Buyers of Bored Ape NFTs sue after digital apes turn out to be bad investment

merridew@feddit.uk to Technology@lemmy.world – 552 points –
Buyers of Bored Ape NFTs sue after digital apes turn out to be bad investment
arstechnica.com
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This is so funny. The entire point of cryptocurrency was to be an irreversible, untraceable currency. Now these dipshits are sueing over losses? I don't know if they are severely mistaken or severely angry. You are not getting that back. Neither do you deserve to. You knew what you were doing.

The first step is "Fuck the government!" The second step is always "Help me, Obi Wan Government, you're my only hope!"

I deserve help from the government as I've done everything right and just been unfortunate. Its everyone else who have got into trouble entirely through their own doing that don't deserve help.

Also: "why do things that happen to stupid people keep happening to me?"

When was cryptocurrency meant to be untraceable? It literally had the complete ledger out in the public.

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They just seem really upset that the scam/grift/MLM didn't work out in their favour and they're the ones taking the loss.

I don't really agree with this sentiment.

Are they dipshits?

Yes

Should Sothebys lose all credibility and be fined for faking an auction?

Also yes.

Should Bored Ape owners get any of their money back?

Naaaaaaaaaaaw

This crosses certain lines that are beyond just: huuuur crypto dumb

You forgot unregulated which usually even makes it to the front row in a lot of arguments completely denying the necessity to even have regulations at all...

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It's hard to feel sorry for anyone who fell for a very obvious art grift. Even harder to be sorry for those caught grifting.

Even a cursory understanding of value would have told these people that pretty looking receipts are a piss poor investment, but no, they were convinced that NFT's (a tech they obviously knew nothing about) held intrinsic value despite having nothing of value backing them.

Everyone caught up in the NFT art grift did so because they thought they could make a quick buck being ahead of the wave of the next big pump and dump like crypto and got fucked by their hubris. The grifter's meanwhile were out here selling them graffiti'd up CVS receipts and saying they were worth the Mona Lisa.

The result? A perfectly valid and valuable technology has been completely disregarded by the public because 90% of people were too stupid to think before they bought into a tech they didn't understand and they all lost money to grifters. Worlds most widespread art grift and everyone was played a fool, and a valuable tech has been discredited, misunderstood, and shunned.

A perfectly valid and valuable technology has been completely disregarded by the public

Damn, you were so close! Just expand what you said about NFTs to the whole crypto bullshit and you got it.

The one example I’ve heard that makes sense are NFTs to represent a purchase of digital games. This then allows the selling of digital keys second hand.

Other than that it all sounds like a scam.

you dont need useless nft tech for that to be possible

Of course not, but what little I know of NFTs is they do the two things needed for that to be possible: one, ability to transfer ownership, and two, verify ownership.

I have no clue if NFTs are the best way to accomplish that, let alone even a good way, and people much smarter than me can figure that out.

In the end I don’t think it matters. For it to be viable it would require the big companies to adopt it, which I never see them accepting a legal way to do second hand sales of digital goods.

Yeah, if you are waiting for a company that loses money through second-hand sales to implement an NFT scheme to facilitate second-hand sales... That could take a while.

This post of yours is one that I completely agree with.

That's a fundamental issue with NFTs though. Every instance of a fitting use case already has a non-NFT way to accomplish the same in the way the people in charge want to keep it.

Why would e.g. Steam want you to be able to trade games without Steam being involved/getting a cut? They can just ask you go buy from them.

Why would a state want to hand over control over the land registry to some cryptobro?

Why would the whole financial side of the art industry want to hand over control to a block chain and make themselves redundant?

Also, revertability of mistakes is a core feature of any reasonable transaction system. A system without that is worthless.

Sorry, this turned into a rant.

I can see ticket sales being issued via nft. They could set a maximum the ticket can be resold for, thus hindering scalpers and the original seller can also get a stake in the resale of the ticket. Beyond that I have never seen another decent use.

But again, why do that if you can also bind tickets to names and use that to make yourself the only possible place where people can sell their tickets on, with a substantial fee (like Ticketmaster does)?

They have no incentive to let people freely sell tickets when thy can also force themselves in as mandatory man in the middle.

You remove the burden of verifying the names and storing the personal data and you don't need to handle the resale inhouse. Other than that yeah it's pretty much the same thing

To a reasonable company, this might be a burden. To a big corporation it's half the reason they are doing this.

