One of the creators of Bored Apes Yacht Club, Gordon Goner, has criticized the misinformation campaign claiming that he and other cofounders are Nazis.
blog post titled A letter from the Founder, he pointed out that the group of friends behind Bored Apes have Jewish, Turkish, Cuban, and Pakistani backgrounds, making it illogical that they’ll be Nazis.
According to him, while the accusations have been in the news for several months, he has not bothered to respond “because frankly, they are insanely far-fetched.”
(1/2) The outpouring of support from our community today has been overwhelming. We will continue to be transparent with our community as we fight these slanderous claims. In order to put a stop to the continuous infringement, and other illegal attempts to bring harm to…
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) June 25, 2022
But a video on YouTube by a podcaster who claimed to have done 6 months investigation documenting links between and Nazi symbolism appears to be the final straw. The video, which now has close to a million views, has generated further debate about what Goner calls a conspiracy.
Meanwhile, Goner claimed that anti-BAYC activist Ryder Ripps is behind the allegations. Ripps had earlier copied BAYC artwork for his NFT collection and sold some on OpenSea before being suspended for violating copyrights.
Furthermore, Goner explained that all Yuga Labs and BAYC symbolisms come from video games in the spirit “of irreverence and absurdity.” For example, Yuga Labs’ name came from the villain in Zelda, and all the four founders chose their pseudonyms based on inside jokes and quirks.
Additionally, he denied that the firm launched on the day of Hitler’s death, among other allegations made by the troll.
Snoop Dogg and Eminem Release Video Featuring Bored Apes
While there have been many debates on the issue, one thing is sure, BAYC holders don’t seem to care much. The blue-chip NFT remains popular with celebrities, including legendary rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg, who recently released a new track titled “From The D 2 The LBC.”
music video features both rappers who are also BAYC holders as Bored Apes from the collection. The video preview happened at Fest 2022 before the final release yesterday. It now has 4.4 million views on YouTube.
However, Bored Apes continue to perform poorly in terms of sales volume. In the last 24 hours, there has been a decline of 23.31%, and the past seven days aren’t much better either, with a 53.62% drop.
