Yuga Labs founder released a statement in response to claims that the BAYC had hidden Nazi symbols.
Yuga Labs founder addresses misinformation campaign linking BAYC with Nazi groups
On June 24, Wylie Aronow, co-founder of Yuga Labs known online as Gordon Goner took to Twitter to talk about the “misinformation campaign”. Proponents of the campaign believes that Goner and his team are “super-secret Nazis.”
Goner said that he previously paid attention to what he called “incredibly unbalanced” accusations. But he didn’t give a detailed response as he did after a YouTuber posted an hour-long video of an alleged 6-month investigation showing what he thinks is a link between the BAYC corporate image and Nazi symbols.
“We haven’t given a more detailed answer to these claims because, to be honest, they are ludicrous. But when we woke up this morning, a podcaster we respect was talking about this conspiracy theory, which was pretty strange.“
So far, nearly 900,000 people have watched the video, which has sparked a lot of discussions.
There are Jews, Turks, Pakistanis, and Cubans in the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
According to Goner, a group of Jewish, Turkish, Pakistani, and Cuban friends created the BAYC. Goner’s wife is also of Mexican-American descent. Goner believes that it’s a silly idea that the BAYC or any of its members is connected to the Nazi movement.
Goner said that the accusations are “lies” spread by Ryder Ripps an anti-BAYC activist. Ripps made a copy of his NFT collection under a different name and sold it on OpenSea for almost $3.5 million. After this, he lost his account for breaking intellectual property laws.
Yuga Labs was named after a bad guy in the video game Zelda who can turn himself and his friends into 2D art. And this made sense for the NFT collection they wanted to make. He also said that he and his friends were nerds who played MMORPG games like Warcraft.
BAYC logo was never meant to be taken so seriously, which is why it looks “ramshackle and dive-y”. He said that everything about BAYC has a “spirit of irreverence and absurdity”. Which is very different from what Ripps thinks.
How was the BAYC logo created?
We didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, so the club looks shabby and seedy. Everything about the BAYC shows how silly and disrespectful it was.
Goner even posted the email he sent to the logo designer. In which he said that the club was based on his interests in punk music, skateboarding, navy flags, etc. There was never a single word about the Nazis.
Even though BAYC is controversial, it is still the collection of choice for celebrities and influencers. In fact, Eminem and Snoop Dog just released a video in which they become two bored apes and start to sing.