ApeCoin up 50% as buyers get ready for a huge metaverse digital land sale

The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT-themed coin was up 50% this week alone, according to CoinMarketCap, and was up nearly 7% to $22.28 per coin in the last 24 hours early Thursday afternoon. On Thursday, the coin, which is not directly issued by Yuga Labs, the company that owns Bored Ape Yacht Club, and instead is run by a decentralized autonomous organization called ApeCoin DAO, reached the highest prices it’s seen since it was released in March of this year, before retreating slightly.

Part of the reason for ApeCoin’s rise is the excitement around the sale this weekend of 50,000 plots of virtual land on Otherside, yet-to-be released metaverse platform. Interested buyers will need ApeCoin to purchase a plot, which is contributing to the price surge. 

Land in Otherside was originally planned to be sold in a Dutch auction, meaning that it would  start at a high price, and then decrease as time went on. But on Thursday Yuga Labs pivoted away from that strategy.

“Dutch auctions are actually bullshit,” the Otherside posted on its official Twitter account Thursday.

Now, all plots of land in the metaverse world will be sold for a flat price of 305 ApeCoin, according to Otherside’s Twitter account. That’s equal to about $6,957, as of ApeCoin’s price on Thursday afternoon. However, if the price of ApeCoin increases, the price of land will be inflated as a result.

To buy land, users will have to verify their crypto wallet beforehand and load it with ApeCoin and some Ether to cover gas fees, according to Yuga Labs. Buyers will be limited to two NFTs at the beginning of the sale to avoid a big increase in gas fees for those purchasing land.

A leaked Yuga Labs pitch deck from last month revealed that the Otherside metaverse platform would include 200,000 plots of digital land, but the company has not confirmed this. The Otherside team said in a blog post on its official Twitter on Thursday that 55,000 plots of land will be up for sale on Saturday.

A Yuga Labs spokesperson told Fortune the company had no comment.

Existing Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders will be able to claim a free plot of land for 21 days following Saturday’s land sale, according to a Twitter post from the Otherside’s official account. 

Yuga Labs owns some of the most popular NFT projects, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club. The company said it would be incorporating these NFTs into Otherside. Unlike Decentraland and The Sandbox, which are metaverse platforms that have had to build out a community from scratch, Yuga Labs’ NFT projects already have large cult followings and organized communities.

ApeCoin has been on the rise since its release on March 17. The decentralized autonomous organization that released the coin, ApeCoin DAO, built up hype by giving away free tokens to Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT owners. ApeCoin jumped as much as 90% in its second day of trading.