bored ape yacht club 2023

Bored Ape NFT event attendees report ‘severe eye burn’

Yuga labs says it’s currently investigating reports of impeded vision and skin/eye injuries believed to be caused by unprotected exposure to uv lights during apefest 2023..

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

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Several people have reported experiencing eye pain, vision problems, and sunburnt skin on Sunday after attending ApeFest, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection event in Hong Kong that ran from November 3rd-5th.

Some ApeFest attendees posted on X (formerly Twitter) after seeking medical attention , with one person reporting that they had been diagnosed with Photokeratitis — aka, “welder’s eye,” a condition caused by unprotected exposure to ultraviolet radiation — and another saying the issue was a result of UV from the stage lights , leading to speculation that the injuries were caused by improper lighting used at the event .

“I woke up at 04:00 and couldn’t see anymore,” said @CryptoJune777 . “Had so much pain and my whole skin is burned. Needed to go to the hospital.”

Yuga Labs, the blockchain company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, says it’s aware of the situation and taking the reports seriously. “We are actively reaching out and in touch with those affected to better understand the root cause,” said Yuga Labs spokesperson Emily Kitts in a statement to The Verge . “Based on our estimates, the 15 people we’ve been in direct communication with so far represent less than one percent of the approximately 2,250 event attendees and staff at our Saturday night event.”

Similar symptoms, which include sunburn and waking up to severe, burning eye pain, were reported in 2017 by partygoers who attended a Hypebeast event at The Landmark commercial complex also in Hong Kong, with the event’s DJ later discovering lighting used mainly for disinfection purposes had been installed at the venue. The Landmark venue did not feature on the ApeFest event plan, and the two incidents appear unrelated.

Update, November 6th 9.25AM ET: The statement from Yuga Labs has been updated to reflect estimated figures of impacted event attendees.

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Bored ape pictures not turning a profit —

Buyers of bored ape nfts sue after digital apes turn out to be bad investment, lawsuit: sotheby's $24m sale to ftx gave bored ape nfts "an air of legitimacy.".

Jon Brodkin - Aug 17, 2023 6:59 pm UTC

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. A Sotheby's auction duped investors by giving the Bored Ape NFTs "an air of legitimacy... to generate investors' interest and hype around the Bored Ape brand," the class-action lawsuit claims.

The boost to Bored Ape NFT prices provided by the auction "was rooted in deception," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Central District of California. It wasn't revealed at the time of the auction that the buyer was the now-disgraced FTX, the lawsuit said.

"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. Lawsuit plaintiffs say that harmed investors bought the NFTs "with a reasonable expectation of profit from owning them."

Sotheby's sold a lot of 101 Bored Ape NFTs for $24.4 million at its "Ape In!" auction in September 2021, well above the pre-auction estimates of $12 million to $18 million. That's an average price of over $241,000, but Bored Ape NFTs now sell for a floor price of about $50,000 worth of ether cryptocrurrency, according to CoinGecko data accessed today.

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 original class-action was filed in December 2022, and Sotheby's was added as a defendant in an amended complaint submitted on August 4.

Yuga describes its collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs as "unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain" that double as a "Yacht Club membership card." The website has some "members-only" areas. "When you buy a Bored Ape, you're not simply buying an avatar or a provably rare piece of art," the NFT collection's website says. "You are gaining membership access to a club whose benefits and offerings will increase over time. Your Bored Ape can serve as your digital identity, and open digital doors for you."

Lawsuit: Yuga “colluded” with Sotheby’s

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.

The lawsuit alleges that Yuga Labs and Sotheby's violated the California Unfair Competition Law, the California Corporate Securities Law, the US Securities Exchange Act, and the California Corporations Code. The plaintiffs also claim that Sotheby's Metaverse, an NFT trading platform opened after the auction, "operated (or attempted to operate) as an unregistered broker of securities."

"FTX has several deep ties to Yuga such that it would be mutually beneficial for both Yuga and FTX (as well as Sotheby's) if the BAYC NFT collection were to rise in price and trading volume activity. Upon information and belief, given the extensive financial interests shared by Yuga, Sotheby's and FTX, each knew that FTX was the real buyer of the lot of BAYC NFTs at the Sotheby's auction at the time that Sotheby's representatives were publicly representing that a 'traditional' buyer had made the purchase," the lawsuit said. FTX is not named as a defendant.

Ape prices soared, then plummeted

After the auction, the price of Bored Ape digital assets hit a new high and kept rising for months. It peaked at over $420,000 in April 2022 but plummeted to about $90,000 six weeks later, according to CoinGecko .

The class action lawsuit's named plaintiffs are Johnny Johnson, Ezra Boekweg, Mario Palombini, and Adam Titcher. They are trying to get certification of a class consisting of "all investors who purchased Yuga's non-fungible tokens ('NFTs') or ApeCoin tokens ('ApeCoin') between April 23, 2021 and the present." There were over 103,000 account holders of Yuga securities as of December 1, 2022, the lawsuit 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.

Yuga and other defendants have a September 12 deadline to file motions to dismiss the complaint. Sotheby's told CNN this week that the "allegations in this suit are baseless, and Sotheby's is prepared to vigorously defend itself." Yuga Labs similarly called the allegations "completely without merit or factual basis."

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SBF, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the Spectacular Hangover After the Art World’s NFT Gold Rush

In September 2021, Sotheby’s offered up for auction a cache of 101 Bored Ape NFTs as a lot in a special sale called Ape In! The digital art revolution had seemingly remade the art market in the months prior, and this was the finest collection of non-fungible tokens ever assembled by one of the world’s oldest auction houses, founded in 1744. Scrolling through the catalog of cartoon monkeys in funny hats and jackets, one could see one rare Bored Ape with solid gold fur and holographic eyes, but also rarer yet, the Ape with an unshaven face eating a piece of pizza. For digital-art enthusiasts who aspired to membership in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, this was a huge deal. 

The house was confident that Ape In! could ride the NFT momentum that had been building since the prior spring—one that began when  Everydays, a work by the digital artist  Beeple ,  sold at Christie’s for $69 million—and move these online pictures of weird primates to the tune of millions.  A promotional video showed the cartoon monkeys in DJ booths spinning EDM at a party in what appeared to be Sotheby’s global headquarters on York Avenue in Manhattan. Young and ambitious specialists in the house’s digital-art department, a brand-new endeavor, bullishly offered the lot at an estimate of somewhere between $12 million and $18 million.

