【Coinlive Original】What is the Boring Ape Controversy?

Whether it is for cryptocurrency investors, Wall Street managers or the general public, Boring Ape (BAYC) is undoubtedly the most famous NFT project in the world. For those who don't understand NFT, Boring Ape is nothing more than a digital picture. However, for collectors who love NFTs, Boring Ape is one of the ultimate collectible goals. Sadly, that all changed with an article that also sparked heated discussions among Twitter and YouTube users. The reason why The Boring Ape gets so much talk is racism, more accurately it should be called Nazism.

If you are not active in the NFT circle, or you don’t use Twitter often, then there is a high probability that you don’t know what happened. As one of the bystanders, let the author take you to sort out the ins and outs of this controversy.

Just earlier in the year, Twitter user @ryder_ripps exposed evidence of racism involving Boring Apes in a string of tweets. Yuga Labs, the parent company that owns the Boring Ape intellectual property (IP), immediately responded to the allegations. However, @ryder_ripps didn't stop there, and later compiled all his findings into an article published on https://gordongoner.com/ , entitled "Bored Apes Are Racist". By the way, Gordon Goner is one of the co-founders of Boring Ape and Yuga Labs.

Yuga Labs responded to a series of questions with a tweet. Link: https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1478100695404449804

The boring ape controversy sparked heated debates in the NFT circle at the time, and even appeared in monthly articles on major news websites, but it didn’t do much harm. Boring Apes is still going strong in terms of sales, and @ryder_ripps is still relentlessly convincing others.

Boring Ape's Floor Price Chart

On June 20, 2022, a video titled "The Boring Ape Nazi Club" was uploaded to YouTube and immediately gained public attention. As of press time, the video has had a total of 1.27 million views. This hour-long video is an in-depth analysis of the evidence gathered by @ryder_ripps, as well as the author's own interpretation and opinion. The Boring Ape racism controversy reignited after the video went viral. In the NFT circle, more and more people gradually believe that Boring Ape may have more or less appropriated the characteristics of Nazism, such as Nazi dog whistle, Nazi symbols, Nazi naming, etc.

According to @ryder_ripps, the Bored Ape logo looks eerily similar to the swastika

Although the floor price of the Boring Ape NFT has not been greatly affected, its reputation has indeed suffered a lot. At this time, sales of a boring ape "fake disc" named "RR/BAYC" are skyrocketing. "RR" is an abbreviation for Ryder Ripps, and this man is @ryder_ripps himself, the founder of the boring ape racism movement. For the purpose of satire and protest, @ryder_ripps copied the boring ape NFT and sold them for 0.15 ether each. This pirated NFT project began to be sold around mid-May 2022, and the free mint (free mint) project had not yet become popular at that time.

Buyers can reserve the Boring Apes they want to mint for 0.15 ether. URL: https://rrbayc.com/

Before the racism controversy resurfaced, bootleg Boring Ape NFT sales were poor. As the Youtube video went viral, the floor price of the project rose by leaps and bounds. To everyone's shock, the price of this imitation soared from 0.15 ether to more than 1.5 ether in one day, an increase of more than ten times! I still remember that in the morning, the author browsed the most popular projects within 24 hours as always. Saw this RR/BAYC project from out of nowhere appearing on the hit list at 0.2 ether per tile. 10 minutes later, when I re-refreshed the page, the floor price had shot up to 0.5 ether, which is crazy!

If you bought RR/BAYC in the secondary market at that time, you can get up to 10 times the income in less than a day!

However, the good times are short-lived, and RR/BAYC was finally taken off the shelves by OpenSea. Even though @ryder_ripps claims it's an artistic act, it doesn't change the fact that it violates copyright. As the world's largest NFT exchange, OpenSea's rapid delisting action caused the price of RR/BAYC to plummet. Although these NFTs can still be traded on the second and third largest NFT exchanges, namely Looksrare and X2Y2, the impact of being delisted by OpenSea is always huge. At the time of writing, RR/BAYC has clearly lost its heat, flooring below 0.2 ether.

@ryder_ripps didn't have trouble launching the imitation disk NFT in May because the project didn't attract much attention at the time. Once he started making huge profits off Boring Ape's intellectual property, the problem became a ticking time bomb. At present, Yuga Labs has filed a lawsuit against @ryder_ripps and related personnel for plagiarizing IP, but has not accused the other party of defamation or libel. So the guy who uploaded the boring ape Nazi video earlier got lucky.

Official statement from Yuga Labs

Now that the dust has settled, Gordon and Yuga Labs have stopped responding to the controversy. Proving that Boring Ape is linked to racism or Nazism is, in my opinion, impossible. Things that cannot be proven to be true end up being so-called "conspiracy theories". Still, Boring Ape's reputation did take serious damage in the process. In order to avoid being branded a fascist, NFT enthusiasts or celebrities may avoid buying Boring Ape NFT in the future until the jury has reached a verdict.

Author: [Coinlive] Nell