It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 08, 2022
'Obscene': BP Profits Hit 8-Year High Amid Climate Emergency
"Oil company bosses are being allowed to make obscene profits from climate breakdown and the gas price crisis on the back of widespread devastation for people around the world," said one campaigner.
Climate activists with Stop the Money Pipeline held a rally in midtown Manhattan on March 3, 2021, protesting companies that have profiting off the climate crisis.
(Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Fueled by rising oil and gas prices that have left millions struggling to afford energy bills, British fossil fuel giant BP reported its highest yearly profits in nearly a decade on Tuesday while rejecting calls for a tax on its financial windfall.
The company raked in $12.8 billion in profits in 2021—more than its annual income for the past eight years. The announcement comes a week after BP's rival Shell reported $19.3 billion in profits last year.
"BP and Shell are raking in billions from the gas price crisis while enjoying one of the most favorable tax regimes in the world for offshore drillers."
BP CEO Bernard Looney said Tuesday the company is "delivering distributions to shareholders with $4.15 billion of buybacks announced," and the company intends to deliver $1.5 billion more in share buybacks.
"We see these wealthy firms extracting billions in profit from one of our most basic needs," said Ryan Morrison, a just transition campaigner for Friends of the Earth Scotland. "BP and other fossil fuel bosses are getting even richer as the price of energy pushes millions more homes into fuel poverty and forces people to choose between heating and eating."
Oil and gas prices have skyrocketed in recent months due to higher demand following economic shutdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, with the crisis in Ukraine being blamed for pushing them even higher.
In the U.K., an estimated 22 million households are expected to see their energy costs rise after the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (OFGEM) announced last week a 54% increase to its price cap from 2021.
Household energy bills in the U.K. could rise by nearly $1,000 per year, according to CNBC.
BP's announcement intensified calls for a windfall tax for large fossil fuel companies in the U.K., which, Greenpeace head of climate Kate Blogojevich noted, are "pushing our world closer to catastrophic climate change" while collecting record profits.
"These profits are a slap in the face to the millions of people dreading their next energy bill," Blagojevich said. "BP and Shell are raking in billions from the gas price crisis while enjoying one of the most favorable tax regimes in the world for offshore drillers."
Caroline Lucas, a member of British Parliament representing the Green Party, called BP's profits "obscene" in light of the energy and cost-of-living crisis in Britain.
Despite reports that more than one million additional U.K. households could struggle to afford adequate heat due to rising prices, Finance Minister Rishi Sunak last week rejected calls for a windfall tax for oil and gas profits derived from drilling in the North Sea, where BP and Shell have drilled for decades.
Looney also dismissed demands for a windfall tax, which the Labour Party put forward earlier this month, saying it could save most households more than $200 per year on energy costs.
"We need more gas, not less gas, and therefore we need to encourage investment into the North Sea and not discourage it. That's number one," Looney told CNBC Tuesday. "And the second thing is around the transition, we need to accelerate the transition."
Like other Big Oil companies, BP has recently released plans to purportedly reduce emissions and shift toward renewable energy sources as global experts at the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have warned that companies must stop burning fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis and to limit global heating to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.
But as Common Dreams reported last week, climate pledges released by companies including BP, Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil are rife with loopholes which "ultimately serve little more than to greenwash the fossil fuel industry's image and deceive customers about the climate risks inherent in continued use of its products," according to the Center for Climate Integrity.
"Oil company bosses are being allowed to make obscene profits from climate breakdown and the gas price crisis on the back of widespread devastation for people around the world," said Morrison Tuesday.
The Stop Cambo campaign, which successfully pressured Shell to cancel plans to develop the Cambo oil field in the North Sea late last year, tweeted that the solution to the energy crisis as well as the climate catastrophe is "cheap, green energy."
"Instead of allowing these companies to continue causing social and environmental devastation for their own pocket, we need to overhaul our energy system to end our dependence on oil and gas," said Morrison.