Yeah and rent-seeking is the only real big business left in town besides personalized advertising.

No way a rent-seeking opportunity this great isn't going to be gobbled up by the existing players and instead given up for free so that they can use new, poorly performing, expensive technology instead.

You can't cap resale prices with technological limits because payment can be split between multiple channels before the seller transfers ownership.

Yeah, that's why I only said hinders not stops. I mean I personally wouldn't send two payments where one of the transactions is one sided because you just open yourself to bring scammed but I'm sure some people would

I could see that being a use case if it weren't for how much the underlying technology sucks ass. Blockchains spend too much time doing their silly little trust-less security nonsense dance to be able to perform at the scale needed by systems that will sell...say...Taylor Swift concert tickets.

They arent. For the NFT to do anything in a game it has to interact with the game in some way. The game gets to decide how it interacts with each NFT. So you are already using a central authority to change your NFT to something of value in the game, So why bother with the whole distributed trustless aspect of the blockchain and not just have a row in a database table?

You don't, but nfts allow distribution platforms to let buyers do it while requiring little to no effort on their part.

they have no reason to allow you to do that, and you dont need nfts for that either

Never said it's needed, I said it could be used for it and would lower the amount of effort required on the distributor's side.

They also have no reason to allow people to sell in game items at the moment, yet look at Steam making bank from item sales!

Yeah and they only make bank because they sit in the middle of the transactions as the trusted third party.

The only way to possibly make NFTs work for Steam would be for them to also start up a side business of "SteamCoin" currency, because the only way to offload the enormous costs of running a blockchain network at scale is to have miners and nodes running the network for their own gains.

And even then, they'd lose autonomy over their own business and it would likely be slower in terms of transactions per second for normal customers.

It's a losing proposition pretty much all around. The only way that an existing company with an adequately equipped IT department would transition to this is if they were forced to by law...and I don't see that happening ever.

They most certainly do not allow buyers to do that. And again, this is already happening with existing technology, and much more efficient and secure.

The "could" was implied, I know it doesn't happen now, doesn't mean it couldn't.

Check wallet for nft proving a person owns the game (since wallet content is public), if the person sells the nft then they can't play anymore, the new owner can.

Ask people to send a certain amount of crypto from their wallet to prove it's theirs and associate it with their in game account (also becomes a way to get a cut from sales).

It's surprising it's not something that already exists since it solves the DRM issue (from the game distributor perspective).

As far as I know there are no major platforms to that allows players to sell their digital games, only in game items.

There's no business incentive to allow a second-hand digital games market, and there's no regulation to force them to provide one. It's pretty much that simple.

NFTs won't solve this, and even if there was a mandated way to sell "used" digital games (a concept that's actually pretty bizarre when you think about it) it would not be through NFTs or block chain, because the underlying technology is slow and costs a shit ton to run. Unless you're producing a coin on the side, there's also no simple mechanism to offload the costs of running it.

That is already possible without the use of NFTs, and much more efficient and secure.

There's no point in using NFT for that.

What assets are games going to allow you to import? Just anything?

Or only from authorized issuers (like the original game dev and authorized artists)? If so then you have no real place for NFT, you already have Steam marketplace and equivalent where the game dev sets up or integrates with an online marketplace.

Want transparency in the marketplace? Use transparency logs, not blockchains.

If you're allowing literally any NFT then this is no different from allowing people to import arbitrary assets, with the sole difference that some have a digital receipt attached.

Blockchains are really only useful for certain coordination problems among mutually untrusting parties who can't find a common trusted 3rd party. For most game devs that trusted 3rd party is Steam marketplace. It's really only if you want to share assets in both directions between specific games from specific other developers AND want to make them exclusive / player owned AND don't trust marketplaces like Steam, that it MIGHT be relevant to investigate if a blockchain solution fits.

There is value in a fully distributed append-only database system that can run on nodes that don't trust each other. We just haven't found any valid use of it outside crypto yet.

There is value in a fully distributed append-only database system that can run on nodes that don't trust each other. We just haven't found any valid use of it outside crypto yet.

FTFY

How is crypto not a valid use? Crypto as a get rich quick scheme is stupid and useless, but crypto for peer to peer payments is perfectly valid.

What (of value) does crypto do that existing payment services don't?

I'm not suggesting that crypto replace any existing use for bank cards or apps like zelle or cash app. I'm suggesting that there are other payment scenarios where excusing systems don't fit, like a dispensary that lost access to a payment processor (hypothetical, not sure if this has happened) or a merchant wanting to avoid transaction fees. It's absolutely useless in 99% of all transactions, but it's not 100%.

