Bored Ape
Bored Ape: The NFT market is currently facing a significant decline, but there has been a recent consolidation in the sector. Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, has announced that it has acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits brands, which are the world’s three best-selling non-fungible token collections.
Yuga Labs now owns the trademarks, art copyright, and other intellectual property rights of the acquired collections. The value of the transaction has not been disclosed. Despite the recent drop in the value of NFTs, Yuga Labs has created a significant amount of value in a short period.
The company created Bored Apes in April 2021, and its NFTs have generated more than $1 billion in sales, attracting celebrities like Neymar and Snoop Dogg. Bored Apes was ranked as the second most traded NFT collection on the OpenSea platform, with CryptoPunks being the first, having generated $2.2 billion since its creation in 2017, while Meebits moved $227 million since its creation.
The acquisition makes Yuga Labs the dominant player in the NFT market, and the company has already ventured into other areas like physical products, mobile games, and events. With the purchase of CryptoPunks and Meebits, Yuga Labs will also have to put its creativity to work since the two collections were not generating revenue for their previous owner, Larva Labs.
Unlike Bored Apes, the CryptoPunks and Meebits contract does not provide for a commission every time they are resold. The founders of Bored Apes have no plans to change that, nor do they plan to repeat the “membership club” model they adopted with their bored apes.
The acquisition comes as Yuga Labs is in talks with Andreessen Horowitz for a capital investment that would value the company at more than $5 billion, according to the Financial Times report.
