The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is continuing its foray into the mainstream with its own upcoming film trilogy, announced this week by Coinbase.

The crypto-exchange giant is sitting in the producer chair for the animated short-film series, titled “The Degen Trilogy”. And the first of those will be premiering at the NFT.NYC industry event in June to tie in to the long-awaited launch of Coinbase’s NFT marketplace.

In case you’re not living in the crypto bubble, by the way, “degen” is short for degenerate. And in this space, that’s less an insult and almost a badge of pride, or at least an acceptance of a common practice. Degens are crypto investors or traders who tend to “ape” into various digital assets – tokens or NFTs – without doing due diligence or proper research. It’s essentially a risky, fast-moving, bets-spreading strategy.

 

‘An incredible group of directors, writers and animators’

But back to the Bored Apes tilt at Tinsel Town, which very much sounds like it has Hollywood veterans on board…

“We have an incredible group of directors, writers, and animators behind this film,” Coinbase says on the film’s website. “We can’t tell you who they are just yet, but you’ve seen what they’ve done before.”

Owners of BAYC NFTs will be able to audition their apes to be in the series, with Coinbase asking owners to create a backstory for their character to potentially appear in the films.

If chosen, the owner of that NFT will receive a US$10k licensing fee, paid in Bitcoin or ApeCoin – the BAYC ecosystem token recently created and airdropped by BAYC developer Yuga Labs.

Time to ape in on a BAYC? Got half a million dollars lying around? While there’s no official floor price on these most famous of NFTs, they’ve proven to be pretty much unattainable (unless via illegitimate means) for less than about US$300k.

 

Fortnite’s Epic Games Raises US$2 billion in Metaverse move

Epic Games, the studio behind the “battle royale” smash hit Fortnite, has announced in the past 24 hours it’s completed a US$2 billion raise in a metaverse-related play.

Sony and LEGO owner KIRKBI have both invested US$1 billion in the funding and it takes Epic Games to a coffer-busting valuation of US$31.5 billion.

In a blog post, the firm said it had raised the funds “to advance the company’s vision to build the metaverse and support its continued growth.”

What’s this mean for crypto? It may not yet amount to an official endorsement of the industry from Epic Games, but the fact remains it’s widely accepted the concept of the metaverse is deeply connected to the development of the next iteration of the internet, also known as web3.

It’s also commonly believed that blockchain technology will underpin this internet of the future, which is why some people tend to see the terms “crypto” and “web3” as being interchangeable.

The popular Twitter account “brycent” – an avid NFT gamer and commentator on the industry believes it’s big news, stating in a Twitter thread:

“No you probably won’t see a Fortnite NFT this week, this month, or this year. But @EpicGames opening their audience up to the metaverse will almost certainly create more web3 participants.”

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