The auction house Sotheby’s and the celebrity Paris Hilton in particular are named in the case, because they would have made misleading promotion for the NFT.
A group of investors in what is called the ‘Bored Ape NFT’ wants to bring a collective lawsuit against around thirty defendants. He accuses celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber of promoting the NFT collection without ever admitting to being paid for it. The Sotheby’s auction house is also mentioned. According to the plaintiffs, she was recruited by the blockchain firm Yuga Labs to legitimize the Bored Apes brand and thus generate interest.
Bored Apes NFT from Yuga Labs are perhaps the best-known examples of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). These are images of monkeys linked to a receipt on the blockchain to create a ‘unique set of collectibles’. At the end of 2021, they were able to enjoy a gigantic vogue and were at the time promoted among others by celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon and Madonna. Many NFTs have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but their value has fallen sharply in recent months. Today, a Bored Ape, for example, still costs around $50,000.
FTX
This is an amended complaint that was filed in December of last year already. At the time, Sotheby’s had not yet been cited. But this time, according to rumor, the auction house would be well involved in the case relating to an online sale dating from September 2021. A hundred Bored Ape NFT had then been sold to a single collector for some 24 million dollars, a sum significantly higher than the expected 12 million. However, the wallet address to which Sotheby’s sent these NFTs is linked to FTX, the now-defunct crypto-company that the prosecutor said had close ties to Yuga Labs. The purpose of the trial is therefore, among other things, to find out whether there was a conspiracy to inflate the price of NFTs.
Both Yuga Labs and Sotheby’s deny the charges.