Last week that the SEC is looking into Bored Ape Yacht Club’s parent company, Yuga Labs, for possible securities violations related to the sale of Bored Ape NFTs and ApeCoin tokens. This news sent shockwaves through the NFT world.
Some legal experts have said that SEC Chair Gary Gensler is clearly expanding his regulatory reach to include NFTs. Since the news came out, APE has dropped by more than 10%.
Greg Solano, co-founder of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, says, “It’s not that surprising, given everything else that’s going on, that NFTs are getting looked at.”
Solano said on the most recent episode of their gm podcast, in which he and Decrypt co-founder Wylie Aronow are still talking, “Policymakers everywhere want to know more about Web3 and how it works. These are untested waters because they are brand new. Also, at Yuga, we value our role as leaders in the industry and welcome the chance to work with our peers and policymakers to shape the ecosystem.”
Definitely the best in their field. In April 2021, Bored Ape Yacht Club put out the first monkey JPEG in a new series. The parent company of Yuga Labs is now worth $4 billion, which includes the rights to CryptoPunks and Meebits. This is after only a year and a half. Yuga is the only person who owns the four NFT collections with the most market value.
Since a BuzzFeed article from February of last year revealed their real names, Aronow and Solano have joined the likes of BAYC and Yuga as Web3 celebrities. At the time, people in the crypto community were angry and said it was unfair “doxxing.”
When asked about all the fuss in a recent interview with Decrypt, Aronow and Solano (who now use their real names on Twitter in addition to their crypto names, Gordon Goner and Garga) almost brushed it off as nothing. Then, why did this seem so important to the Web3 crowd?
Aronow said, “I think the journalists are the ones who blew that out of proportion more than anything else.
During NFT NYC in June, the two men put on ApeFest, a four-day party for BAYC holders. Tens of thousands of people came, and major artists performed. Both men said they loved being recognized and surrounded by Ape owners who loved them.
“It really has been a blessing and a curse,” Aronow continued. “It was bound to happen eventually, we just hoped we’d be able to do it on our own terms.”
Aronow has said that he and Solano have only been on camera a few times since their identities were found out on purpose.
He said: “I kind of view us as a garage band that made it and we’re still just trying to keep that authenticity. And frankly, I’m a little precious about it. We don’t do a lot of PR, we don’t do a ton of interviews, we’re pretty selective about that, just because, to me, that’s just a little bit too rock star.”
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