At the end of the 2000s, there was an unprecedented growth of young artists coming on board. Justin Bieber was one of the promising talents that emerged. He has risen to fame with his music listened greatly amongst his “Beliebers”, but he has also been embroiled in controversies, and well, the evil in the music industry, lawsuits! The “Sorry” singer got sued for copyright infringement for his “10,000 Hours” collaboration with Dan+Shay in 2022. Now, he is getting sued again. In 2020, the digital currency, cryptocurrency saw sporadic growth in the shareholders in many digital assets.
The original online currency, Bitcoin saw a surge from a mere $5,000 in 2020 to a rise to $60,000 in 2021. Cryptocurrency has a complex web of systems to let the user operate their blockchain. But, one of the most popular s of transactions is through non-fungible tokens(NFTs), which use objects to trade. Several celebrities promoted the NFTs, however, these celebrities are embroiled in lawsuits for misleading users and procuring losses due to sector’s collapse. Justin Bieber is one of them.
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Justin Bieber Is Embroiled In A Class-Action Lawsuit Promoting BAYC NFTs
On December 8th, 2022, Adonis Real and Adam Titcher filed a class-action lawsuit in the Federal Court in California. The plaintiffs accused Yug Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs of misleading the investors and promoting surging the purchase which led investors to lose their investments at “inflated prices”.
Yuga Labs, its parent company, launched the BAYC NFTs in 2021 for pre-sale. The Bored-Ape avatar became one of the most sorts after avatars. It had 10,000 variants of the apes with different features. Till March 2022, according to the OpenSea marketplace, the value of the Bored Ape was 466,000 ETH (US $643,030,467).
The complaint read, “The truth is that the Company’s entire business model relies on using insidious marketing and promotional activities from A-list celebrities that are highly compensated (without disclosing such), to increase demand of the Yuga securities by convincing potential retail investors that the price of these digital assets would appreciate”.
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Celebrities Like Jimmy Fallon, Madonna, And Others Are Also Sued
The BAYC collections enable investors to buy $76,000 worth of ApeCoin at the price of $7.50 when post the launch stage. On December 6th, 2022, there was a surge in NFTs worth $32 million in a day. ApeCoin is the currency used for the Bored Ape Yacht Collection. The owners were given exclusive discords of the celebrities, the Yacht Club, and others benefits. When one has BAYC, the investor has access to other NFTs and digital assets. It became a status symbol to possess them.
Many celebrities like Justin Bieber, Eminem, Paris Hilton, Serena Williams, Madonna, and others owned and promoted them. They are also sued. The lawsuit alleges them as “a promoter for the Company and solicited sales of Yuga securities to the public”. Jimmy Fallon, along with Paris Hilton, talked about the BAYC NFTs in one of the episodes of the ‘Tonight Show’. The talk show host, Universal Television, and Electric Hot Dog are sued.
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