In May of last year, the lowest price for a Bored Ape NFT was over $400,000. Today, the same NFT is worth only 11% as much, selling for $43,391.
In December, the people who bought Bored Ape NFTs when the price was high filed a lawsuit against everyone they blamed for tricking them into paying hundreds of thousands for incredibly ugly cartoon apes, including Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, Serena Williams, Madonna, The Weeknd, Kevin Hart, DJ Khaled, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and Steph Curry.
And now, the lawsuit has been amended to include Sotheby's as a defendant.
As reported in Techspot:
The amendment claims Yuga colluded with Sotheby's "to run a deceptive auction." Following the $24.4 million sale, a Sotheby's representative described the winning bidder as a "traditional" collector. According to the lawsuit, the buyer turned out to be crypto exchange FTX. The same FTX that imploded and whose founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is in jail awaiting trial.
The lawsuit claims the sale was "rooted in deception" and lent the Bored Ape NFTs "an air of legitimacy" designed to generate hype and investor interest around the brand.
CNN has more:
The amended lawsuit, which was originally filed in December without naming Sotheby's as a defendant, claims the sale was "deceptive" and that the auction house had been hired by blockchain company Yuga Labs to "generate investors' interest and hype around the Bored Ape brand."
"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for (Bored Ape Yacht Club) NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the plaintiffs' legal team added in a complaint filed in a federal court in California earlier this month.
In a statement emailed to CNN, the auction house said: "The allegations in this suit are baseless, and Sotheby's is prepared to vigorously defend itself."
Representatives for Paris Hilton, whom the lawsuit accuses of having "feigned interest" in the NFTs for financial gain, and Justin Bieber did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