Instead, the lot of 107 NFTs sold for $24.4 million, smashing records for Bored Apes. What newly minted patron of the digital arts snagged this for eight figures? Sotheby’s wouldn’t comment on the buyer apart from saying that among those heavily involved in the bidding were legacy art collectors. 

“We’re seeing a growing number of traditional art buyers getting interested in NFTs,”  Michael Bouhanna,  cohead of digital art sales at the house, told ARTnews at the time. And why not? Some thought these monkeys with headgear and lasers for eyeballs could be worth billions in our not-so-distant virtual lives. Bored Ape Yacht Club, the moniker given to the 10,000 unique iterations of the NFT created by Yuga Labs in April 2021 and initially sold for about $190 a pop, tweeted out, “To the buyer, I think we speak for everybody when we say:  WELCOME TO THE CLUB .” It punctuated the message with a skull-and-crossbones emoji, a monkey emoji, and a boat emoji—to signify a yacht. 

Increasingly, it looks as though the buyer was not a traditional art collector or even a human person that other Ape owners could welcome to a club. The blockchain is an opaque-at-best space, but in the months following the purchase,  some close observers have settled on the idea that the buyer of the Apes at Sotheby’s was FTX, the crypto exchange that recently crashed and burned, resulting in  an inquiry  into the possible market machinations of its founder,  Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently charged with crimes related to the overnight disappearance of billions of his investors’ funds in the fall. (Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty and, in a statement , said he “did not steal funds.”) 

The evidence, per Blockchain Twitter, boils down to this: A few months after the Sotheby’s sale, FTX had listed the 101 Apes on a page detailing its NFT holdings. When FTX launched its NFT sales platform in December 2021,  some of the Apes  FTX had available to sell were clearly identifiable from the Sotheby’s sale three months earlier—one Twitter watcher posted a  screenshot of the platform that shows eight of the Sotheby’s-sold Apes. That December 1, FTX announced the marketplace with a  video where the Apes from the Sotheby’s sale were front and center, to which two-time NBA MVP  Stephen Curry, who had been recently named FTX’s “global ambassador,” responded, “Cool announcement video, but my editing skills are missed,” adding a crying-laughing emoji. (The blockchain, it maybe goes without saying, gets pretty internecine pretty quickly, but  Conor Grogan, a director at rival crypto exchange Coinbase, did his best to dig through the extremely Web3-style paper trail. You can read his whole thread  here .) 

When a new crypto denomination, ApeCoin, debuted in March 2022, $8 million worth of the stuff was transferred from  the digital wallet that made the purchase at Sotheby’s back to Alameda Research. Alameda is the sister firm of FTX where, complaints allege, Bankman-Fried could park his missing billions. (More fun with org charts: Yuga Labs has been clear that it is not the entity that launched ApeCoin. That would be something called ApeCoin DAO. It just so happens,  as The Verge reported in March, that ApeCoin DAO gave a good chunk of the early windfall of the coin’s launch to “Yuga Labs, Yuga Labs’ founders, and the VCs who backed the project.”)

And what firm was a prominent part of Yuga Labs’ $450 million fundraising round in 2022? That would be, you guessed it, FTX.

If Blockchain Twitter’s sleuthing bears out—and they really do seem to have the receipts—what we’d have is a major Yuga Labs investor inflating the value of Yuga Labs’ most valuable asset by bidding it up at auction. With Bankman-Fried now facing charges of fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations, his company’s trove of Bored Apes remains in the FTX wallet. The old link to the NFT collection now goes to  a claims agency . 

SBF and the Mystery of the 101 Apes  (working title) is emblematic of the art world’s deal-with-the-devil approach to the NFT market, a golden goose cut open and killed by those seeking the source of the bullion. During the bull years—well, months, really—of the phenomenon, auction houses built up their digital art departments (Sotheby’s Metaverse, Christie’s 3.0, etc.) and even the galleries established separate wings to pump out NFT sales, most notably Pace Verso. Hollywood talent agencies hired Silicon Valley–adjacent fixers to score content deals to make movie franchises from NFT IP. In 2021,  an estimated $2.6 billion  in art NFTs were sold, and anyone in the art market that hopped on that gravy train seemed to be getting a cut. 

And then in mid-2022 the bottom fell out. In late June, crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital went belly up, leaving investors both big and small holding the bag. Genesis Capital had put billions into 3AC— all gone . Terra, a $60 billion Singapore-based crypto exchange, imploded spectacularly, after its stablecoin, UST, collapsed and its token, Luna, fell from a price of $80 to pennies. And then the FTX zeppelin fire brought the crypto crisis to the front pages, causing a global sell-off of risky assets. The cheapest available Bored Ape in April 2022 was about $429,000, and earlier that year  Justin Bieber   reportedly had to pay $1.29 million to get his. In the days after FTX imploded, Apes were available for as little as $76,400. 

“Oh, the bubble burst,”  Kimberly Grauer, the head of research at crypto data firm Chainalysis, and an expert on trends in cryptocurrency economics and crime, recently told True Colors. “People stopped viewing it as a way to make money via speculation. It dried up, it cooled down. People were less eager to put their money in NFTs than they were before.”

The crisis has forced economists, cultural prognosticators, art world rubberneckers, and tech world cheerleaders to collectively grapple with the phenomenon that we witnessed. Was it a legitimate burst of enthusiasm for a revolutionary way to create and sell a new kind of art? Or a tulipomania speculation bonanza that was driven purely by greed and hype? Here’s another way of framing the question: The art world figures who presumably know better—were they selling snake oil to marks? Or did they really believe in the value of these digital-token things?

We got on the horn with Benedict Evans , a tech thinker who is a partner at Mosaic Ventures and had a stint at Andreessen Horowitz—though he had left a16z before it led the $450 million fundraising round for Yuga Labs, just before the crypto winter.

“Does a real estate broker feel any obligation to tell you that you’re in a real estate bubble, and you shouldn’t buy this?” Evans said. “No. That’s not their job. Their obligation is still to the seller.”

