ApeCoin at All-Time Highs Ahead of Otherside NFT Drop 

Yuga Labs’ ApeCoin is trading at all-time highs ahead of the Otherside NFT sale scheduled for Saturday. While unconfirmed, the NFTs are suspected to be land parcels for the Otherside Metaverse. 

Otherside Launch Approaches

The next big development in the Bored Ape Yacht Club universe is right around the corner. 

This Saturday, those who pre-registered on somethingisbrewing.xyz before Apr. 1 can participate in the first mint for Otherside, a new Metaverse launched by Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs. The NFTs are suspected to represent land in the Otherside Metaverse but Yuga Labs has not explicitly confirmed this. 

While details are still sparse, the official OthersideMeta Twitter account has confirmed that those who pre-registered their Ethereum wallets and intend to participate will need to pay using the recently-launched ApeCoin. Additionally, the mint will use a Dutch auction format with the price starting high and gradually declining over time until all NFTs are sold. 

Since ApeCoin’s launch on Mar. 17, the token has experienced wild price fluctuations. Shortly after its debut, it sank to an all-time low of $6.21 but rebounded strongly. Since Apr. 21, ApeCoin has made a series of new all-time highs and currently trades at $20.40.

ApeCoin’s recent ascent has propelled it above other Metaverse tokens such as Decentraland’s MANA and The sandbox’s SAND. APE currently sits at a market cap of over $5.7 billion, making it the 28th biggest cryptocurrency. 

In addition to ApeCoin’s new highs, Yuga Labs NFTs are also trading at record prices on OpenSea. The floor price for Bored Apes has soared to over 140 ETH, up 40% over the past 30 days. Mutant Apes have seen a more significant price increase, with the cheapest examples now setting users back 37.5 ETH, a rise of 70% from a month ago.

Much of ApeCoin’s recent rally can be attributed to the imminent Otherside NFT mint. What exactly users will be minting on Saturday remains unconfirmed; however, a leaked Yuga Labs pitch deck strongly suggests the mint will be for land parcels in the Otherside Metaverse. The deck states that Yuga Labs will sell 200,000 Otherside land plots, with 30,000 claimable for free by Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders, 70,000 allocated to an initial public sale, and the remaining 100,000 reserved for a subsequent drop. 

Each Otherside land NFT will not only correspond to land in the Otherside Metaverse but will also have the possibility to contain natural resources, rare artifacts, and one of 10,000 “Koda” NFTs, the latest additions to the Bored Ape Yacht Club universe. 

Speculation is rife that a dedicated NFT marketplace is also set to go live at the same time as the NFT mint and will exclusively allow trading for the new NFTs. As those pre-registered for the NFT drop needed to provide know-your-customer verification, some have argued that it would only have been necessary if users stood to profit by selling NFTs directly through Yuga Labs’ platform. 

Despite the fact that the mint is scheduled to take place at 5 pm UTC on Apr. 30, Yuga Labs is yet to announce the starting price for the Dutch auction or how many NFTs each wallet will be able to mint. The uncertainty over how much ApeCoin is needed has likely led to many hopeful minters stockpiling large amounts to ensure they don’t miss out. Whatever happens on Saturday, the Otherside mint is likely to be the talk of the NFT space this weekend. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing this piece, the author owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.