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.

  • db2@sopuli.xyz
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    2 years ago

    Nope. Too bad, they knew what they were buying. That they convinced themselves the value they attributed to it would remain or increase is entirely on them. The fact that so many others saw it through a realistic lens means they had the same ability and chose not to.

    But that said, the proceeds for them should also get clawed back and 100% put toward scam identification education. Neither side in this one should walk away enriched.

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      This is the part about wealthy people that I just love. If muh investment pays off, f-off society, I was smart and made a wise investment. I deserve to keep 100% of the proceeds. But when things go south, “Save meeeeeeeeee, you [society/regulators] shouldn’t have let me go through with it”. Then we’re back to the socialism they say they hate so much and that they lobby their own money to deny to the common folk.

      Oy vay

    • Chronographs@lemmy.zip
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      2 years ago

      Honestly I’m ok with them keeping their money, afaik everyone knew where they were buying they were just dumb enough to think it would ever be worth something. If we want to claw back money from people we should start with the ones ruining the environment to make the line go up

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Back in the mid-90s I had a friend who inherited $40,000 from her grandmother and spent all of it on $75 Fossil watches, the kind that were based on old cartoons like Popeye etc. And it took her a while to do it since she would drive to malls within a few hours of her and clean out the department stores that carried them. That’s over 500 watches, a few at a time.

      She was adamant that this was an excellent investment, but these are on eBay now for $50 to $60. At parties she would pull out the collection and start showing them to people (no touchy, of course) as if there was something intrinsically interesting about a cartoon Fossil watch. The sad thing is, with $40,000 in hand she probably could have bought two or three times as many from a wholesaler and maybe eventually actually have made some money.

  • omgarm@feddit.nl
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    2 years ago

    The fact that they still sell for 50k is insane. It’s a shitty picture with a convoluted proof of ownership. The fuck.

  • Sassy@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    I hope the defendant loses, but the damages shouldn’t be awarded to the fools who bought the NFTs. That money should go to literally anyone else, because they’ve already proved they can’t be trusted with money. Fuck both sides of this dispute.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 years ago

    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.

    Wait till they realize the actual value is $0.

    • DrQuint@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      The 50k value is itself propped up by fake transactions anyways. Since these sales are public, they can just push some around between two paid off clients to give the impression this is their worth.

    • Bobby Bandwidth@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I spent a lot of time coding some NFTs for a unique use case / idea I had. It doesn’t involve trading / speculative cryptocurrency or drawings of apes. If I ever finish it I definitely will not advertise it as using NFTs. The interesting thing to me is using them as contracts and/ or programmable money. Currently the banking system and credit card companies have a chokehold on payments/purchases/etc. But, NFTs and smart contracts in general provide an alternative to that. That to me has value inherently. Now, I’m aware that bad actors have been using crypto to circumvent laws/regulations, and I’m not in favor of that. But I also do not like the credit card system, and think there’s value in exploring alternative paradigms.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Nonono you didn’t read the article, the company behind says these are unique, and they were promoted by famous people, and auctioned at Sotheby’s.

      Trust me, clearly they are very valuable, honest! Somehow they are claimed to still be worth $50,000!! I bet in another couple of years they’ll still be worth way over erh let me think, they may still be worth something, maybe a couple hundred? It’s the future, it’s a sure thing!!

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Remember when Seth Green said he had a whole TV show ready to go based on his his Bored Ape and then someone stole it? He paid $300,000 to get it back and ever since… no TV show. I’m wondering if he’s just embarrassed at this point.

    • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      buy stupid NFT

      pitch TV show about said NFT

      get investors to pay for it

      take out insurance on NFT and TV show

      never bother to make TV show

      just collect salary as passive income

      “leak” private key a few days before “release”

      collect insurance to repay investors

      profit

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      These silly things, according to the article, are still selling for $50k each. There are still greater fools to sell to, they just aren’t as rich. The current owners can still walk away with about 20% of their initial “investment”. They themselves will be the greater fool if they don’t unload them onto someone else.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    2 years ago

    GEE, WHO THE FUCK COULD’VE FORESEEN SUCH TURN OF EVENTS, HUH??? If only there were people that realized very early on that NFTs were absolutely pointless, right?

    Sarcasm aside, even being the USA, I doubt there’s any law that criminalizes shit investments. Despite everything, NFTs and cryptocoins themselves still aren’t legally considered scams, so investing in them and losing money due to their price fluctuations aren’t crimes.

    Yuga colluded with fine arts broker, Defendant Sotheby’s, to run a deceptive auction.

    Isn’t that the modus operandi of art auctions in general? There’s always at least one or two fellas doing everything in their power to pump up prices of certain pieces or specific artists, since they have big collections.

    Sotheby’s Metaverse, an NFT trading platform opened after the auction, “operated (or attempted to operate) as an unregistered broker of securities.”

    Ooohh, now that could be interesting, though I highly doubt they’ll get more than a slap on the wrist, if it gets that far.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I don’t even understand how someone could fall for NFTs. It was so obviously a stupid, broken concept from the very beginning, it hurts to know that anyone actually was so dumb spent money on this.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Seth Green was literally going to make a TV show about his worthless scam. Like, bruh, you made Robot Chicken and have been on Family Guy for 24 years. Are you actually out of ideas?

      • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        He wanted to use it as a mascot and written off the purchase as a business expense that would also gather value because now his bored ape has a show. Tons of advertising for the ape, in the form of the show, that he flips his 300k purchase for millions would normally be a smart investment except NFTs spoil all good things.

    • Highlybaked@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Conmen typically target people of low intelligence in scams because it increases the chances of said scam being successful, like the classic Nigerian Prince scam littered with spelling inaccuracies aimed at duping the idiots.

  • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I wish I had the temerity to sue people when an ‘investment’ doesn’t go my way.

    I’m sure they’d have sued Sotheby’s if they made lots of profit right?

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 years ago

      There was the bit about Sotheby’s misrepresenting FTX as a buyer, but that doesn’t make me any more sympathetic to their situation. Which, now that I’ve typed that, is extremely cynical when I like to think of myself as empathetic. I’m gonna try to change my take here. I like @db2’s take that the money should be invested in public education.

      • kimpilled@infosec.pub
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        2 years ago

        I don’t think it would have mattered had they known. FTX was still in their good graces at the time, and FTX didn’t actually scam anyone (in this particular transaction lmao).

    • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Makes sense that a bunch of grifters would be involved in a grift that, in turn, makes their grift look more legitimate as well.

  • assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    When the price of all that worthless shit was going up these bozos smugly told anyone who told them it was worthless to ‘have fun staying poor’. They made their bed. They need to eat their loses.