Are you arguing that any technology that does the same thing as an existing one has zero value whatsoever?

If I had to spitball an answer, I'd say the value of an innovation increases as it improves on existing similar things, and decreases as it worsens from them.

I don't see any benefit to crypto for sending money, and introducing a new, volatile currency backed by people's imagination is a detraction to me.

Oh yeah I love paying someone using a wildly volatile currency that goes up and down like a roller coaster and has exorbitant transaction fees. But at least I'm not a chump who uses a bank card.

I'm not anti bank or bank card, when those aren't an option crypto is a valid option. Ideally something without much for transaction fees, of course. Since prices are volatile, you would likely only purchase what you needed when you needed it.

This is wildly inconvenient, but remember this is a "banks are not an option" scenario. That's really up to the recipient. It could be a dispensary that got shut down by their payment processor, or another shop that wants to avoid the 3-5% transaction fee that payment processors charge. And yes, it could be something nefarious or illegal on the dark web.

To say crypto has no valid uses is simply inaccurate. For most people, though, there are better options like peer-to-peer payment apps (zelle, cash app, etc.) or just plain old cash.

I’ve read both these five times and I’m not seeing the difference, help!

"outside crypto" at the end is crossed out.

Huh. Thank you. It's not showing that for me using the Voyager app on Android. Thought I was losing my marbles

Oh weird must be a Voyager issue then, not seeing it via that on iOS, thanks for the reply!

If there's no valid use how do you derive value? It's old tech at this point and still looking for a problem to solve.

NFTs do have value in narrow use cases. For instance Domain names are NFTs and incredibly important to the way humans interact with the internet.

Except they aren't because they are just managed by a bunch of central agencies.

Not everything that's digital and where the rights to it can be sold is an NFT.

Lmao, have you ever a bought a domain name. Its not an NFT, lmao you don't even own one permanently after buying u. You basically license one from a registrar and that expires after a set interval. There's no NFTs involved.

You're the third person to say the same thing. NFTs conceptually predate the existence of the blockchain and don't need to be on it. Wikipedia or w/e you got your definition that says otherwise are simply wrong. And yes, I own several different domain names.

Not sure you know what the token part of NFT means. Usually it's the non fungible part, so congrats on being uniquely wrong.

At some point in time you'll just have to unravel your word salad and realize that all things associated with this space are incredulous.

Except that they're not. NFTs take something that exists - like domain names - and injects unnecessary Blockchain bs. What added value does a Blockchain bring?

Edit: I may have misunderstood and the person I'm replying to agreed with my assertation that the tech has been disregarded and that it expands to crypto as well. I expected that assumption was obvious and didn't need to be stated directly and thought the poster was being disingenuous. Leaving my comment up for posterity.

Don't conflate your ignorance with other people's knowledge, go develop a better understanding of the tech rather than assuming it has no value because you're too ignorant to learn about it.

Even crypto has a place, doesn't mean it's being used correctly by the majority of people.

I equate the public engaging in crypto and NFT's to tribal folks who accidentally pick up a discarded radioactive canister, what they have is valuable in the right hands, dangerous to themselves.

Your original comment addressed exactly what I meant: not NFTs are the ponzi scheme but all crypto tokens are.

Nothing "perfectly valid and valuable" about blockchain - there are zero legit use cases that can't be far more efficiently solved by conventional database tech (yes, also proof of stakes).

The reason is simple: the basis for the whole thing is trustlessness which does not exist - even in the crypto token world. You need trust to entry and to use it and I prefer a lawyer/notary over trusting some dev not putting bugs into my "smart" contract. I don't trust the notary because of their fancy diploma either but because there's a state that forces him to do right or lose his license/end up in prison. Nothing like that in your blockchain "trustless" environment.

Why do you think blockchain tech is as old as Android and has produced nothing but carbon dioxide and tears from "I'm gonna get rich quick" morons?

Because like any system to have trust it must be co-opted and regulated by the government and/or corporations and building the infrastructure and tools that make integrating with the block chain take time.

Also when you say that there is nothing that blockchain does that can't be done by other systems, do you include up to the second global access and management of a decentralised ledger that can be directly integrated into all software systems with inbuilt security?

Because it seems like all those technologies are privately owned and managed, don't have any interest in developing or providing global integration and access.