For more insight into how the sky-high prices of certain NFTs got built up, there’s an explosive lawsuit making its way through the US District Court in the Western Division of the Central District of California that takes aim at the founders of Bored Ape and their most famous fans. The 94-page complaint reads like an episode of  Entourage set in the midst of the crypto-crazed early ’20s, starring a Mad Libs grab bag of rappers, zeitgeist hitters, and A-listers:  Diplo, The Weeknd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg, Post Malone, Future, Kevin Hart,  and—last but not least— The Chainsmokers . The suit, which is seeking class-action status for buyers of Yuga NFTs or ApeCoin, weaves a narrative of alleged crypto fraud, Hollywood machismo, social media spamming, celebrity worship, and a little bit of Bono (who is, it should be noted, very much not a defendant; U2 catches a drive-by mention via their former longtime manager). Ultimately, it alleges that the rise of the planet of the Bored Apes was nothing more than a scheme to make the monkeys look like assets that celebrities and art dealers were spending millions to obtain. Those transactions were staged, the suit claims: The famous and influential were getting their Apes gratis and were being paid to promote the stuff, a fact they failed to disclose.

“These famous celebrities, they’re getting in, and they’re going to cause a spike in the price as they continue to interact in the ecosystem. They’re part of the club, and more people are going to want to have these to be a part of the club with the celebrities,” said attorney  John Jasnoch,  a partner at the San Diego firm Scott+Scott, which filed the case on behalf of a pair of aggrieved NFT and ApeCoin owners named  Adonis Real and  Adam Titcher, as well as other plaintiffs yet to be named. “And so, ‘Oh, they’re unique and they’re scarce’—it drives that thought that it’ll be a successful investment for you.”

Perhaps you noticed in early 2022 that nearly every celeb was on a crypto company payroll—Stephen Curry was making bank as the spokesperson for FTX and various celebrities were putting up Instagram Stories about their pricey NFTs. And there was that  Larry David  Super Bowl ad . According to the suit, the alleged scheme began when Yuga Labs partnered with music industry veteran  Guy Oseary,  who manages  Madonna and U2. Oseary, who’s named as a defendant in the suit, allegedly brought in high-profile friends and clients to buy and promote their NFTs. 

But what the lawsuit alleges is that Oseary and company used a consumer-crypto app called MoonPay—think Venmo or PayPal but for crypto—to allow the “transactions” to occur without having to disclose them to investors, so that the bold-faced names never had to actually spend money on the NFTs they said they were buying. In addition, the suit alleges that Oseary’s venture capital firm Sound Ventures (of which  Ashton Kutcher, who is not named as a defendant in the suit, is a partner), along with several of the other celeb Ape endorsers named elsewhere in the lawsuit, were early investors in MoonPay, allowing them to “financially benefit from the cross-pollination and promotional efforts for the Yuga Financial Products.”

“Together, Oseary, the MoonPay Defendants, and the Promoter Defendants each shared the strong motive to use their influence to artificially create demand for the Yuga securities, which in turn would increase use of MoonPay’s crypto payment service to handle this new demand,” the suit reads. “At the same time, Oseary could also use MoonPay to obscure how he paid off his celebrity cohorts for their direct or off-label promotions of the Yuga Financial Products.” 

Asked for comment, a Yuga Labs spokesperson said, “In our view, these claims are opportunistic and parasitic. We strongly believe that they are without merit, and look forward to proving as much.” Oseary did not respond to requests for comment last week, and the court docket shows that he was granted an extension to respond to the suit. 

A MoonPay spokesperson said, “MoonPay says all celebrity clients were charged in full for the price of the NFTs and a service fee.”

While the lawsuit is in its earliest stages, it may have already provided some much-needed context to one of the more baffling exchanges of our entire pandemic-era screen consumption: the “I bought an Ape” back-and-forth between  Jimmy Fallon and  Paris Hilton on  The Tonight Show in January 2022, in which the pair, Ape owners each, discussed the finer parts of NFT shopping. Fallon, with the somber tone of a man who has come to terms with the state of his soul, says he picked his Breton-striped Ape because he, too, wears striped shirts. Hilton, as if she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was saying, offered, “I saw you on the show with Beeple and you said you got it on MoonPay.” As the suit alleges, for all its unintended comedic gold, the exchange was helping to build up the idea of Bored Apes as investment pieces worth millions— a sort of Tinker Bell play —and attract more buyers. As the plaintiffs and their lawyers tell it, celebrities talking about their Apes on social media, or late-night TV, became the public-facing part of a plan in which their hundreds of thousands of dollars of NFTs translated to the popularity of ApeCoin. Which translated to a $450 million seed fundraise, and a $4 billion valuation.

Neither Fallon nor Hilton responded to requests for comment last week. 

“Did you watch the  DJ Khaled  one?” Jasnoch, the lawyer, asked me.

He was referring to  footage of DJ Khaled , aughts-era hip-hop’s walking exclamation point, standing on a yacht looking at multiple phone screens, various people telling him, “You bought an Ape! You bought an Ape!” as Khaled wobbles around confused.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Jasnoch said. “He’s just like, ‘I don’t know what this is.’”

In the auction world, the sale of the digital future was a relatively subtle proposition: The houses needed to incept the cultural cognoscenti and implant the idea that NFTs are art. Was Beeple’s  Everydays —a series of thousands of images and illustrations,  some of which are sexist or downright puerile —actual fine art worthy of a downtown gallery opening and a celebratory private dinner at Frenchette, which Beeple really had thrown for him last March? In retrospect, is it a bit crazy to  say things such as “I look at life as pre-Beeple and post-Beeple—like the world thinks about before Jesus Christ and after,” as  Noah Davis, who  arranged the $69 million Beeple sale at Christie’s as the house’s head of digital sales,  really did once say . (Davis has since left Christie’s and now works, as it happens, as a brand lead at Yuga Labs for CryptoPunks, another of its NFT offerings. They look kinda like the Apes, if they were punky-looking cartoon guys.)

But it doesn’t quite matter if it’s art—auction houses sell wine and constitutions and sneakers and watches and first editions. If it’s selling, you sell it.  

“It’s like Hollywood making movies about how Hollywood sucks. You actually embrace it,” Evans, our crypto sherpa, said. “Like, yeah, I’ll take that money.”

The auction houses have their boilerplate explanations of why a certain NFT should be contextualized as art, making sure that they remain as devoted as ever to the seller, not the buyer. Did Beeple really “achieve something historic” when Christie’s slotted his NFT-cum-walking-man-sculpture,  Human One, into its evening sale between paintings by  Issy Wood  and  Stanley Whitney ? 

Jasnoch, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the Yuga suit, attempted to thread this needle by comparing the Bored Ape NFTs and their crypto complement, ApeCoin. The former can, in the broadest sense, be argued to be an artwork. The latter is purely a unit of currency with no artistic value whatsoever—making it, in his estimation, a viable thing to be regulated. The linking of the two entities so closely is where things get tricky—and the lawyers get involved.

“I think the concept of an NFT can have intrinsic value, and that a token can represent value in some fashion, and I think there’s value in people liking the look of the artwork,” he said. “But in terms of it being a financial product and how they were marketed and how they were sold, it really is an unregistered security and it needs to be subject to proper disclosure. And once you get into generating all that hype around the Bored Ape itself, they release the ApeCoin token, which doesn’t even have the pretense of a piece of art or anything. And that’s just a straight-up unregistered security that is used for speculation and for trading.”

Evans offered another conundrum. When a market offers something for sale at a large sum, there is, at a base level, an understanding among the public that it has some legitimate importance. Perhaps the artwork is not to one’s liking, but it has a provenance and the artist is in museum collections—or there’s historic relevance to something that makes it at the very least a curio.

“When you are buying vintage vinyl, or rare sneakers, or Marilyn Monroe’s shoes, or a Salvador Dalí print, or whatever it is, you’re getting something that has no tangible physical value, but you’re also getting it in the belief that other people attribute value to that too,” Evans said. “There’s like a deep cultural base that thinks Jordan sneakers are worth something, early Sex Pistols vinyl is worth something. And the challenge with all of these NFTs was you didn’t really know that there was that broad, deep cultural base. It was just: ‘Oh, my gosh, somebody just bought one for 200 grand.’”

For the time being, some in the art world are still acting as though the devotion to NFTs could result in some kind of windfall. Sotheby’s Metaverse has a sale up right now. It’s offering the first NFTs by the artist  Sebastião Salgado, but they aren’t exactly lighting the place on fire. They cost $250 each. Back in 2021, the Natively Digital sale netted Sotheby’s $17.1 million, with $11.75 million paid for a single NFT from the series of CryptoPunks. 

But in February 2022, Sotheby’s set up a special sale where it expected a set of 104 CryptoPunks to go for as much as $30 million, only to see the thing collapse minutes after the scheduled gavel-in when the consignor backed out,  reportedly due to a lack of interest from bidders. The house didn’t explain at the time and the seller crowed online that it had all been an elaborate gaming of the system—though just how anyone got played remains unclear. By last December, the Natively Digital sale seemed to have lost its luster entirely. Sotheby’s offered the first-ever Keith Haring NFT as the star lot of the sale, but it sold for $25,000, well below the $80,000 high estimate. 

Things aren’t much better at Christie’s, where the NFT platform Christie’s 3.0 has a smattering of work for sale, mostly in the low four figures. Despite the fact that the auction house launched an on-chain marketplace in the Web3 space in 2022, sales of the stuff were way, way down year to year. In 2021, the house  sold $150 million in NFTs.  In 2022, sales were just $5.9 million , a 96% downturn. And it’s not like Christie’s had a bad year that dragged down the digital sector: The house saw a record $8.4 billion in top-line sales, and NFTs were just about 0.07% of the total.

When asked for comment on whether they plan to continue with their NFT platforms, Sotheby’s declined. Christie’s did not respond to a request for comment. 

There’s no definitive way to say whether the NFT market will ever come back. When asked what the data says, Grauer, the crypto expert, said it’s certainly a bear market at the moment, but things could hypothetically recover. 

“A lot of people are very eager, and say that we are in the heads-down-and-build phase and are looking for the right projects to invest in when liquidity opens up in the next year or so,” she said. “Other people have said the bubble’s burst, and I certainly don’t have a strong idea of which one’s correct.”

One tech entrepreneur seems to have found a solution. In 2022,  Skyler Hallgren, David Sawyer,  and Zach Miller launched Unsellable, a start-up that purchases worthless NFTs for a penny as a way to provide a tax write-off. It’s proven quite popular with collectors looking to exit the space as quickly as possible, those who have accepted the fact that these once-promising investments are, in fact, devoid of value. The Unsellable Collection, the start-up’s vast haul of worthless digital detritus, is currently home to over 16,000 objects.  

And that’s a wrap on this week’s True Colors ! Like what you’re seeing? Hate what you’re reading? Have a tip? Drop me a line at [email protected]. This article has been updated.

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More Than 20 Report Burning Eyes After NFT Festival in Hong Kong

Bored Ape Yacht Club, the collective that hosted the three-day event, said it was investigating possible causes, including UV lights used at a party on Saturday night.

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By Callie Holtermann

More than 20 people have reported burning eye pain and vision problems after attending a party for NFT owners in Hong Kong last weekend, the organizers said on Tuesday.

The gathering was part of ApeFest, a three-day event hosted by Bored Ape Yacht Club , a group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts who own unique digital images of primates that cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece.

Yuga Labs, the parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club, is in contact with 22 people who had eye problems after the event, said Louise Conroy, a spokeswoman for the company.

“We are very distressed by these reports,” Ms. Conroy said in an interview, adding that Yuga Labs was working with an independent firm to investigate the claims. “Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, we intend to do the right thing by our community members.”

Although the exact cause of the symptoms had not yet been determined, she said, there were some potential culprits: “At this point, we’re looking into fluorescent paint in one of our setup areas, and most definitely looking at UV light.”

An estimated 2,500 crypto enthusiasts gathered at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal on Saturday night for a night of drinks, music and mingling that ended just after 11 p.m.

Adrian Zdunczyk, 30, a cryptocurrency trader who lives in Portugal, said that a sharp, fiery sensation in his eyes awoke him around 4:30 the next morning and that the feeling would not go away no matter how many times he rinsed his eyes with water. “It felt like microwaving your eyes,” he said on Tuesday.

Over the weekend, he saw social media posts from others reporting nearly identical symptoms: intense eye pain , vision problems and irritated skin similar to sunburn. Chloe Ge, another attendee, told The Financial Times that at 3 a.m. on Sunday she felt like her eyes were “ being burnt with spicy chili .”

Dr. Will Flanary, an ophthalmologist in Portland, Ore., said that the symptoms being described on social media pointed to “a classic case” of photokeratitis, or damage to the cornea caused by ultraviolet light.

The condition is similar to “snow blindness,” the eye damage experienced by skiers exposed to UV light reflected off snow, he said. The condition is serious, but usually heals within 24 to 72 hours.

