Dispatch #79: Planet of the Bored Apes

Mar 18, 2022 4 min read

Dispatch

In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:

BAYC buys Crypto Punks and Meebits
Nexo lists ApeCoin
A close call for PoW in Europe

The Big Idea

Bored Apes Buy CryptoPunks

This one was certainly unexpected.

Over the last year, one of the great NFT battles has been Punks vs. Apes. Larva Labs’ CryptoPunks had the OG pedigree, but the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) kept attracting more and more celebrity devotees. At the end of 2021, however, the аpes flipped the punks and the discussion started to shift.

Last week, BAYC creator Yuga Labs shocked the world – not that anything can shock us anymore – when it announced that it had purchased CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs. The first and most important change they made was to give Punk holders commercial rights that had been in a gray area previously.

The community was divided. Some saw it as a move that would dramatically expand the creativity and entrepreneurialism in the punk community by providing legal clarity around rights. Others felt more torn about the implications. Prominent NFT investor DCInvestor said, “I don’t expect everyone to understand, but feels like my favorite corner bar just got turned into an Applebee’s.”

What everyone agrees on is that this is an absolute power move from Yuga Labs that will shape the NFT industry for years to come. Yuga ain’t playing around. They seem to be building out their entire ecosystem in the metaverse. Proof? ApeCoin ($APE), a token for culture, gaming, and commerce, just launched and is owned and operated by the ApeCoin DAO.

Oh, and $APE is now available on Nexo. Just use your credit or debit card to buy ApeCoin directly.

The Latest In…

European Regulations

The European (and, who are we kidding, global) crypto community had a bit of a scare over the weekend as anti-proof-of-work language found its way back into an amendment to the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) draft legislation in the European Parliament. The ESG-inspired language set to create environmental standards for consensus mechanisms would have been problematic, to say the least for Bitcoin and other PoW assets.

A similar provision had previously been deleted but the amendment was due for a vote on Monday and so the last-minute addition created a frenzy within the community. When all was said and done, the language was rejected but the entire affair was a reminder of just how much small wording changes in legislation can make huge impacts, and why the community must remain vigilant.

The Latest In…

Institutions & Funding

ConsenSys raised $450M at a $7B valuation (double its last round in Nov 2021).
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is seeking to build a digital assets division.
One of the US Department of Justice’s top crypto experts is joining a16z crypto as Head of Regulatory.
Optimism, the Ethereum scaling startup, raised a $150M Series B funding round.
Phew!

The Latest In…

Nexo Listings & Rewards

The Buy & HODL Challenge: Old to Nexo? New to Nexo? Doesn’t matter ‘cause HODLing is for everyone. We’ll give you an up to $1,500 reward in NEXO Tokens when you buy or top up at least $5,000 in SOL, ADA, MATIC, BNB, DOT, AVAX, and hold the assets in your secure Nexo account for 90 days. Read more here.
$NEAR: The utility token of the L1 Near Protocol blockchain is available on Nexo. You can buy NEAR with a card and receive it in your account immediately or use the Nexo Booster to buy 3x more NEAR, using leverage. Also, you can earn up to 10% APR when you hold the asset with us.

The Week’s Most Interesting Data Story

The Metaverse Is Getting LIT

Yuga Labs buying Punks wasn’t the only metaverse story this week. A leaked deck from Yuga also shows that they’re planning on phasing in their own metaverse. In terms of metaverses that already exist, $3T bank HSBC announced that they were the first to buy land in The Sandbox. Indeed, metaverse purchases as a whole are heating up. Check out the dramatic increase in volume last year to almost $500M. This seems like a trend that is only just beginning.