Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal is being investigated by the law for his part in supporting the Astrals NFT project. In relation to the Astrals non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a federal judge in Miami said that O’Neal had to answer claims that he “sold” illegal stocks. This decision is part of a class-action case that has been going on for more than a year.
The case says that O’Neal promoted Astrals NFTs, which the plaintiffs say are illegal stocks in the United States because they have not been registered. O’Neal’s lawyers said in a move to dismiss that he wasn’t a seller and didn’t have power over the project. However, on August 16, Judge Federico Moreno decided that the plaintiffs had made enough claims to show that O’Neal had a major part in selling the NFTs. This means that he now has to reply to these claims.
The judge agreed that the NFTs and Galaxy tokens connected to Astrals could be considered stocks under federal law, but threw out the claim that O’Neal had direct power over the project.
The case talks about how O’Neal promoted the NFTs. He told buyers to “hop on the wave before it’s too late” and that the project would keep getting more valuable. But when O’Neal’s coin exchange, FTX, went down, the value of the Astrals NFTs dropped too, leaving investors with big loses.
It is based on the Solana blockchain and has 10,000 NFTs, a metaverse called Astralworld, and a government token called Galaxy. Although O’Neal made some good points, the court’s ruling keeps the focus on his role in pushing what could be seen as unregistered securities. This sets up a legal battle that could have bigger effects on the crypto and NFT markets.