“It’s excruciating pain,” he said. “It’s 10-out-of-10 pain. But no, they won’t go blind from this.”

It is not clear where attendees may have been exposed to ultraviolet light. Images and videos from the event show a stage with a D.J. booth where neon purple lights were directed at the crowd. In another room, tubular lights mounted on the ceiling shone onto several decorative toilets where attendees paused to take photos.

Mr. Zdunczyk was told that he had photokeratitis at an eye clinic in Hong Kong on Monday. He was given lubricating eye drops and his symptoms have vastly improved, he said.

Still, he feels frustrated by the experience. He said he had paid the cryptocurrency equivalent of around $100,000 for a Bored Ape NFT and, with it, membership in a prominent community of crypto enthusiasts. Although he has exchanged emails with Yuga Labs representatives about his ordeal, he feels that the company has not taken the situation seriously enough. “It would have been better if it didn’t happen,” he said.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the best-known collections of NFTs, or nonfungible tokens . Each member used cryptocurrency to purchase one of 10,000 distinct digital assets , which in this case are cartoon images of apes with accessories like cigars.

Bored Ape Yacht Club became broadly known amid a craze for digital artwork that gained steam in 2021 , thanks in part to celebrity endorsements. In January 2022, Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton showed off their Bored Ape NFTs on “The Tonight Show.” “We’re both apes,” Mr. Fallon said, holding up a cartoon monkey wearing heart-shaped sunglasses. “I love it.”

The market for cryptocurrency and NFTs has cooled significantly since. The price of the least expensive Bored Apes had fallen to just over $50,000 in July, according to CoinDesk , an online publication that focuses on digital currencies. Just last year, the cheapest Bored Apes were selling for more than $400,000. Both Mr. Fallon and Ms. Hilton were later named in a class-action lawsuit alleging that Yuga Labs conspired with celebrities to defraud investors.

But Bored Ape Yacht Club has still sought to drum up enthusiasm among its members through ApeFest, its annual meet-up. The first ApeFest was held in 2021 in New York; the second, also in New York, featured a performance from Lil Wayne.

ApeFest this year was held in Hong Kong, which is vying for the attention of the international crypto community. Attendance was free for owners of Bored Ape NFTs, and $269 for plus-ones.

A website for the event promised “Three days of meet-ups and mayhem,” followed by “one big night full of surprises.”

Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times. More about Callie Holtermann

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Pushed by a nonprofit with ties to the Trump administration, Arkansas became the first state to shield noisy cryptocurrency operators from unhappy neighbors. A furious backlash has some lawmakers considering a statewide ban .

Attendees at Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Event Report ‘Severe Eye Burn,’ Skin Irritation

By Todd Spangler

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor

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People who showed up to Yuga Labs ‘ recent three-day event celebrating a collection of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have reported eye and skin irritation, potentially from UV light used at the event.

Yuga Labs’ ApeFest, held Nov. 3-5 in Hong Kong, included a brightly lit party held on Saturday. Several of those who attended wrote on social media that they experienced “eye burn” and other symptoms after the event.

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Yuga Labs told The Verge that it estimated that the “15 people we’ve been in direct communication with so far represent less than 1% of the approximately 2,250 event attendees and staff at our Saturday night event.”

One of the ApeFest attendees, Adrian Zduńczyk, founder and CEO of the blockchain consulting company Birb Nest, posted on X Sunday that he “woke up with severe eye burn” and said he was diagnosed with photokeratitis after visiting a local hospital and eye clinic. Photokeratitis “is like having a sunburned eye,” according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “Photokeratitis is caused by damage to the eye from ultraviolet (UV) rays.”

Another person who said they attended ApeFest, posting on X under the handle “Crypto June,” wrote , “I woke up at 04:00 and couldn’t see anymore. Had so much pain and my whole skin is burned. Needed to go to the hospital. The doctor told me the uv of the lightning of the stage did it. It has the same effect as sunlight.”

Yuga Labs describes itself as “a web3 company shaping the future through storytelling, experiences and community.” The mania for NFTs, which use blockchain technology to verify ownership of digital content, kicked off in earnest in early 2021 — and the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were among the first to catch fire.

In March 2022, Yuga Labs raised a $450 million seed round at a $4 billion valuation . Last month, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre announced an unspecified number of layoffs at the company. The restructuring “will help us better serve our communities and execute on our vision for the company,” he wrote. “These decisions are not taken lightly as they impact people and roles within the company.”

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Bored Ape Yacht Club and BAPE To Collaborate on Limited Edition Collection

With early teasers indicating a remix of the classic ape head logo tee and camo motif..

Yuga Labs , the Web3 company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club ( BAYC ) NFT collection has announced a collaboration with iconic Japan-based streetwear brand, A BATHING APE, better known as BAPE .

While little information has been shared as to what type of items the collaborative capsule will include, BAYC did share that fans of both brands can expect to see designs that reflect “lazy opulence and irreverence.” Based on the teaser image that was shared, it appears there will be at the very least one Ape Head logo tee, with various BAYC elements and inspirations integrated into it.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by A BATHING APE® OFFICIAL (@bape_japan)

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THE BORED APE GAZETTE

#1 name in bored ape news .

• Nov 9, 2023

YEAR IN REVIEW: The Bored Ape Yacht Club Released Its 2023 Sizzle Reel!

While the mainstream media and normies are convinced that the nft market is dead, the bored ape yacht club posted its year-in-review video that showcased some of the biggest and boredest stories from around the swamp, while the nft market, crypto, and the broader economy have had a bearish 2023, things have been anything but boring across the yugaverse and reports of the bayc’s death are greatly exaggerated..

“Them: NFTs are dead. Us:,” the BAYC tweeted this evening along with a nearly four minute long video highlighting some of the boredest moments from the swamp.

From dookey dash and gordon goner stepping down due to his health to the hv-mtls, 2nd trip, made by apes and fuck it saturday the bear market of 2023 has been anything but boring.

As the Bored Ape Gazette previously reported, the BAYC first aired this sizzle reel at ApeFest 2023 in Hong Kong.

The bored ape gazette will continue to follow the bayc and the broader yugaverse. stay tuned for updates.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Review | 2023 Guide

It’s not every day that an NFT gets sold for 90 ETH , however, when it’s a Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT, this news is expected. With celebrities joining the ever-growing BAYC club, including Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone, Von Miller, and many others, 2021 has skyrocketed the popularity of BAYC to a whole new level.

Just in case you didn’t know what an NFT is:

Non-fungible tokens or NFT’s are tokens that are based on the blockchain network. Ownership of these tokens represents the digital ownership of a virtual or a physical asset that has inherent value in the world. The concept of NFTs isn’t too new, however, their origin and popularity will always be linked to 2021, as this is the year where the industry of NFTs went mainstream and transformed into a billion-dollar venture.

This article will dive into the cool world of Bored Ape Yacht Club Collection (BAYC) and why they are one of the most popular NFTs out there.

What Is BAYC?

Put simply, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection of 10,000 NFTs that live on the Ethereum blockchain. Ownership of a singular NFT grants exclusive access to certain perks and benefits, including access to the online community of BAYC NFT owners.

The apes NFTs are kept on the Ethereum blockchain as ERC-721 tokens and hosted on IPFS. With over 170 different qualities to choose from , featuring expression, hat, etc., each bored Ape is one-of-a-kind, although some are rarer than others.

Wıth 5.9k owners , the floor price of BAYC NFTs stands at a whopping 51.25 Ethereum with 250.8k volume of ethereum traded so far. 

Who Created BAYC?

BAYC is the creation of four friends who were committed to creating something ‘dope’. The ‘pseudo’ names mentioned on the website are as follows:

• Gordon Goner
• Emperor Tomato Ketchup

How To Buy A BAYC NFT?

• To buy a BAYC NFT, you need to visit NFT marketplaces such as Rarible, or OpenSea. Find the listing of BAYC, here is a link to BAYC’s OpenSea listing.
• Next, you need to select your favorite ape and place your bid on it.
• To place a bid you need to connect your wallet, e.g. Metamask, and make sure you have enough funds (ETH) in it.
• Once you’ve placed your bid, the bid for the ape NFT will be updated. The main bid will only be changed if you out-bid the current one.
• Once the timeframe of the ‘Sale’ ends, the NFT will be sent to the highest bidder’s wallet.

What Happens When You Buy A BAYC NFT?

Becoming a member of Bored Ape Yacht Club brings exclusive benefits including meetups, yacth parties, concerts, and a chance to meet celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Chris Rock, and many others. Due to this reason alone, the price of BAYC NFTs is kinda sky high and not affordable for every ‘average’ NFT lover out there.

Holders of BAYC NFT get the complete ownership and commercial usage of their NFT. They receive a member’s-only graffiti board, known as THE BATHROOM , which has a canvas on which users can put their NFT, draw, write , and present their art to other NFT holders.

BAYC Roadmap

With such huge popularity, the BAYC NFTs have completed 100% of their roadmap which includes releasing the ‘Caged Apes’ to random Apeholders, starting a YouTube channel, introducing a liquidity pool, and so on.

With the continuous evolution of the NFT world, this roadmap is definitely going to be updated by the BAYC team in the near future.

Are BAYC NFTs Worth Buying? 

After CryptoPunks, BAYC is the second-largest NFT project of its sort. CryptoPunks is a 2017 compilation of 10,000 8-bit avatars that derives much of its worth from the fact that it is the first NFT collection. The common ones go for roughly 100 ether, or $500,000.

There are 10,000 apes in BAYC, each with unique “properties” like fur types, facial gestures, apparel, accessories , and much more. The characteristics of each NFT will be published on its page, along with the percentage of NFTs in the collection who share that property. Anything less than 1% is generally considered extraordinary.

So yeah, if you can afford it, BAYC is an investment you can make after consulting your crypto experts. 😉

But, I Cannot Afford A BAYC NFT? 🙁

Well, it is totally understandable if you cannot buy a BAYC NFT right now as the lowest price of a BAYC NFT on OpenSea is a whopping 45 ether, which is close to about $180,000. However, if you had bought the ape NFTs back in April when they launched, you would’ve got one for 0.08 ether, which was only $190 at the time .

The good news for you is that even though the price of BAYC NFT might be out of reach for many NFT lovers, there are other valuable NFTs that have launched or are about to launch. You can easily know which ones are valuable. 

But how? 

It’s simple. All you have to do is subscribe to the NFTlately.com NFT newsletter which sends out the latest news, NFT drops, releases, and many more awesome deals about NFTs. Sign up now and don’t miss another great project like BAYC!

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• Market cap of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worldwide 2022-2024

As of July 12, 2024, the market cap of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT projects available on the Ethereum blockchain and listed on OpenSea was worth roughly 304 million U.S. dollars. As of July 2024, Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens reported one of the highest market caps of profile picture (PFP) NFT collections worldwide . PFP NFTs refer to non-fungible tokens commonly used as profile pictures on social media accounts.

Market capitalization of Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token (NFT) projects worldwide from December 2022 to July 2024 (in million U.S. dollars)

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December 13, 2022 to July 12, 2024

figures only include the Ethereum blockchain and projects listed on OpenSea

Data refer to the sum of each NFT valued at the highest of its most recent traded price and the collection's floor price. Please find here more information on the market cap methodology and here more details about the listing criteria. Figures have been rounded.

Other statistics on the topic Crypto art

• NFT sales value in the art segment worldwide in the last 30 days June 2024

Financial Instruments & Investments

• Daily sales volume of NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club to May 27, 2024
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• Biggest NFT marketplaces on May 29, 2024, based on 30d sales volume

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Statistics on " NFT art market "

• Sales value of art and collectibles NFTs worldwide 2019-2023
• Market cap of leading NFT collections in the art segment worldwide 2024
• Market cap of Art Blocks NFT projects worldwide 2022-2024
• Key information on the NFT trading activity of Art Blocks worldwide 2024
• Market cap of leading PFP NFT collections worldwide 2024
• Daily sales and price of NFT collection CryptoPunks to January 10, 2022
• Daily sales of NFT collection CryptoKitties to November 29, 2022
• Key information on public auctions of art-related NFTs worldwide 2021-2023
• Contemporary art sales above one million U.S. dollars worldwide 2018-2022, by medium
• Leading NFT artists worldwide 2023, by auction revenue
• Total sales of selected leading auction houses worldwide 2022-2023, by category
• Sales of NFTs on Christie's 3.0 worldwide 2023, by auction
• Most expensive NFTs sold on Christie's 3.0 worldwide 2023, by price realized
• Total visits to digital art market website superrare.com worldwide 2021-2024
• Share of visits to digital art market superrare.com worldwide 2024, by country
• Share of works held in HNW art collections globally H1 2022, by medium and generation
• Leading channels used by HNW art collectors to purchase art worldwide H1 2023
• HNW art collectors planning to buy paintings vs. NFTs worldwide H1 2022, by market
• Median spending of HNW collectors on digital art H1 2023, by generation
• Main factors that would motivate art buyers to buy NFTs worldwide April 2023

