ApeCoin tanks after chaos surrounding Bored Ape Yacht Club creator’s metaverse NFT land sale

Over the weekend, Yuga Labs made $320 million selling “Otherdeeds,” Ethereum-based, virtual land deed NFTs for its yet-to-be released, highly-anticipated metaverse project, “Otherside.” However, the sale came with a lot of problems. 

Ethereum became so congested with transactions that the blockchain was pretty much unusable for hours;  a record amount of Ether was permanently destroyed; and users were left spending thousands on fees on failed transactions. 

BAYC-themed ApeCoin was required to buy the virtual land deeds. Likely as a result of the mayhem over the weekend,  the price of its ApeCoin dropped. 

ApeCoin is down 13% in the last 24 hours alone, according to data from CoinGecko. 

Although ApeCoin surged 50% and hit an all-time high on Thursday of $26.70 in anticipation of the Otherdeeds sale, it has since fallen to $14.30, and was trading at $14.52 as of Monday afternoon. 

Many people trying to buy an Otherdeed reported paying thousands of dollars in gas fees, or transaction fees, only to have their transactions declined because of the overwhelmed Ethereum blockchain. Yuga Labs promised to pay back those who were unable to process their Otherdeed NFT transactions.

“We are aware that some users had failed transactions due to the incredible demand being forced through Ethereum’s bottleneck,” Yuga Labs tweeted on Saturday. “For those of you affected, we appreciate your willingness to build alongside us – know that we’ve got your back and will be refunding your gas.”

However, the messy sale and uncertainty is likely impacting the price of ApeCoin. 

ApeCoin was initially airdropped to BAYC NFT holders in March by a collective called ApeCoin DAO, a so-called decentralized autonomous organization. Though the DAO is separate from Yuga Labs, the creator of BAYC, the company did adopt ApeCoin as its primary token for the BAYC ecosystem.