Law firm Scott+Scott announced a class action lawsuit against Yuga Labs, an issuer of BAYC NFT and ApeCoin. The company is accused of promoting digital assets with a false profit guarantee, causing losses among investors.
The case covers the period from April through June of this month. For now, the firm is looking for other victims of Yuga Labs’ actions and gathering evidence. However, lawyers are already prepared to meet with the defendant in court.
A Scott+Scott representative claims that Yuga Labs used Influencers and stars to promote its “fraudulent scheme.” The lawsuit also says that the token rate sagged 87% from its “overpriced high.”
Lawyers are betting that NFTs from the BAYC collection and the native ApeCoin token will be recognized as securities. That would put Yuga Labs in a difficult position, since the company would not be able to disclose holder data under the law.
A USC law professor in a Decrypt commentary rated the likelihood of this outcome as extremely low:
“It would be like opening a can of worms. Such a precedent would extend the SEC’s responsibilities to several asset groups at once. And no one at the commission wants that.”
This is far from the first such risk. Earlier, we reported that an American demanded compensation of $258 billion from Ilon Musk because of “organizing a Ponzi scheme around DOGE.”