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NFT art market overview

• Premium Statistic Sales value of art and collectibles NFTs worldwide 2019-2023
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• Premium Statistic Market cap of Art Blocks NFT projects worldwide 2022-2024
• Premium Statistic Key information on the NFT trading activity of Art Blocks worldwide 2024

Collectibles

• Premium Statistic Market cap of leading PFP NFT collections worldwide 2024
• Premium Statistic Daily sales and price of NFT collection CryptoPunks to January 10, 2022
• Premium Statistic Market cap of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worldwide 2022-2024
• Premium Statistic Daily sales volume of NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club to May 27, 2024
• Premium Statistic Daily sales of NFT collection CryptoKitties to November 29, 2022
• Premium Statistic Key information on public auctions of art-related NFTs worldwide 2021-2023
• Premium Statistic Contemporary art sales above one million U.S. dollars worldwide 2018-2022, by medium
• Premium Statistic Leading NFT artists worldwide 2023, by auction revenue
• Premium Statistic Total sales of selected leading auction houses worldwide 2022-2023, by category
• Premium Statistic Sales of NFTs on Christie's 3.0 worldwide 2023, by auction
• Premium Statistic Most expensive NFTs sold on Christie's 3.0 worldwide 2023, by price realized

Online art platforms and marketplaces

• Premium Statistic Biggest NFT marketplaces on May 29, 2024, based on 30d sales volume
• Premium Statistic Total visits to digital art market website superrare.com worldwide 2021-2024
• Premium Statistic Share of visits to digital art market superrare.com worldwide 2024, by country

NFT collectors

• Premium Statistic Share of works held in HNW art collections globally H1 2022, by medium and generation
• Premium Statistic Leading channels used by HNW art collectors to purchase art worldwide H1 2023
• Premium Statistic HNW art collectors planning to buy paintings vs. NFTs worldwide H1 2022, by market
• Premium Statistic Median spending of HNW collectors on digital art H1 2023, by generation
• Premium Statistic Main factors that would motivate art buyers to buy NFTs worldwide April 2023

Further Content: You might find this interesting as well

*A BATHING APE

MR. BATHING APE

BABY MILO STORE

BAPE PIRATE

A BATHING APE®（以下、BAPE®）は、NFT制作スタジオのYuga Labsと手を組み、Bored Ape Yacht Club（以下、BAYC）とのコラボレーションをリリースします。 このコレクションは、ストリートブランドが新たなトレンドとなった2000年代初頭のリラックスした雰囲気を反映し、両ブランドが体現する華やかで大胆なデザインのアパレルやフットウェアをラインアップしています。

APE HEADデザインは、お互いのロゴとブランド名を融合させ、”BORED APE”として再構築。TEEとコーチジャケットがラインアップします。

ブランドのシグネチャーであるABC CAMOにもBAYCのロゴを組み込みアレンジ。プルオーバーフーディ、トラッカーキャップ、バケットハットといった定番アイテムが登場します。

BABY MILO®をBAYCのアイコンであるCurtis風にアレンジしたラグマットや、APE HEADクッションなどのホームアイテムも取り揃えています。

BAPE STA™も特別なデザインにアレンジされています。アッパーにはABC CAMO、透明なラバーソールの中にはCurtisがデザインされたユニークなデザイン。
全世界1,000足限定生産となっており、中にはシリアルナンバーが記されています。

Yuga Labsのアパレル部門の副社長であるMichael Ghory氏は「このコレクションは、ストリートファッションが情報通であることやトレンドの先駆者であることを意味していた時代を思い起こさせます。」と述べています。


Bape® Hong Kong Limited のCOOであるThomas Hui 氏は「BAPE®は、絶えず変化するファッション業界において、新たな挑戦を追求し続けています。これまでにない試みとして、WEB2.0とWEB 3.0の各コミュニティとのコラボレーションを積極的に進めています。」と述べています。


本コレクションはBAPE STORE® 原宿、渋谷、大阪、京都店およびBAPE.COMにて2023年12月16日(土)発売開始。

BAPE® X BAYC BAPE STA COLOR: GREEN MENS : ￥33,000- (税込) LADIES' : ￥33,000- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC COACH JACKET COLOR: BLACK ￥33,000- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC CAMO PULLOVER HOODIE COLOR: GREEN, PINK ￥36,300- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC TEE #3 COLOR: BLACK ￥9,900- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC TEE #2 COLOR: WHITE ￥9,900- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC BUCKET HAT COLOR: GREEN ￥14,300- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC MESH CAP COLOR: GREEN, PINK ￥11,000- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC CUSHION COLOR: GREEN ￥8,800- (税込)

BAPE® X BAYC RUG COLOR: MULTI ￥13,200- (税込)

Andrew Tate’s new token is a reminder of crypto’s ‘bro’ problem

The bad news for Andrew Tate? He is facing human sex trafficking and rape charges . The good news? He’s allowed to leave Romania as he awaits trial. And rest assured, Tate is not wasting time repenting. Rather, he is using the opportunity to promote his Solana-based ‘ memecoin ‘—named DADDY—on the world’s stage. “I am free,” the would-be political prisoner announced in an X post Friday. “I’m free to do a tour around the world. A DADDY tour,” he proclaimed in an accompanying video, listing off locations he wants to visit, including “Tokyo, Dubai, [and] Miami.” 

Tate is just one of numerous celebrities who have seized on memecoins as a way to promote their brand and to make money. Tate began promoting his coin on June 11, and shortly after, it reached a market capitalization of over $217 million .

I AM FREE. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 3 YEARS I CAN LEAVE ROMANIA. THE SHAM CASE IS FALLING APART. $DADDY X THEREALWORLD GLOABL TOUR LOADING – Will you be there? https://t.co/9TN9VyfzRh pic.twitter.com/LieZl7OF9F — Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) July 5, 2024

The so-called masculinity influencer launched the currency to dethrone rapper Iggy Azalea’s $MOTHER , “for the patriarchy.” “We’re bringing the Gs back make me a f***ing sandwich females,” he added. And he’s succeeded in doing so: It currently trades at a value five times greater than Azalea’s, according to CoinGecko data .

