so they got the $335M at the time of mint - 55,000 x 305 APE coin. it's a little different in that the payment was in their own APE coin rather that just ETH. so people's cost were different depending on when they bough the APE coin and for what price. A bigger cash grab would have been selling in ETH and not promising to lock up all the APE received in the mint. They also get 5% of sales that happen on trading sites. They did a similar auction (Mutant Apes) maybe 6 months ago on a 20K NFT project that sold for ~3 ETH mint price (which was about $10K at the time). Those are worth about 20 ETH now (but only ~$40K since ETH is down). That netted them ~$100M in an hour (10K were given away to current Bored Ape holder). good work if you can get it, lol.
I should have said "much better examples of cons..." My point is that Yuga has the best track record out of just about any NFT out there. Yes, they extracted a TON of money for themselves along the way, but have not been proven a bad actor and actually have bestowed a hefty ROI for people who held on or bought their NFTs at mint. My point was that there are tons of NFT projects that are straight cons (or rugs) where the creator tries to sell as many as they can and then just straight up shuts all communication down and bolts often to try it again.
I have been kicking around NFTs for a little over a year, so yeah i track all this fairly closely. You are correct in that it can be viewed as a game of musical chairs. sharp traders find a way to mint or buy early and then sell into fomo as the price rises to people clamoring to get in on the project increases. finding the sweet spot is the trick. For instance, I bought one of those Mutant Apes at mint for $10K and then sold it 45 mins later for $25K as it sold out in minutes and people were scrambling to buy these on the secondary market. fast forward a few months and the trading price for those dropped below the mint price but then eventually rose up to $80K as news of the APE coin and Otherdeed launch were announced.
- a lot of the time though, it never recovers from that peak that happens and those who bought at the top are stuck with a loss.