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Legendary tennis player Serena Williams and Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry have landed themselves in a class action multi-billion dollar lawsuit. It is claimed that celebrity endorsement of the NFT brand artificially increased the demand and value of the BAYC NFTs and Yuga Labs’ ApeCoin crypto tokens, causing buyers to lose a staggering amount of money. Fans have seen a growing trend of such digital currency lawsuits involving elite celebrities.

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Even though they can’t be solely held responsible for the consumers’ financial losses, their alleged involvement in the matter may get them into trouble. Williams and Curry were the promoters of The Bored Ape Yacht Club, a group of 10,000 different Bored Ape non-fungible tokens.

Serena Williams and Stephen Curry are involved in the latest NFT crisis

It’s hard to think of any NFT project that was more notable than The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). Fans had initially met NFTs with skepticism. However, when notable athletes like Serena Williams and Stephen Curry started endorsing the firms, people thought it interesting enough to invest in.

Many jumped on the bandwagon and dropped a fairly staggering amount to scoop up the digital rights to popular NFTs. The lawsuit reads that the endorsements caused “investors to purchase these losing investments at drastically inflated prices.”

via Imago

The fact that so many celebrities participated in endorsing BAYC helped it generate so much buzz. This promotional campaign was enormously successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales.

The complaint claims that celebrity endorsement artificially increased the interest and value of the BAYC NFTs and Yuga Labs’ ApeCoin crypto tokens, resulting in “staggering losses” for buyers.

READ MORE- Serena Williams Dishes Out $815,000 for Father King Richard’s New Florida Home After His $10 Mansion Transfer

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Yuga Labs is expected to be worth $4 billion in 2022. This is largely attributed to the NFT collection’s over US $1 billion in sales. According to the lawsuit, the brand relied heavily on the perception that buying a BAYC NFT would give buyers status. It provided them with benefits, access to events, and other lucrative investment opportunities that were only available to BAYC holders.

Williams once invested to promote cryptocurrency adoption in Africa

The 23-time Grand Slam champion had contributed an undisclosed amount to the pre-seed round of Nestcoin. It is a FinTech startup with a base in Nigeria. The recent trend among venture capitalists to fund startups in Africa is being continued by this most recent development.

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The firm had introduced Breach, a crypto education platform. The platform introduces various initiatives to increase access to cryptocurrency knowledge in emerging markets. For instance, Breach is considering a program in which it collaborates with creators to develop various forms of crypto content, which should, in theory, make it easier to produce inclusive, relatable, and accessible content.