Tate’s views do not reflect those of the entire cryptocurrency world and some of those who purchased his token are likely driven by profit-seeking rather than ideology. Nonetheless, popularity of Tate’s coin points to the crypto industry’s lingering problem with misogyny. While some elements of crypto have been hostile to women since its inception, the current market revival has been based in part on appealing to the mainstream. This includes the institutional investors who are gaining access to the market via the spot Bitcoin ETFs , and members of Congress, who are making strides towards regulation . So, must the “ crypto bro ” evolve in order for the industry to be taken seriously?

The unwavering ‘crypto bro’

The term “crypto bro”—an echo of the “tech bro” term long used to decry obnoxious elements of Silicon Valley—gained traction during the 2021 crypto bubble. The phrase doesn’t have a precise definition, and can describe everything from hackathon-loving blockchain geeks spouting lore, to far-right libertarians who view crypto as a way to defy government control. In any case, the term reflects the uncomfortable truth that it was an industry created by men, for men. Indeed, a 2021 survey shows only 5% of users globally were women. 

As a female reporter coming to the industry in 2024, I’ve encountered “crypto bro” culture firsthand. And I should add, it has some upsides: As a woman, one walks directly into the bathroom at conferences, strolling past the queue patiently checking X. But despite conducting well over 100 interviews this year, I’ve yet to speak to a female founder. There’s perhaps one exception in Azalea, but her bid to become crypto’s matriarch swiftly triggered a counteroffensive from Tate.

There are, of course, an abundance of women who have built successful companies and careers in crypto. To name just a few: He Yi, co-founder of Binance, and co-founder of the Tezos blockchain, Katherine Breitman. Caitlin Long, the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank for digital assets. The CEO of Yuga Labs, the company behind the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, is Nicole Muniz. At Coinbase , Alesia Haas and Emilie Choi claim the roles of CFO and COO, respectively. Mary-Catherine Lader leads Uniswap Labs as COO.

These women have made it in crypto, but they are much an exception. The industry is “deeply entwined with masculinity,” writes Professor Alexis Henshaw. Why? The best answer may be risk tolerance. It’s believed men are more likely to be accepting of riskier investments, and crypto is a more volatile asset. 

But Professor Dan Cassino, a researcher of crypto and masculinity at Fairleigh Dickinson University, says it runs deeper than this. Crypto is marketed as a way for individuals to demonstrate stereotypically masculine traits, he argues. This includes, “mastery of complex systems, defiance of existing power structures, all in service of a heroic narrative that ends—in the telling of the people selling the crypto—with getting rich,” he says. That is, provided they display the masculinized traits of loyalty and perseverance.

This phenomenon is exemplified in a video posted by one Wall Street Wolverine amid the 2021 crash. The crypto influencer looks into the camera and commands: “Gentleman, here we invest with balls. Here, we HODL…Crying here? Get your f***ing money and put it in a Santander fixed-term savings account.”

Cassino is surprised it’s taken until now for Tate to launch a coin. His audience—young men who value traditional masculinity, but feel that they’re falling short of it—is the same audience disproportionately likely to buy crypto, he says. Tate has calculated that if he can sell his “ Hustler’s University ” to his fans, he can sell them on crypto.    

Young men moving to the right

Unlike in previous cycles, thanks to the ETFs, institutional investors have now moved into the market. As a result, the industry no longer relies solely on the wallets of young men. Despite this, retail investors are still setting the industry’s tone. While surveys suggest that female adoption is rising, in 2024, the crypto bro “certainly still exists,” says Cassino.

Today, just 6% of crypto CEOs are women. And users are still disproportionately young men. The most recent adoption stats —taken from Norway—show that men are still more than three times as likely than women to own crypto, and 70% of users are under 40. In March, the Financial Times reported that custodian Copper served sushi off two naked models in a private event at a crypto conference. Meanwhile, as celebrities keep their distance, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have emerged as the industry’s figureheads. And now, there’s Tate’s global DADDY tour to look forward to. 

And in light of broader shifts in the political landscape, the perseverance of the crypto bro makes sense. A recent report found that young men have become more conservative since 2014—around the time when crypto started gaining popularity—and are the only U.S. population group to do so. “Despair” and “disillusionment” with established politics were popular words used among survey respondents. Facing a society where gender roles are influx, and women are more likely than men to attend college , some are looking to Tate and crypto’s promise of financial freedom to revive notions of traditional masculinity.

Memecoins and the boys

Usurping the role NFTs played in the previous cycles, memecoins have dominated the tone of the current market revival. Memecoins merge finance, internet trends, and gambling, and investors flock to the highly speculative, tongue-in-cheek assets during viral moments. And young men form the “basis” of this craze, says Cassino. While the crypto world once revolved entirely around Bitcoin, many newer adopters have instead embraced the likes of DOGE, PEPE and SHIB (and now DADDY). This reflects an ongoing desire to join a community bonded by shared risk, and united with a middle-finger-up to the system, any system—even crypto itself.

There is no data on the gender divide of memecoin investors. However, as high-risk and anti-authority investments, the coins share similar appeal to memestocks . Thus, enthusiasts for the latter can be considered a proxy for memecoin hobbyists. Nathaniel Popper’s recent book The Trolls of Wall Street retells the memestock saga where “degenerates” on Reddit pulled off the GameStop trade that shook Wall Street. A tale of institutional defiance to some, Popper unravels a different story, one of socially isolated and chronically online young men failing to prosper by traditional means, and thus looking for an outlet. 

The memestock mania shares similar characteristics to the Tate superfan with young men seeking a community to push back against a perceived threat masculine identity. But does crypto need to shed its bros to be taken seriously? Cassino believes that if the watering-down of bro culture resulted in the proliferation of gray suits, crypto may lose its appeal, morphing into any other financial instrument. But then, would anyone be interested in it? “You could argue that without the crypto bros, there isn’t much left,” he says. 

Crypto’s unique selling point is the community that surrounds it. Community is never a bad thing, particularly one that allows men to bond. The challenge crypto faces is how to retain its culture while broadening its membership. Arguably the crypto bro fell out of favor due to bad actors like Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao . But now, with both behind bars, the industry has a chance to rebrand degeneracy as inclusivity, and to remind the public that its existence came about as a response to the failure of broader social and economic systems.

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