"It's time to rapidly scale up investment in renewables and energy efficiency while winding down fossil fuel production to create affordable renewable energy for everyone," he added. "A just transition will not be realized while profit-obsessed fossil fuel companies call the shots."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
KOO KOO KONSPIRACIES
Kevin McCarthy says he'll probe COVID-19 origins and investigate allegations that the Bidens have made millions from deals with China if the GOP wins the House in 2022
Cheryl Teh Sun, February 6, 2022
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he will set up a committee to "investigate the origins of COVID" if the Republicans were to win the House in 2022.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Rep. Kevin McCarthy wants to set up a "committee on China" if the GOP takes the House in 2022.
McCarthy said this committee would, among other things, investigate the origins of COVID-19.
He also said GOP may investigate claim that the Bidens made millions from China while he was VP.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he would set up a committee on China to investigate the origins of COVID-19 if the Republicans were to take a majority in Congress in 2022.
"When we take the majority, we will create that committee on China, and it will be a bipartisan committee, so you will have one American voice on how we can compete where China comes in and captures the critical minerals when they come in and capture our medical supply and others," said McCarthy this weekend on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."
McCarthy added that a GOP majority in the House would probe whether the Biden family made millions in dealings with the Chinese government while Biden was vice president. He cited a claim by Peter Schweizer, president of the conservative think tank Government Accountability Institute, that the Bidens have benefited from Chinese funds.
"We might have to go further. You might just have to be able to have a further investigation just within this family. What are they doing, and where did this money come from?" McCarthy told the show's host, Maria Bartiromo. "You take the actions of the Democrats — I do not know what China has on these people, but it must be so powerful because the actions at every turn stop and harm us but protect China."
Rumors have long persisted that Biden made large sums of money in deals with China. However, according to a CNN fact check of those claims: "There is no evidence Joe Biden has received large sums of money from China or has otherwise gained wealth as a result of his son's business dealings abroad."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
France's nuclear ambitions take shape with turbine deal
Unlike Germany, France remains staunchly pro-nuclear
(AFP/Sameer Al-DOUMY)
Jeremy MAROT Mon, February 7, 2022, 6:19 AM·2 min read
French electricity giant EDF prepared Monday to close a deal for the nuclear turbines business of General Electric, the latest step in President Emmanuel Macron's plans to revive his country's atomic power drive.
Buying the turbines would give EDF a key component for the new EPR reactors it hopes to build in France while also wooing international clients looking to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for energy.
Talks with GE were announced last September, when Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire hailed a deal that "increases EDF's capacity to build our future energy system and fulfil our industrial ambitions for this strategic sector".
It would mark a return for the turbines business to France seven years after GE's purchase of the unit from Alstom -- a controversial deal approved by Macron, who was finance minister at the time.
Details have not been released, though financial daily Les Echos said EDF would pay $273 million (236 million euros), of which $73 million is assumed debt, if approved by the board of the state-controlled firm late Monday.
EDF's board of directors met on Monday, several sources told AFP.
However, the company was not expected to formalise a takeover on Monday and would await the signing of a memorandum of understanding before communicating further, added one source who asked not to be named.
If announced in the coming days, a deal would come ahead of a trip by Macron on Thursday to Belfort, in eastern France, an industrial basin that is home to GE's main production site for its steam turbine systems.
He is expected to announce further details of a new nuclear push he insists is crucial for supplying zero-emission electricity as Europe moves to slow global warming and reduce its dependence on imported oil and natural gas.
That could see next-generation EPR2 reactors built in France in the coming years and the development of more affordable Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which could replace existing coal-fired plants.
EDF has said Scandinavian and Eastern European countries are interested in building SMR plants, but EU heavyweight Germany remains strongly opposed to nuclear power over safety and radioactive pollution risks.
France generates 70 percent of its electricity from a network of more than 50 reactors across the country, but many are nearing the end of their lifespan.