Blockchain has the potential to be the foundation of globalised services and systems, and crypto the basis for a world currency, just because we haven't gotten there yet is like saying the wheel was useless before we invented cars. The use cases and implementation of the tech might currently be niche but that's because we're still developing the right vehicle for it to carry.

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The result? A perfectly valid and valuable technology has been completely disregarded by the public

No. Stop. If blockchain, nfts, etc. had actual merit over what we already have rn, they would be used everywhere. But ever since the inception of the og blockchain, they do not. Because there is not a single actual use case of them that isn't already done (and done better) by other tech.

So stop this "oh it was good, just misunderstood" nonsense. It was never good, and never will be.

Is your only argument "wah, wah, wah, no!" because it's not very convincing.

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Neither side of this looks good for crypto bros.

One side says, "This was a ripoff; you knew it was a ripoff when you sold it to us."

The other side says, "This was a stunt; you knew it was a stunt when you bought in."

"Yes your Honour, I knew it was a pyramid scheme. But I never thought I would be the last buyer. I always thought there would be another dumbass to buy it from me at a higher price, otherwise I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. I'm not stupid, unlike those last buyers!

Moreover, your Honour, on a technical note, this is not a monkey. You see, a monkey is different from a monke, and both..."

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The amended lawsuit alleges that "Yuga colluded with fine arts broker, Defendant Sotheby's, to run a deceptive auction." After the sale, a Sotheby's representative described the winning bidder during a Twitter Spaces event as a "traditional" collector, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said it turned out the auction buyer was now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges. Ethereum blockchain transaction data shows that after the auction, "Sotheby's transferred the lot of BAYC NFTs to wallet address 0xf8e0C93Fd48B4C34A4194d3AF436b13032E641F3,77 which, upon information and belief, is owned/controlled by FTX," the complaint said. Speculation that FTX was the buyer had been percolating since at least January 2023.

So basically, they're alleging Sotheby's, Yuga, and FTX staged the auction to pump the price. Bold claim, curious how this will play out.

Isn't pumping the price kinda the job of sotherbys/auctions?

The amended lawsuit alleges that "Yuga colluded with fine arts broker, Defendant Sotheby's, to run a deceptive auction." After the sale, a Sotheby's representative described the winning bidder during a Twitter Spaces event as a "traditional" collector, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said it turned out the auction buyer was now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges.

I don't think it's fair to pin this all on people who got duped. Calling FTX, a company now known for throwing around large sums of stolen money to pump up the brand, bribe government officials, and fix prices, a "traditional collector", is beyond misleading.

Yeah fuck these stupid NFT scams but fuck FTX more. They knew what they were doing. They also are alleged to have been behind the giant Bitcoin price pump of 2021

[Bored Ape NFTs can now be purchased for just $50,000 each.]

You can also buy my special doodles for $12 million each.

I'm looking for a rendition of the Sistine Chapel with God as Danny Devito and Christopher Lloyd as Adam, like it was in the Taxi days, ideally done in oils. All I've got is a buck, but my social account has followers. If I post it, you'll get exposure. What can you do for me?

NFT's were actually a very clever plot put together by us starving artists to combat the hordes of choosing beggars that infest the internet. We all knew it was a scam, just like limited edition glichee prints, but there hasn't been a time in history when artists made enough money not to have to scam folks to survive, so we figured we were more than justified taking the tech-bros for a ride.

What kind of idiot do you think I am?

I won’t pay a penny more than $10 million.

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i don't think you can sue for buying the losing ticket of crypto gambling

All of this NFT art is so ugly. If it was unique in a visually pleasing way—okay buy it. But to me, all of these images just look basically the same but with a new background or accessory.

Are there any actually good looking NFT series?

Every NFT I've seen looks like dogshit, and crypto enthusiasts get so angry when I point it out.

I have some that I didn't pay for and they also look fkn stoopid. Like the artists are people who just discovered how to use Photoshop last week, but never learned how to draw

NFTs were doomed anyway because AI art can do such a better job than artists and completely flooded the market.

NFTs were doomed because of what they are.

Getty, the giant corporate image copywriting company, is essentially selling images with the same intent that NFTs were created for. The only difference is that once the image is sold on Getty, it's actually sold. Finding another copy of the image is nearly impossible. The image then actually has value and most importantly, sole ownership.

