Founder of the Bored Apes NFT collection denies allegations of involvement in Nazism

One of the co-founders of Yuga Labs shared a statement regarding allegations of the use of hidden Nazi symbols in BAYC.

on June 24, Wiley Aronov, better known as Gordon Goner, co-founder of Yuga Labs, posted a Twitter thread to respond to a «disinformation campaign» claiming that he and his team are «super secret Nazis.»

Goner noted that they had seen similar accusations before, but chose to ignore them: «We have not responded in more detail to these accusations because, frankly, they are unrealistically far-fetched. However, this morning we woke up and saw a new video from a podcaster we respect talking about this conspiracy theory.» So far, the video has garnered nearly 900,000 views and has sparked a lot of controversy among those who have watched it.

Goner began his tweet by explaining that the founders of BAYC are a group of Jewish, Turkish, Pakistani, and Cuban developers. Even Goner’s wife is an American of Mexican descent. Because of this, he argues, it would be ridiculous to think that BAYC has anything to do with the Nazi movement.

Goner said that all of these accusations are lies promoted by an anti-BAYC activist. The disinformer’s name is Ryder Ripps, who previously created a copy of the BAYC collection under a different name and sold it for $ 3.5 million on OpenSea before his account was blocked for violating intellectual property laws.

Goner also denied allegations related to the collection’s logo, saying that there were no secret Nazi symbols in it. He even published a brief for the designer to develop the logo, where there is indeed not a single word about Nazism, but there is a specific task: «It is necessary to make the logo so grungey that the user realizes that the monkeys are unrealistically bored, you can say 'bored to death'.»