Last Thursday, the creators of the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Yuga Labs launched a BAYC branded cryptocurrency aptly dubbed ApeCoin or APE.

APE's launch came just days after Yuga acquired two of the other most valuable properties in the NFT space, Cryptopunks and Meebits, hinting at the scale of the company's growing ambitions.

The new token is set to power Yuga's growing ecosystem of play-to-earn games. This interconnected in-game economy will likely only grow in importance as Yuga seeks to bolster its metaverse offering and even build its own.

The token has fared well in a relative sense since launch. It currently stands as the 47th most valuable digital currency according to CoinMarketCap. However, that valuation has virtually halved since reaching its peak of $5 billion shortly after APE's launch.

Currently, the crypto trades comfortably in the $12-10 range on virtually every major exchange, including the notoriously fickle Coinbase as well as Binance, FTX, eToro, Kraken, Gemini, and others.

Initially, APE will act as in-game currency for Yuga's existing and upcoming lineup of play-to-earn games, such as Benji Bananas and other titles in development in collaboration with WWE Undefeated and gaming studio nWay.

Proceeds from sales will go on to finance various digital and physical projects through the APE Ecosystem Fund. Coin owners will vote on how that fund is spent in what is known as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), in this case, the ApeCoin DAO.

One ApeCoin equals one vote under this system, which the Ape Foundation will administer. The foundation will manage the DAO's day-to-day activities while ensuring the community's initiatives are both legal and feasible.

Governing the foundation will be a "board" whose members will include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and FTX's Amy Wu, among others.

"The possibilities for blockchain's impact on culture are so endless that they can't possibly all be predicted yet," reads the token's website. "APE is a token made to support what's next, controlled and built on by the community. It will serve as a decentralized protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse."

During its short lifespan, Yuga has launched not only the most valuable NFT collection in Bored Ape Yacht Club, but also the most culturally relevant.

Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Eminem, Justin Bieber, and others have helped bring BAYC to the cultural fore. Today the dismal lineup of grinning apes is synonymous with the word NFT, with just costing a minimum of $240,000

But, with the launch of APE, Yuga is seemingly looking beyond the NFT space and towards the metaverse.

According to a pitch deck aimed at investors and obtained by Block, Yuga is looking to build its own game-based metaverse, dubbed MetaRPG.

APE tokens will power the in-game economy of this digital world, which will feature an App Store where players can use BAYC and even other NFTs to generate new characters from scratch. Yuga plans to kickstart the venture with the sale of 200,000 parcels of virtual land through which it hopes to raise $178 million.

The company is projecting revenues of $455 million in 2022, a nearly three-fold increase compared to the $127 million it earned last year, primarily through land sales in this in-game world.

On Tuesday, Yuga Labs announced it had raised $450 million to build out its brand new metaverse at a $5 billion valuation. The company was founded in 2021.