Washington Street Advocacy Group and Todd Fine Condemn Ryder Ripps's Statement on Yuga Labs
By Todd Fine
Recently, legal documents revealed that the NFT company Yuga Labs reached a settlement agreement with the internet artist Ryder Ripps and cryptocurrency influence Jeremy Cahen, known as “Pauly0x.” In an expensive four-year lawsuit, Ripps and Cahen had been accused of violating Bored Ape Yacht Club’s trademarks by selling a collection called RR/BAYC, or Ryder Ripps/Bored Ape Yacht Club, which linked to the same hosted images of cartoon apes made by Yuga Labs. Ripps and Cahen were among a collection of internet critics who had observed that the symbols and terms in Yuga Labs’s NFT collections were related to the Nazi SS and to key concepts in esoteric fascism, including the fascist reinterpretation of the Hindu cycle of time known as the “Kali Yuga” and the “traditionalism” of Italian philosopher Julius Evola, who himself worked with the SS. Ripps and Cahen leveraged these criticisms to grow their own social media followings and to launch a long succession of volatile memecoins that extracted millions of dollars.
While we can understand the pressure of facing a lawsuit from such a well-financed opponent, supported by some of the largest venture capital firms, Ripps’s statement as part of the settlement is despicable. Ripps states that the claims against Yuga Labs were “false allegations” and were raised disingenuously to “manufacture controversy” and to create “chaos.” His willingness to disavow all of the political activism against Yuga Labs (a good deal of which he did not initiate) validates the views of the more principled anti-fascist critics who eventually separated themselves from Ripps during this struggle. A number of activists and writers came to the conclusion that Ripps and Cahen were disingenuous right-wing trolls themselves, always more interested in self-enrichment and self-promotion than building any sort of movement to challenge fascism and racism.
Now, Ripps’s action to undercut the people who once stood with him does real harm to the fight against the rising fascism emerging from Silicon Valley, and it encourages Yuga Labs to continue to threaten, lie, distort, and deceive. The success of Yuga Labs, funded by the venture capital firm a16z which has advanced fascist philosophy itself, to popularize fascist symbols without any consequence was a key moment in the American descent into political authoritarianism, during which crypto was as much a cultural weapon as a tool of financial corruption. The unwillingness of major American media organs and political leaders to detail Silicon Valley fascism as it emerged was critical to the political coup. The fight against Yuga Labs was potentially a critical moment to expose these developments, yet Ripps’s and Cahen’s unwillingness to express a coherent political message against fascism harmed the others who sought to.
At the same time, the Washington Street Advocacy Group also accepts its own failings in communicating its message. The corporate capture of American media, the intellectual degradation of American political discourse, the appeasement of fascist tech billionaires by major pro-Israel Jewish groups like the ADL, and the pathetic weakness and corporate capture of the Democratic Party have all combined to allow this vicious Silicon Valley fascism to fester openly. Those who responded with the vigor that history taught was necessary were punished.
The one saving grace is that Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen are now, apparently, unable to speak further on the critical issues related to this matter. We must return focus to the fascist inspirations of Yuga Labs founders Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, who themselves had ties to an alt-right press and had a documented history of interest in alt-right ideas linked to Julius Evola and traditionalism. As Ripps and Cahen “move on” with their lives, the Washington Street Advocacy Group remains willing to help media, activists, and writers understand the role of NFTs and Yuga Labs in the maturation of tech fascism.
Full statement from Ryder Ripps on April 10, 2026:
*In 2022, I was part of a group, including Jeremy Cahen, aka Pauly0x, that created, promoted, and sold a collection of NFTs known as Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club, or RR/BAYC. We intentionally used the BAYC name and designed the collection to look like Yuga Labs’ BAYC in every way we could. *
We wanted to confuse people. We wanted to rip off the BAYC collection, stir up chaos in the community, antagonize Yuga Labs and its founders, manufacture controversy, and manipulate mainstream media. We wanted to use all of that to get attention for ourselves and to make money off RR/BAYC.
We shouldn’t have dragged Yuga Labs or its founders into an unprovoked fight. I want to apologize for the harm we caused to Yuga’s founders, employees, and their families. And we should not have used members of the NFT community as pawns in a contrived feud.
I’ve changed since this started. In 2021, I thought it was edgy and funny to throw around false allegations of extremism and hate. I don’t anymore. I sincerely want to apologize for all of it, and put this chapter behind me.