Shockingly, Bored Apes Now Laying Off Employees as NFT Market Disintegrates

Victor Tangermann
·2 min read

Token of Gratitude

Bored Ape Yacht Club developer Yuga Labs is laying off an unspecified number of employees as the appetite for the nonfungible tokens (NFTs) continues to evaporate.

In an announcement on X-formerly-Twitter, Yuga Labs CEO Greg "Gargamel" Solano said that "some very hard, strategic decisions" had "unfortunately" included a "restructuring."

"To put it simply: Yuga lost its way," Solano wrote. "Getting ourselves centered and on the right path means being a smaller, more agile and cryptonative team."

The news comes amid a major downturn in the NFT market, with Bored Ape NFTs that once were worth millions of dollars being sold off for a tiny fraction.

But is the bizarre trend really on its way out once and for all — or are NFTs in for an imminent resurgence, as some recent reports suggest? Anything's possible, but common sense suggests that at this point you should only invest with extreme caution.

Apes of Wrath

Celebrities who once shilled the drab JPGs of fatigued primates are even being sued by angry investors for hyping up the tokens back in 2021, who argue that they "misleadingly promoted" the collection.

In October, Yuga Labs' Ethereum-based token called ApeCoin dropped to an all-time low, hovering at just over $1. Despite rallying in February, the coin has now again lost much of its value.

Overall, Bored Apes feel like a shadow of their former selves, when they were being sold for millions of dollars back in 2021 and 2022. Nowadays their price floor is barely hanging above $40,000.

Apart from slinging Bored Apes, Yuga Labs has also struggled to launch its video game, called Otherside. In March, the company opened beta sessions to Bored Ape owners for an eye-searing $75,000.

Despite the hefty price tag, the game appeared to be in a disastrous state, from horrible graphics to abysmal performance.

Nonfungible Renaissance

In short, Yuga is in "hard mode," as Solano put it in his announcement. The company is "going from zero to one again, and we can't pretend otherwise."

That's despite certain signs of life in the NFT market. Just last week, a CryptoPunk NFT sold for a whopping $12.4 million in Ethereum, ranking among the most expensive NFT sales of all time.

Is that a sign of what's still to come? As with everything else in the extremely volatile and unpredictable world of crypto, all we can do is wait and watch.

More on NFTs: People Say Their Eyes Are Burning After Attending a Bored Ape Event