ApeCoin, the token powering the Bored Ape Yacht Club-inspired DAO, fell 13% in 24 hours amid BAYC’s record-breaking metaverse land sale. APE was trading at $17.74( R 276) at this time yesterday, according to CoinMarketCap data. The token then dropped to $16.24( R 260), rose back to $17.56 ( R 281), dropped to as low as $15.7( R 252), and retook $17.16( R 275, and is now trading at $15.49( R 248).
Despite this, the unpredictable market movement has caused significant harm, with net losses over the last day totalling more than 13%. ApeCoin is the governance token that is used to propose and vote on various ApeDAO ideas. Though it is not the official token of the BAYC collection, people who owned a Bored Ape NFT were eligible for an airdrop of this token in March.
The goal of the coin is to rally the community around common goals and events. One such event, the recent land sale for the community’s so-called Otherside metaverse project, is likely to be the key driver of the token’s recent volatility.
The Otherside metaverse and Apecoin
On Saturday night, Yuga Labs, the firm behind the NFT collection, unveiled the Otherside metaverse land mint. Within this yet-to-be-launched environment, the event enabled the selling of NFT-based deeds (dubbed “Otherdeeds”) to digital land. Yuga Labs received $561 million(R 9bn) as a result of the successful campaign. As purchasers hurried to buy a piece of digital real estate, fees on Ethereum, the network on which the sale took place, skyrocketed.
Furthermore, these deeds could only be obtained by using the ApeCoin token. As the buzz surrounding the minting sale grew in April, speculators bought up massive amounts of APE to ensure they could get their hands on a deed.
The rise, however, faded when it became evident that the mint would not be auctioned off in the Netherlands, but would instead be sold “for a flat price of 305 Apecoin,” according to the people behind the metaverse initiative.
In a Dutch auction, the price of an item is determined by its market demand, with prices potentially rising as demand rises.
However, because the price per deed was publicized the day before the property sale, some investors may have sold some of their ApeCoin holdings.
Overall, the previous 24 hours have been far from dull for the BAYC community.
