Landmark case recognizes Bored Ape NFT as an asset
- Reference: 1652956993
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/05/19/nft_recognized_asset/
- Source link:
[1]
NFT digital art seen on smartphone. Bored Ape Yacht Club (or BAYC) is the collection of the most expensive NFTs
"We are the first law firm in Singapore, and one of the first few in the world, that is successful in obtaining a worldwide proprietary injunction to freeze a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT sale on the blockchain against a Metaverse personality," said international arbitration and litigation specialist Shaun Leong on law firm Withers KhattarWong's [2]LinkedIn page .
The Singapore High Court settled the [3]commercial dispute over the jovial beanie-wearing ape through a court order on May 13, thus restoring its ownership to Janesh Rajkumar, after it had been used as collateral in a loan and subsequently seized.
Rajkumar had used his NFT to borrow Ethereum from public persona and Twitter afficionado " [4]chefpierre " on NFTfi. The ape was to be held in escrow by NFTfi until the loan could be repaid with the stipulation that the loan could be extended.
However, rather than extending, chefpierre foreclosed on the loan, shifted the NFT to his personal Ethereum wallet, and listed it for sale in OpenSea.
[5]Crooks steal NFTs worth '$3m' in Bored Ape Yacht Club heist
[6]HPE uses blockchain for distributed machine learning models
[7]Sir Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web NFT fetches $5.4m at auction while rest of us gaze upon source code for $0
[8]Star loses $500,000 NFT after crooks exploit Rarible market
"This injunction recognizes NFTs as an asset," said Withers KhattarWong in a [9]canned statement , adding: "The case is also unique as it allows for the service of court papers to be effected via social media such as Twitter, including on Ethereum's platform."
[10]
The high court in Singapore (the disc shaped building on the left) was designed by Norman Foster and opened in 2005
Leong asserted that the ruling is important as it recognizes that Singapore courts can take jurisdiction over assets sited in the decentralized blockchain.
Around 10,000 BAYC apes exist worldwide as a collection of pictures of apes in costumes with varying facial expressions, with some owned by celebrities including Madonna, Eminem, and Jimmy Fallon. Their price peaked at $434,000, or 152 ETH, in April 2022 on online NFT marketplace OpenSea.
[11]
The UK also had a recent landmark ruling in January when it recognized the digital art tech as legal property, [12]froze two stolen NFTs , and returned them to the digital wallet of the owner.
[13]
Since then, BAYC's Instagram was hacked, leading to the [14]theft of about $3 million from the digital wallets of NFT enthusiasts. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/05/19/shutterstock_bored_ape.jpg
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6932869607615541251/
[3] https://www.judiciary.gov.sg/hearing-list/hearing-list-details/ds-1-491764
[4] https://twitter.com/chefpierre_
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/26/nft_theft_bored_ape_yacht_club/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/27/hpe_new_ai_products/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/world_wide_web_nft_auction/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/15/rarible-flaw-nft/
[9] https://www.withersworldwide.com/en-gb/insight/withers-obtains-asia-s-first-nft-freezing-injunction
[10] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/05/19/shutterstock_singapore_high_court.jpg
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YoZppfRN8hR5iPJApzF1YgAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=dc381273-cc40-42c4-b824-ad8c0125af55
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YoZppfRN8hR5iPJApzF1YgAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/26/nft_theft_bored_ape_yacht_club/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Crazy times!
And most of them are registered and cost money to use. The article has quite an extensive list of licenses for various letter combinations and letter organization. I heard a rumor that soon, El Reg will censor these registered letter combinations and organizations unless you pay up for a subscription.
Re: Crazy times!
"freeze a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT sale on the blockchain against a Metaverse personality"
A classic example of where I understand what these words mean individually (although "Metaverse" is a bit sketchy) but now that they've been assembled into a sentence I'm just left scratching my head
Not sure which is sillier
"The case is also unique as it allows for the service of court papers to be effected via social media such as Twitter ..."
" a collection of pictures of apes in costumes with varying facial expressions .... Their price peaked at $434,000 ..."