EDF is building its first EPR, a technology that heats highly pressurised water to power a steam turbine, at Flamanville in northwestern France, but the project has sustained multiple delays and cost overruns since its launch in 2007.
GE, for its part, has been shedding assets for several years in a bid to focus on its energy production businesses, which include nuclear fuel and reactors, as well as healthcare and aircraft engines.
jmt-cho-js-sjw/imm
Lebanon returns 337 artifacts of different eras to Iraq 2 / 7 An Iraqi clay tablet is displayed between a Lebanese flag, right, and an Iraqi flag during a ceremony held at the National Museum of Beirut, before 337 artifacts were handed over by Lebanese Minister of Culture Mohammed Murtada to Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Feb. 6, 2022. Until they were handed over, the artifacts had been kept at the private Nabu Museum in north Lebanon.
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Sun, February 6, 2022,
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's Ministry of Culture handed over to Iraq on Sunday 337 ancient artifacts that had been on display in a Lebanese museum for years.
The items, which included clay tablets, were returned by Minister of Culture Mohammed Murtada to Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon during a ceremony held at the National Museum of Beirut.
Murtada told Iraq’s state-run news agency in a Saturday report that a Lebanese committee had been investigating the items since 2018.
The artifacts had been stored most recently at the private Nabu Museum in northern Lebanon. The report gave no further details about the artifacts' provenance.
“We are celebrating the handing over of 337 artifacts that are of different eras of civilizations in Mesopotamia,” Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon Haider Shyaa Al-Barrak said at the ceremony. This will not be the last handover, he added, without elaborating.
Many of Iraq’s antiquities were looted during the country's decades of war and instability, mostly since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Iraq’s government has been slowly recovering the plundered antiquities since then. Archaeological sites across the country however continue to be neglected due to lack of funds.
At least half dozen shipments of antiquities and documents have been returned to Iraq’s museum since 2016, according to Iraqi authorities.
Mexican president irked by French auctions of artifacts
Mon, February 7, 2022,
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Monday French auction houses had gone beyond the pale with brazen sales of pre-Hispanic artifacts.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said some auction houses had gone so far as to send Mexico’s archaeological institute photos of relics, asking if they were genuine, so they could sell them for more money.
López Obrador said he had issued orders for the government National Institute of Anthropology and History, known by its Spanish initials as the INAH, to stop responding to such requests.
“They, the organizations that auction these pieces off, are so brazen they ask the INAH for information, they send photos, so the INAH can tell them if these are authentic or fakes,” López Obrador said.
The president also took a dig at the French government, which has done nothing to stop a series of such auctions in recent years. López Obrador said the French should be more like the Italian government, which has made a point of identifying and returning ancient artifacts.
“It is very regrettable that the French government hasn’t passed legislation on this, as has been the case in Italy,” López Obrador said.
“We are going to raise this on the international level. We have managed to recover a lot of pieces and that is very important,” the president said. “For example, Italy and the United States have sent us a lot of pieces.”
López Obrador said First Lady Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller had written to France’s foreign minister asking for two upcoming sales of around 50 Mexican artifacts to be stopped.
The Paris auction house Société Baecque et Associés is scheduled to auction off native artifacts from around the world on Feb. 9.
On Feb. 11, the Société Binoche et Giquello is scheduled to auction a variety of pre-Hispanic artifacts from across Latin America.
López Obrador said many of the pieces in those sales are fakes, and asked potential buyers “not to act like criminals.”
The president and the first lady have mounted a campaign to win the return of artifacts from the Maya, Aztec and other pre-Hispanic cultures, and the president said 6,000 relics have been returned to Mexico so far.
But despite letter-writing and diplomatic requests, Mexico has had little success in convincing the French to crack down on the lucrative trade.
