It's Bananas, but Unconfirmed Metaverse Rumors Are Pumping ApeCoin

All it took on Wednesday were a pair of tweets from the pseudonymous #cryptotwitterati handles @renegademasterr and @WillyTheDegen to ignite a surge in the price of ApeCoin (APE), a token linked to the buzzy-as-it-gets NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

The speculation is that Yuga Labs, the developer team behind BAYC, is pushing its “Otherside” metaverse toward a public land sale and that the sale might be priced in APE.

None of the rumors has been confirmed, and crypto speculation often flames out spectacularly, along with the previously pumped token prices.

Yuga Labs didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

At press time, the APE price was around $16, up 24% over the past 24 hours and 68% over the past 30 days, according to the data site CoinGecko. The market capitalization has shot to a very biped level of $4.6 billion this week.

When the APE token launched in March, Yuga Labs announced plans to “adopt ApeCoin as the primary token for all new products and services.”

Details around its “Otherside” metaverse remain sparse. But trailers released by Yuga Labs show involvement from a slew of popular NFT (non-fungible token) faces, including Cool Cats, Nounz and Toadz, whose floor prices have all risen this week.

Lyllah Ledesma contributed reporting.