A twisted tale of celebrity promotion, opaque transactions and allegations of racist tropes

Read ction lawsuit complaint in Court >>

TĐH: Excerpt from the Complaint filed in Court

Ultimately, “[t]he [BAYC NFT] series serves as a kind of fan club on steroids that encourages owners of the NFTs to move through an ever-growing and exclusive list of events and opportunities.”32 And the Company presents the Bored Ape ecosystem as a brand that is organically beloved by some of the most famous celebrities in the world. But the truth is that the Company’s entire business model relies on using insidious marketing and promotional activities from A-list celebrities that are highly compensated (without disclosing such), to increase demand of the Yuga securities by convincing potential retail investors that the price of these digital assets would appreciate and that, as members of “the club,” these investors would be given exclusive access to additional financial products and benefits.

By Elle Reeve and Samantha Guff, CNN

Updated 11:01 PM EST, Fri February 10, 2023

CNN — 

Sitting across from Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show,” Paris Hilton, wearing a sparkling neon green turtleneck dress and a high ponytail, looked at a picture of a glum cartoon ape and said it “reminds me of me.” The audience laughed. It did not look like her at all.

Hilton and Fallon were chatting about their NFTs – non-fungible tokens, typically digital art bought with cryptocurrency – from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The camera zoomed in on framed printouts of the ape cartoons. “We’re both apes,” Fallon said. Hilton, with her signature vocal fry, replied, “Love it.”

Super Bowl LVI was crypto’s coming out party. This year, the party’s over

“The Tonight Show” episode from January 2022 is a YouTube time capsule showing the temporary alliance between celebrity marketing and the crypto industry. Bored Ape Yacht Club was not the biggest crypto phenomenon, but it was one of the top beneficiaries of celebrity hype. That celebrity hype, in turn, helped draw new consumers to crypto — an industry rife with manipulation and fraud, and one that US regulators are now giving more scrutiny in the wake of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. But for a time, when crypto’s prices seemed to have no limit, the money appeared too good for some to ask questions — questions like: Why are some of those apes wearing prison clothes?

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