The US regulator has taken the market’s largest collection of NFTs under curiosity. The altcoin fell hard after it announced that it would open an inquiry about the team behind it.
SEC chases popular NFT collection
Yuga Labs, the team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, one of the most expensive NFT collections, is preparing for the legal battle against the SEC. According to Bloomberg’s report, the reason for the investigation is that some of the company’s products do not comply with federal securities laws. The SEC will precede that some of Yuga Labs’ NFTs are stock. Thus, the collection will move to security status rather than just an NFT. In addition, as part of the investigation, regulators will also be intrigued by Yuga Labs-linked Ape Coin.
The price of Apecoin has fallen sharply
The 37th cryptocurrency by market cap is currently down over 8%. The entire loss of Apecoin occurred within the 1-hour candlestick after the SEC announced it would open an investigation. The popular metaverse coin is trading at $4.7 at the time of writing. The highest price of the day crashed hard at $5.27.
According to Bloomberg’s report, the SEC is investigating whether the sale of digital products by Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, violates federal law. Yuga Labs has not been charged with misconduct so far. Also, filing an SEC investigation does not mean the agency will sue the firm. Yuga, in his statements regarding the SEC’s move:
It is well known that policy makers and regulators are trying to learn more about the new world of Web3. We hope to partner with the rest of the market and regulators to define and shape the emerging ecosystem. As a leader in the industry, Yuga is committed to fully cooperating with any investigations along the way.
Altcoin market seeks more regulatory clarity
The Yuga Labs investigation is the SEC’s latest attempt under regulation, headed by Gary Gensler. As we quoted as Kriptokoin.com, Gensler previously stated that the regulations are clear and most cryptocurrencies have the securities characteristics defined by the Supreme Court decision of the 1940s. The head of the SEC has also repeatedly said that these teams and the tokens they produce should be regulated by an institution.
About Yuga Labs
US-based Yuga Labs was founded in February 2021. The company is best known for the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the world’s largest and most profitable NFT project to date. BAYC contains monkey NFTs of 10,000 pieces. On April 23, Yuga Labs launched the BAYC mint phase and the final sale took place on May 1. The starting base price was 0.08 ETH (about $240). Just a few months later, in August 2021, the base broke 44 ETH (around $137,000). Today, the project is worth billions.
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