Daniel Alegre, the CEO of Yuga Labs, was recently in the news in the NFT business. On May 10, 2023, he bought a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT on Blur for 50 ETH. At the time, it cost about $90,000 to buy. Why does this matter? CoinGecko says that the floor price for Bored Ape NFTs was around 44 ETH (nearly $78,000) when Alegre bought them.
In other words, Alegre used his own money to buy an NFT from his own company, and he paid a lot more for it than he needed to.
Alegre shows his support for the BAYC
Alegre probably wanted to show his support for the BAYC NFT project and, more generally, the intellectual property portfolio of Yuga Labs by making this buy. Most of the best-known and most important NFT projects are currently in this portfolio. These include Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherside, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, CryptoPunks, and Meebits.
This shows that Alegre understands how much people in the NFT setting value community and interactions with other people. Participants in the NFT project are asked to follow other people in the space who are part of the community, talk to them often, and use an image from the community as their avatar.
Alegre finally chose to buy Bored Ape #3575, a painting of a chimpanzee wearing sunglasses and a Sea Captain’s helmet. After he bought it, he quickly changed it to his Twitter picture. “To my kids: meet a new member of the family. Proud to Ape into BAYC #3575,” he wrote.
Yuga Labs’ NFT-based media empire with Alegre as CEO
Yuga Labs raised $450 million from Andreessen Horowitz last year. At the time, the company was worth $4 billion. Their final goal is to create a media empire that is all about NFTs. They are starting with games and their own metaverse project, which is also called Otherside. Yuga Labs announced at the end of 2022 that Alegre would be joining the company as CEO to help it reach its goals.
Alegre would be a good candidate for the job. He used to be the Chief Operating Officer of Activision Blizzard. He helped make games like Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Diablo, and Overwatch, which are all well-known titles.
CoinGecko says that the Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest blockchain collectible because its market capitalization is close to $800 million. The most recent thing that Alegre did shows that the company is still going strong.
