Apes Crashing Ethereum to Raise Money

In another busy week of capital raising, the switch flipped from NFTs to Metaverse and Gaming projects, though most of the funding came from Yuga Lab’s public virtual land sale. Metaverse/Gaming projects raised $403 million, over two thirds of the total pot this week. The rest of the funds were pretty evenly spread between Infrastructure ($62 million), NFTs ($61 million), CeFi ($34 million), Web3 ($27 million), and lastly, in a major drop from last week, DeFi ($6 million).

Three more funds launched this week with a combined $535 million ready to deploy. One is an ecosystem fund for Nym Mixnet, and two general funds that will be focused on later-stage projects that have proven sustainability and strong value adds. Argo Blockchain was the sole mining company that secured a loan this week with a $70.6 million financing agreement with NYDIG.

Deal of The Week

Yuga Labs ($APE) is the company that created the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most popular NFT collection by market cap. The group raised $320 million in a public metaverse land sale that infamously crashed the Ethereum network over the weekend. The sale was for 55,000 plots in the Otherside metaverse, each selling for a flat price of 305 APE, or around $5,800 at the time of the sale.

Why Is This a Big Deal?