The problems of Bored Ape Yacht Club

Introduction

Many people know that while creating a particular product, creators should work not just on such aspects as distribution, good sales, the attraction of the investor’s attention, and others. The trademark registration and copyright concern must be officially demanded on what the content creator tries to sell.

If conditions are not met, any person will be able to take the product and sell it as his own, while not violating the law. The representatives of the company Yuga Labs who are famous, first of all, for the creation of the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is famous for being bought by various celebrities, have faced this trouble.

It is worth noting that the celebrities who were distributing their influence in this business bought tokens from the BAYC collection, not due to their fanatical attitude to it. According to many experts, they demonstrated their dedication to the development of Web3 technologies and the world of cryptocurrencies in general, and the colossal price of some items allowed them to highlight them as being a part of the world of higher classes.

Yuga Labs is in trouble

Yuga Labs got into a bad situation. One of the cryptography fans decided to make money on NFT tokens in an extremely unusual way. He took the popular collection Bored Ape Yacht Club and sold it as his own. We know very few things about the success or failure of this business, however, we know that Yuga Labs has already sued him to make a statement about their rights and make him remove the collection and pay compensation.

Court documents in the Ryder Ripps case showed that the creators of the legendary collection of NFT tokens did not register the copyright for images from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Due to such interesting details, suing Ryder Ripps became a dubious business that provoked lots of discussions on the internet. Looking ahead, investors who had bought NFT tokens from the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club expressed negative emotions, which harmed market indicators of BAYC.

Returning to the topic with the court, it is worth noting that Ripps, besides violating the copyright, was accused of false advertising and cybersquatting. The last one implies the registration of a domain name that contains a trademark for further resale and receiving a significant profit.

An interesting statement has appeared in the court documents, it states the following:

Copyright registration is not required to own them; required to file a claim for one. The Court should not enter into the question of whether Yuga Labs owns the copyright to the Bored Ape images, because such an opinion would be merely advisory; Yuga Labs has no registered copyright and therefore no imminent threat of legal action for copyright infringement.

Such a statement shocked investors and, as a result, the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club suffered heavy losses. The NFT collection lost 30% of the volume of sales per day.

Who is among the accused ones?

While Yuga Labs was suing Ryder Ripps, the celebrities who were promoting the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club also suffered from the situation. The BAYC investors started to file class action lawsuits against celebrities like Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Madonna, and Steph Curry. The complaint application was filed in the California court and the lawsuit alleged that all of the above-named celebrities violated the laws of the state of California and federal laws by their actions.

The talent manager Guy Osiri has also been accused once again. He was accused many times of responding to the request of Yuga Labs and using the network of his friends, so the celebrities started supporting the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club publicly. According to rumors, he received a reward that was sent through MoonPay, the service he had invested in. Yuga Labs did not make people wait for long for their commentary and started denying these statements. Despite the owners of the hyped collection being at the center of a few lawsuits, Yuga Labs still has time and strength to release new NFT sets, including Sewer Pass, which has been revealed recently.

The creators of the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club decided to sue not only Ryder Ripps who decided to sell their NFT tokens as his own but Ryan Hickman and Thomas Lehman. The lawsuits were filed separately, and they indicated fraudulent ways to force cryptocurrency investors to invest their money in RR/BAYC tokens as a claim. According to them, the case of Ryder Ripps includes not only Ripps himself but Ryan Hickman together with Thomas Lehman. According to them, Hickman played a significant role in selling NFT tokens and became a central part of the efforts made in the distribution of tokens.

What is Bored Ape Yacht Club and how not to lose money on it?

We want to remind those who have forgotten or have not known about the collection Bored Ape Yacht Club what it is. BAYC is a collection that was created by the company Yuga Labs. It became highly popular in 2021 when the world of cryptocurrencies was at its historical peak. Some pieces of the collection were sold for not just dozens of thousands of dollars but even hundreds of thousands. Standalone cases showed that rich collectors were ready to pay more than $1,000,000 of their money just to join the club of “the bored apes”.

The whole culture emerged around this set of NFT tokens. The creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club provided owners with not just an opportunity to have the status of an owner of one of such rare (or not at all) tokens that amount to 10,000 units but to receive access to the closed club, which includes many famous persons. In such a way, people sometimes wanted not to be among the collectors who own “the piece of art” valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, but rather to be in the same group with people who are known all over the world.

However, the main hype around Bored Ape Yacht Club passed in 2021, and 2022 hit not just the cryptocurrency market but the BAYC collection in particular. Frequently, owners of the tokens lost 80%, 90%, and 95%+ of the price of the item they had bought. The most remarkable case was probably the story of Justin Bieber. The last one bought a ticket to the club of the owners of the BAYC NFT tokens, however, his item lost 95% of its value, and the maximum price, for which people were ready to purchase it, amounted to 1/20 of what he had paid in 2021.

What was the reason for such a cheapening? First of all, amid the cryptocurrency winter, Bored Ape Yacht Club could simply lose interest among investors, which impacted prices. Secondly, it is worth remembering that all NFT tokens are evaluated not in dollars but in Ethereum. 2021 was famous for ETH costing $4,000+ at some points but it reached $1,000 in 2022. Respectively, the loss of interest and cheapening of the token, for which NFT items are sold, was a killing combination.

Thus, we can learn one important lesson if we have not done it for some reason. You should buy such NFT tokens in such moments as now and sell them when they are hyping and everyone tries to enter “the elite club”. This applies to the rest of the cryptocurrency world, however, this rule is way more important in the case of the world of non-fungible tokens.