I tried to find a photo I saw in a TV show and found they bought it from Getty. That photo is gone from the internet. Aquiring it would mean contacting the TV studio with the cash ready to buy the rights and use of it. They bought it for maybe $30. Buying it from them would be an astronomical price and would take a lot of work. Buying to resell would be a gamble on the shows long-term popularity.

So instead of buying an image outright, owning it forever, and having all control of it's use, you could buy an NFT that anyone can download, claim you own it yet never be able to access the original file, and you don't have any reasonable right to claim copyright. It's just nonsense pump and dump bullshit.

Would I buy a pet rock? No, but that didn't stop people from buying pet rocks.

I did the nft thing. I'm in the black. I tell people not to get into nfts... And if you do only do it for the art, not to make money. There are plenty of dead or free NFTs out there that cost you nothing.

There are some really cool small projects out there with really interesting art... However, the mainstream only sees these fugly PFPs and all of the genuinely interesting stuff is buried because crypto bros don't pump it.

A project I find interesting is "Loot" - it has its own ecosphere - it's a just a series of inventory lists, but it serves as a background for other projects to build on. It's not that the art is good - it's literally white text on a black background - but the concept is interesting. Banners, Loot Explorers, Abstract loot are 3 projects I can think ff off hand

And before anyone comes in and responds "well I could do that" - yeah you could, but you didn't, so yeah.

NFTs as they were presented are bullshit. I think there are more problems than solutions, however, I have seen some of the coolest digital art in this space.

If you want to chat more about the art side of things, hmu. I'm not interested in talking about eth or bitcoin or cryptocurrency - but I can help you find cool interesting projects that are working to try new things other than dumb looking monkeys.

This reads like a sponsored post

Please do not buy any NFTs. I was providing examples of things I liked. I am fully aware of how gross crypto is. I don't do it anymore - I don't like that I left other people holding the bag and made money.

If I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have done what I did. I bought hype, but I also sold it.

I still thinkbthere is cool art in this space, but I don't think anyone should engage in it beyond free things.

Wish I could feel sorry, but so much of the NFT audience responded with such smugness and superiority to any warning and criticism, that it is hard to summon any other feeling than schadenfreude

Bored Ape, in particular, was tried as an attempt to bring digital art into the fine art market to use as a tax dodge. If this case goes to court I hope it's going to shine a big bright light on the fact that a lot of the fine arts market has been a giant tax dodge scam for decades. 🤞

Not that it's been a secret, but exposure is good.

Yep. People shit on nfts all day long for good reason, but ultimately they're just an extension of the art world in general being a market for scams and dodgy practices.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The Sotheby's auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021.

"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for BAYC NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the lawsuit claimed.

Investors previously sued Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs, four company executives, and various celebrity promoters including Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, Serena Williams, Madonna, Jimmy Fallon, Steph Curry, and Justin Bieber.

The lawsuit said it turned out the auction buyer was now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges.

Ethereum blockchain transaction data shows that after the auction, "Sotheby's transferred the lot of BAYC NFTs to wallet address 0xf8e0C93Fd48B4C34A4194d3AF436b13032E641F3,77 which, upon information and belief, is owned/controlled by FTX," the complaint said.

"While the Executive Defendants made hundreds of millions of dollars, investors were left with NFTs worth a fraction of their artificially inflated value," the original version of the complaint in December said.


I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Some schadenfreude is definitely warranted, but the lawsuit may have merit.

I think that's exactly right. It was a grift, after all.

I just don't understand how anyone could have fallen for it. Let alone people with this kind of money, who have all the information in the world at their fingertips. Is it just about them finding certain techbros charismatic? Ooh, they have money, I'd better give them my money so that I can have money too?

Flabbergasting, the whole lot of it.

Well both crypto enthusiasts and art collectors are very used to the notion that an asset is as valuable as what people are willing to pay for it, regardless of intrinsic value, so I don’t find it too surprising.

Yeah. They really should've bought the lion!

Seriously though. This was so obvious right from the start. I can't believe how gullible and naive people are.

2020's the decade of the .jpg wars. Lmao.

“Do I look like I know what a jay-peg is? I just want a picture of a got dang hot dog!”

i love crypto.. I've always asked what the calculations are searching for from the myriad of cpu & gpu's... and no one has really ever given me a straight answer for why it has value. *edit: to the last guy that tried to sell me a photo of a monkey... thanks for the downvote, yet again

It's the final form of artificial scarcity, scarcity alone without even a thing to be made scarce.