Bored Ape Yacht Club ‘Otherside’ Causes Ethereum Crash

On April 30th, 2022, at 9 pm, the massively popular Bored Ape Yacht Club threw a luscious party to introduce their metaverse game, the ‘Otherside,’ to reality. And then, like a scene out of a movie – the party’s over – as Ethereum crashes.

Ground Floor Investment

The Bored Ape Yacht Club minted and sold their first signature NFT on April 23rd, 2021. That sale was so popular that Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape NFTs, sold out within 12 hours, selling 10,000 NFTs at .08 Ethereum (ETH).

If you’re new to the NFT investment scene, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the idea that a digital product can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. The exciting aspect of NFTs is that they can be extremely scarce and exceedingly costly.

The most expensive Bored Ape NFT, for example, sold for a whopping 769 Ethereum or $2.3 million, and to get into the Yacht Clubs’ ‘Otherworld’ party started at a cool $430,000 in Ethereum. Deeds in ‘Otherworld’ were another expense that people snatched up at the first chance.

Ethereum Crashes – Yuga Labs Apologizes

With the Bored Ape Yacht Club party came a hustle to buy Ethereum and lots of it. The buyout was so massive that Ethereum became nonfunctional for a while. Obviously, Yuga Labs hadn’t planned on the hyperactivity surrounding their Metaverse property sale and had this to say about the Ethereum crash.

“We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale,” Yuga Labs said in a tweet. “We’d like to encourage the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to start thinking in this direction.” DAO’s are meant to replace traditional company hierarchies.

While it’s clear that Apecoin – the currency for the Bored Ape Yacht Clubs metaverse – is created on the Ethereum blockchain, Yuga Labs was indeed surprised by the big showing for their metaverse’ ‘Otherside.’

Like your parent’s coming home early, the ‘Otherside’ outage caused other Ethereum users to have issues with their digital wallets – stalling the purchase of coin or using it to purchase for a while after the BAYC’s property deed sale screeched to a close.

Deeds for ‘Otherside’ Land

Yuga Labs created 95,000 property deeds for their ‘Otherside’ Metaverse, 45,000 were set aside for BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) and MAYC (Mutant Ape Yacht Club) owners-who will have a 21 day period in which to purchase their ‘other deeds.’

The remaining 55,000 ‘other deeds’ sold out to 27,000 collectors and hauled in a weighty $320 million in revenue. That’s not a bad payday for the NFT and virtual gaming space.

More Than Just Digital Monopoly Money

It’s easy to look at NFTs and cryptocurrency and think it’s a bit like play-acting, but when you dig under the surface, it’s a lot more sophisticated, and financial experts are planning ahead.

Kun Hu, the CEO of WorldMoney, had this to say about cryptocurrency and its future, “With blockchain, we will put an end to the monopoly of government-issued currencies, as suggested in the title of Hayek’s work – ‘Denationalization of Money.’ Blockchain will simplify the set of concepts revolving around financial services and the complexity of the IT systems. With blockchain, we will have a cryptocurrency that is more stable and safer than any currency that has ever existed before it. This will bring about true monetary and financial freedom.”

Success Breeds Possibilities

With the massive success of the BAYC’s ‘Otherside’ property and other NFT collection sales, there’s no doubt that other collection creators will be looking at duplicating what Yuga Labs has accomplished – the good parts anyway. And with Yuga Labs eyeing their own Level-1 protocol blockchain for Apecoin, Ethereum may find some breathing room for smaller creative teams to scale just like Yuga has done.

The blockchain technology behind NFTs and cryptocurrency has undoubtedly opened up a financial door that no one wants to close. As more people come to understand both the technology and its capabilities, the well of possibilities is nearly limitless for both crypto and NFTs as Web3 and the Metaverse become the new reality in the digital space.

Without a doubt, we will continue to see more NFT Marketplaces popping up and possibly see existing services like Gemini and Coinbase jump into this space as well.

What’s Next?

Yuga Labs announced they’re hiring Discord managers, artists, and a CFO to help their team continue to scale. There is also talk of BAYC NFTs appearing in different Metaverse platforms, where owners of said NFTs would be able to use them interchangeably.

Whatever the future of BAYC and MAYC, there’s no doubt that Yuga Labs will go down in history as one of the first and most wildly successful creators of early NFTs.

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