Yuga Labs says SEC has dropped its investigation into the NFT firm

Non-fungible token (NFT) conglomerate Yuga Labs says the US Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into the company.

“After 3+ years, the SEC has officially closed its investigation into Yuga Labs,” the company said in a March 3 X post. “This is a huge win for NFTs and all creators pushing our ecosystem forward. NFTs are not securities.”

Bloomberg first reported in October 2022 that the SEC opened a probe into Yuga Labs to determine if certain NFTs were more like traditional stocks and, therefore, securities under US laws.

The regulator’s probe started under former Chair Gary Gensler and was part of a wider investigation into NFTs — which included probes on NFT creators and marketplaces — to see if some, such as fractional NFTs, were securities.

Yuga Labs was behind some of the most popular and high-priced NFT collections when the market was at its peak, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club. It also bought the rights to CryptoPunks, an early NFT collection that had historically fetched huge sums.

The SEC’s reported abandoned investigation into Yuga Labs comes as the regulator has been easing its approach toward the crypto industry under the Trump administration.

Late last month, NFT marketplace OpenSea said the SEC closed its investigation into the platform, which came just hours after the regulator also dropped its lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase.

The SEC has dismissed other crypto-related enforcement actions it launched under former Chair Gensler, having also dropped a yearslong lawsuit against crypto exchange Kraken on March 3.

Cointelegraph has contacted the SEC and Yuga Labs for comment.

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