The company behind the "Bored Ape" series of NFTs has raised approximately $285 million in cryptocurrency by selling tokens that represent land in a virtual world game that it claims to be developing.

Yuga Labs, a U.S. start-up, created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs last year, which are blockchain-based tokens representing a set of 10,000 computer-generated cartoon apes.

As non-fungible tokens (NFTs) - crypto assets that represent digital files such as images, video, or items in an online game - became increasingly popular, Bored Ape prices skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

They rose to prominence as one of the most well-known NFT brands, with Apes selling at top auction houses and being owned by celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Madonna.

Yuga Labs, which raised $450 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz in March, has now set its sights on the so-called "metaverse."

Yuga Labs sold "Otherdeeds" NFTs online on April 30, claiming that they could be exchanged for plots of virtual land in a future Bored Ape-themed online environment called "Otherside."

The "Otherdeeds" could only be purchased with ApeCoin, the project's associated cryptocurrency that debuted in March.

There were 55,000 Otherdeeds for sale, each priced at 305 ApeCoin, and the company announced on Twitter that they had all been sold.

According to Reuters calculations based on the price of ApeCoin on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase at 1210 GMT, the sale netted 16,775,000 ApeCoin, which was worth around $285 million as of Sunday.

Although the company stated that the ApeCoin would be "locked up" for one year, it was unclear how the funds would be distributed.

The sale demonstrates that there is still a high demand for speculative, high-risk crypto assets related to online virtual worlds. Upcoming NFTs are largely unregulated, and there have been numerous reports of scams, forgeries, and market manipulation.

While many people are perplexed by the concept of paying real money for land that does not exist, some virtual land NFTs have already fetched millions of dollars.

According to its website, the Otherside metaverse will be a multi-player gaming environment that is currently in development.

Yuga Labs would not say how many people were working on Otherside or when it would be released.

Yuga Labs' Otherdeeds sale comes shortly after the official Instagram account of the Bored Ape Yacht Club was hacked and a phishing link was posted, allowing scammers to steal victims' NFTs.