By Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON (Reuters – A company that makes the NFT series “Bored Ape”, has sold tokens, which are land equivalents in a virtual reality game it claims to be building. It raised $285M worth of cryptocurrency.

U.S.-based start-up Yuga Labs launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club (NFTs) blockchain tokens last year. These tokens represent 10,000 computer-generated cartoon animals.

Bored Apes have seen a surge in demand as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which represent crypto assets like digital files, such images and video or objects in an online game, exploded in popularity.

Apes became one of the most well-known NFT brands. Apes were purchased at top auction houses by celebrity owners like Madonna or Paris Hilton.

Yuga Labs raised $450 Million in March through a round of funding led by Andreessen Hoowitz. Now it is aiming for the so-called, “metaverse.”

Yuga Labs, an NFT seller on April 30, sold “Otherdeeds” online. It stated that these could be traded for plots or virtual land in the future Bored Ape-themed online community called “Otherside”.

You could not buy the “Otherdeeds” using ApeCoin (the project’s cryptocurrency), which was launched in March.

Otherdeeds were available for purchase at 55,000 ApeCoins each. The company posted the news on Twitter (NYSE.) that it had sold all.

According to Reuters calculation based on ApeCoin’s price at Coinbase (NASDAQ) at 1210 GMT, this means that the sale netted 16,775,000 ApeCoin. It is worth about $285 million.

Although the ApeCoin was “locked up” for a year, it wasn’t clear how funds would be divided.

It is clear that there continues to be a high demand for high risk, highly speculative cryptocurrency assets linked to virtual worlds online. Reports of market manipulation, scams, fakes, and fraud are all common with NFTs.

Although many people find it difficult to believe that real money can be spent on land which doesn’t exist physically, there are virtual NFTs of land that have sold for millions.

According to the website of The Otherside, it will offer a multi-player gaming experience.

Yuga Labs did not say how many were currently working on Otherside nor when they would launch it.

Yuga Labs’ otherdeeds sale occurs shortly after the Bored Ape Yacht Club Instagram account was hacked. There is also a phishing URL posted. This allows scammers access to victims’ NFTs.