitz and saw the participation of Animoca Brands, LionTree, Sound Ventures, Thrive Capital, FTX, and MoonPay. The funding round followed shortly after Yuga Labs acquired the rights to the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from their creator Larva Labs.

Yuga Labs’ plan is to become a major player in the NFT space. Thanks to its latest funding, the company is ramping efforts to push its own metaverse version called “Otherside”. This version of the metaverse will integrate avatars from various NFT projects and is NFT-centered.

Yuga Labs via an online sale that took place on the 30^th of April sold NFTs called “Otherdeeds”. These tokens can be exchanged for plots of virtual land in an imminent Bored Ape-inspired metaverse called the “Otherside” which it is already building.

The Otherdeeds token which represents virtual lands could only be purchased using ApeCoin which was launched by Yuga Labs in March. The company put up 55,000 Otherdeeds tokens priced at 305 ApeCoin for sale. Via a tweet, the company confirmed that they had been sold out.

From calculations, Yuga Labs received 16,775,000 ApeCoin from the Otherdeeds sale. As of Sunday, the value of the Bored Apes-associated coin was a total of $285 million on Coinbase.

The metaverse continues to spike interest and Yuga Labs says its Otherside metaverse will be a multi-layer gaming environment based on its Bored Ape collection.