OpenSea Stops Bored Ape NFT Trading Amidst Singapore Court Case

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an iconic representation of the NFT boom.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an icon­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the NFT boom.
Pho­to: Mario Tama (Get­ty Images)

OpenSea, the online NFT mar­ket­place, has shut down trad­ing of a cer­tain Bored Ape amidst an ongo­ing own­er­ship dis­pute case in Sin­ga­pore. The NFT now sports a bright red dis­claimer announc­ing that is has been “report­ed for sus­pi­cious activity.”

The plain­tiff in the court case, Janesh Rajku­mar, appar­ent­ly used Bored Ape 2162 as col­lat­er­al for a loan to bor­row cryp­to, accord­ing to Bloomberg. Rajku­mar sought an injunc­tion, accord­ing to a court fil­ing with Sin­ga­pore Courts, and in a first of its kind case, the court ruled that NFTs qual­i­fy as a dig­i­tal asset that could be protected. 

“It is the first deci­sion in a com­mer­cial dis­pute where NFTs are rec­og­nized as valu­able prop­er­ty worth pro­tect­ing,” said Shaun Leong as cit­ed in Bloomberg. Leong is the lead coun­sel for the case and an equi­ty part­ner of With­er­sworld­wide. “[T]he impli­ca­tion is that NFT is a dig­i­tal asset and peo­ple who invest in it have rights that can be protected.”

The defen­dant is the anony­mous chef­pierre. Accord­ing to The Art News­pa­per, Rajku­mar and chef­pierre entered a loan agree­ment in March using the wes­bite NFT­fi, which allows NFT own­ers to “use the assets they own to access the liq­uid­i­ty they need,” per their web­site. Rajku­mar would hold Bored Ape 2162 on NFT­fi as col­lat­er­al for the loan while it was repaid. 

A part of this agree­ment was that Rajku­mar wouldn’t lose own­er­ship of 2162, and if he couldn’t pay his debt to chef­pierre in time, he would receive an exten­sion. When Rajku­mar real­ized he need­ed more time to repay the loan, chef­pierre alleged­ly fore­closed, and moved 2162 to his per­son­al Ethereum wal­let, where it end­ed up on for sale OpenSea. Now, it’s on ice.

Bored Apes were once an inescapable sym­bol of the NFT rev­o­lu­tion, worth mil­lions of dol­lars. But the NFT craze has def­i­nite­ly died down recent­ly, as For­tune reports that the aver­age price of an NFT fell nearly $5,000 from Jan­u­ary to March of this year, refer­ring to mar­ket track­er Non­Fun­gi­ble. While NFTs might be dip­ping in pop­u­lar­i­ty and val­ue, this court case, how­ev­er, might do NFTs some favors by legit­imiz­ing them as a bona fide finan­cial asset.

Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *