Daniel Alegre, who was appointed as the CEO of Yuga Labs on April 1, took off to Twitter to celebrate his ownership of a piece from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection issued by his company. At the time of writing, BAYC maintains its spot as the most valuable NFT collection with an estimated market cap of 500 ETH, or more than $900 million.
Alegre purchased his Ape #3575 for a hefty sum of 50 ETH (around $90,000) from the Blur NFT marketplace. His piece portrays a monkey in a black t-shirt wearing glasses and a sea captain’s hat. According to CoinMarketCap data, the floor price to buy a BAYC NFT is currently 43.9 ETH ($80,000).
“To my kids: meet a new member of the family. Proud to Ape into BAYC #3575,” Yuga Labs CEO tweeted to his 18k followers. Alegre also owns one piece from the BAYC spin-off collection Mutant Ape Yacht Club.
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Launched in 2021, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs took the industry by storm, quickly becoming a status symbol among some crypto enthusiasts, mostly due to a string of high-profile endorsements from celebrities like NBA star Stephen Curry, rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg, and late night show host Jimmy Falon.
The company has launched two official BAYC spin-off collections, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), and Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC), which feature different types of animal-themed NFTs with unique traits and characteristics. Yuga Labs is also home to other NFT collections unrelated to BAYC, namely CryptoPunks, Meebits, and Otherside.
Before joining Yuga Labs, Daniel Alegre served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Activision Blizzard and spent over 16 years at Google where he was the company’s President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, President of Shopping, and Payments as well as President of Asia Pacific and Latin America.
“Since exploding onto the scene with Bored Ape Yacht Club in 2021, Yuga Labs has quickly made a name for itself through a powerful combination of storytelling and community-building. The company’s pipeline of products, partnerships, and IP represents a massive opportunity to define the metaverse in a way that empowers creators and provides users with true ownership of their identity and digital assets. I look forward to working with the passionate, creative team at Yuga to innovate, inspire, and shape the future of the internet together,” Alegre said in the official statement.
