A group of disgruntled NFT investors have filed a class action lawsuit against a long list of celebrities in California.
Justin Bieber, Madonna, Steph Curry, Kevin Hart, Madonna, Post Malone and Paris Hilton have all been named alongside at least 30 others.
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It all started during the 2021 NFT craze.
Celebrities were spending millions to acquire the hottest NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.
More to the point, they were bragging about it on TV and social media, which led investors to believe these NFTs were a good investment.
And when the value started dropping during the ongoing crypto bear market, investors felt like they’d been defrauded.
According to the lawsuit, the claimants believe these celebrities were hired to “artificially inflate and distort the price” of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
In addition to a long list of celebs, the class action lawsuit also names executives who work at Yuga Labs, the company that created the Bored Ape NFTs.
The lawsuit also mentions MoonPay, a crypto payments app, for facilitating the transactions.
Claimants are seeking damages of $5 million.
A Yuga Labs spokesperson said these claims were “opportunistic and parasitic”.
While the NFTs in question did indeed prove a bad investment, claimants will have to prove the 37 celebrity co-defendants acted with malice.
This isn’t going to be easy, especially considering even the celebrities in question lost money.
Justin Bieber, for example, purchased a Bored Ape NFT for $1.29 million in 2021.
It is now worth $69,000.
Check out the full list of celebrities who are getting sued here.
About the Bored Ape Yacht Club
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection is the second-largest by sales volume.
The number of Bored Apes that change hands every 24 hours is pretty low (between four and six), but they’re incredibly expensive.
On average, a Bored Ape costs 75 Ethereum – or $97,000.
