This week in NFT land we saw Yuga Labs under investigation by the SEC, F1 going wild for Web 3.0, CNN closing the Vault for good, and more. But which trout were particularly tickled? Stick your hand in and let’s find out.
Yuga Labs Under SEC Investigation
Bloomberg revealed this week that Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the issuance of its NFTs. The SEC is investigating whether Yuga Labs’ dissemination of its NFTs amounts to an unregistered sale of securities, something that has already been brought up by others in the past.
The issue is whether people buying Yuga Labs NFTs were doing so with the expectation of making a profit, whether they were explicitly marketed in this way or not, is at the heart of the case, and, with limited utility at the time of their launch, it’s hard to see that they weren’t. Naturally Yuga Labs denied this, but it will be interesting to see what conclusion the SEC reaches over it.
CNN Bins ‘Vault’ Project After Six Weeks
Media giant CNN this week announced that it has scrapped its Vault NFT project after less than two months, citing it as an “experiment”. The corporation, which released important historical events on which it has reported, announced the closure of the plan in favour of “something much larger”.
However, its offer of a 20% refund for buyers didn’t exactly go down well, with some accusing the company of carrying out a rug pull. CNN said that the Vault collection would “live on” at its Discord server, which we can almost guarantee will be the preserve of spammers and bots by Christmas if it isn’t already.
Twitter Investigation Leads to Arrests
French police used an investigation by Twitter sleuth ZachXBT to catch five criminals who set up a phishing site that stole $2.5 million worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs from five victims. The gang set up a site that promised to animate the still images, with users needing to enter their wallet details in order for their creations to come to life, which they did – scuttling off from their own wallet to those of the hackers.
However, ZachXBT and his team used the flow of the funds and other “breadcrumbs” to identify the five in August, with French police acting on the information last week and arresting them. It comes to something when Twitter is doing the police’s job for them.