"apes in costumes with varying facial expressions .... Their price peaked at $434,000"
I'm pretty sure that Elon Musk will have to pay more than that for Twitter.
Re: Not sure which is sillier
apes in costumes with varying facial expressions .... Their price peaked at $434,000
That sounds very much like a description of a minor league rugby team that I one knew.
Re: Not sure which is sillier
Doesn't matter if it is "silly" or not. Chefpierre accepted the NFT as collateral in a real-life monetary loan, therefore chefpierre [him]self treated the NFT as a direct equivalent of an asset worthy of being considered collateral. The court only decided based on this fact - the second party accepted the terms of how the NFT should be considered in [their] contract, and the court could only follow this lead.
This isn't so much as "landmark case" as "contract law".
Name a star
It's like the "Name a Star" game.
A company sets itself up as "Galatic Star Register" or whatever, then sells the naming rights to stars. "Be among famous celebrities, like Albert Einstein, and have a star named exclusively after you! Buy quick, the best stars are going fast! On our site, you can also auction your star's name. Get in early, buy a popular star, sell it later for big big profits! Meet Bob, Bob bought 'Totalynotmadeup' for only $200, and sold it for $1834000. 'Trevor Totalynotmadeup' it's new owner thinks it can only be worth more due to the laws of supply and demand".
Of course its worthless shit, anyone can name a star, anyone can set up a registry for those names, nobody is obligated to use any of those names and nobody buys anything of value there. "Trevor Totalnotmadeup" is party to that to create a false perception of value there, he's there to trigger the "get rich quick" mentality. Albert Einstein can be gifted anything which he then 'owns'.
Once "Galatic Star Register" con is busted, he'll move on to "Universal Star Register Tampa",... so much for scarsity.
An NFT is nothing. You bought nothing, not the copyright, not an exclusive usage, its often just a salted encoding of a URL to a webserver with the image. Sucker, might as well have bought the name of a star on some blokes list of star names in an excel spreadsheet.
BAYC
Oh, those images I can find in an instant on Google Images ?
And some people paid money for that ?
The depth of human stupidity knows no bounds - especially when they're full of money.
Re: BAYC
You can find, and purchase, copies of Van Gogh's Sunflowers on Google, but someone still paid nearly $40 million for the original, which frankly makes no more sense to me than people buying NFTs.
Re: BAYC
A fool and his money....
Re: BAYC
van Gogh's Sunflowers can not be remade, once you have the physical sample in you possession, it is yours only.
Unlike the apes, anyone can generate a billion unique links to a file on a server.
Re: BAYC
> van Gogh's Sunflowers can not be remade, once you have the physical sample in you possession, it is yours only.
Same as the BAYC NFTs. Cryptography ensures you can't make duplicates of the NFTs, and each NFT is associated with a single owner (wallet) in the shared ledger (blockchain).
Note: The JPEG is not an NFT. The NFT is just the record that is registered in the ledger, which happens to also contain a URL.
Still don't get NFTs?
If you still don't quite get NFTs then watch YouTuber Joshua Strife Hayes video "What the hell are NFTs?".
LINK == > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwMjPWOailQ
He starts off with the premise that "What's the best way to make money with no effort? Find a way to sell people nothing for large sums of money but make them think they have something of value.". About half way through Joshua poses the question, "So after all you've learned so far about NFTS, why do people still keep buying them? The main reason is that people are idiots!".
It's probably the best explanation of why NFTs are absolutely fricking, 100%, A-grade horsecrap and I encourage people to watch and share it with anyone, it's non-techie and completely safe for work.
the first in the world to freeze a BAYC NFT sale on the blockchain against a Metaverse personality
Yeah, well just this minute I was one of the first in the world to twirl a coin on my finger whilst balancing a sock on my head and humming the theme tune to Terry & June, but I don't make a big deal out of it, because doing something unique is not actually all that fucking difficult.
The NFT crowd are so hyped up about the supposed value of the rarity of their unique items, they're totally ignorant of how trivially easy it is to create unique stuff.
Crazy times!
A sizable percentage of the words in this article didn't even exist a couple of decades ago...