The most recent occurred in November, when Christie’s Paris branch auctioned off 72 sculptures and figurines from the Maya and Olmec cultures despite Mexico’s claim that the pieces were national treasures and part of its national heritage. Fifteen other items failed to sell.
One stone Maya carving, traditionally known as an “Axe” because of its shape, went for almost $800,000 (692,000 euros). The Christie’s catalogue described the piece as a “sculpturally-carved with a bearded dignitary with his head dramatically thrown back and struggling with a sinuous, mythical rattle snake.”
Mexico previously failed to stop several auctions, including a sale of pre-Hispanic sculptures and other artifacts by Christie’s Paris earlier last year.
Mexican archaeologist Leonardo López Luján, who has overseen the excavations in Mexico City’s Templo Mayor, wrote on his Twitter account at the time that “this is a never-ending story.”
“It’s proven that the old, recurring method of sending letters and demands does not have any effect, other than pretending that something is being done,” López Lujan wrote.
Paris auction houses often sell Indigenous artifacts that are already on the art market, despite protests from activists who say they should be returned to their native lands. Christie’s said the Mayan sculpture, for example, had been bought by a European collector from the U.S. around 1970.
That appears to pre-date a 1972 Mexican law that forbids export or sale of archeological or significant cultural artifacts.
López Obrador also took a dig at Austria for refusing to return a headdress that was reputedly once owned by the one of the last Aztec emperors, saying Austria’s attitude was “egotistical” and “anti-culture.”
The semicircle of green feathers from the Quetzal bird and other species is more than one yard (meter) wide, rather large for headgear.
Held at the museum of ethnology in Vienna, López Obrador said the Austrians had argued it was too fragile to be moved.
Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, gave the feathered headdress as a gift to Spanish Conqueror Hernan Cortes in 1519. But Mexican officials concede Montezuma probably never personally wore it.
Social-media star snake catcher released from hospital after he was bit by a cobra and treated with 65 bottles of anti-venom, reports say
Kieran Press-Reynolds
A file photo of a Cobra snake.Getty Images
The snake catcher Vava Suresh was discharged from the hospital, according to the news outlet Onmanorama.
A video of Suresh being bit by a venomous snake on January 31 circulated online.
Suresh is popular on the internet, with many followers across YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
The snake catcher and social media star Vava Suresh was discharged Monday from an Indian hospital a week after he was bit by a venomous snake, according to the Indian outlet Onmanorama.
Suresh left the Kottayam Medical College Hospital in Kottayam, India around 11 a.m. in good condition, Onmanorama reported. A cobra snake had bitten him a week earlier on January 31 while he was trying to pick it up, according to the outlet.
A video of the moment was shared online by the outlet Indian Express. In the 21 second clip, Suresh can be seen holding a wriggling snake and trying to place it in a large bag. After a few seconds, the snake appeared to latch onto his leg as onlookers cried out and fled after he dropped the cobra on the ground.
Suresh, who went into cardiac arrest after the snake bite, was transported to the hospital and regained consciousness on Thursday after he spent several days in an Intensive Care Unit and on a ventilator, Onmanorama reported.
He was treated with 65 bottles of anti-venom, Onmanorama reported. According to the outlet, 25 bottles of the anti-venom are typically used, but Suresh required the higher dosage to combat the effects of the bite.
Suresh is widely known across the internet. He has over 500,000 subscribers and 51 million views on YouTube, where he has posted numerous videos showing him catching snakes. He also has 2 million Facebook followers and almost 75,000 on Instagram.
The outlet India Today called Suresh the "Steve Irwin" of Kerala, India, a reference to the late Irwin's reputation as a fearless crocodile hunter. Suresh first caught a snake when he was 12 years old, and has captured over 30,000 snakes over the years, according to India Today.
Suresh did not respond to a request for comment.
EAT THE RICH Of Course It’s OK to Out the BAYC Founders
Will Gottsegen Mon, February 7, 2022, 11:19 AM·5 min read
This past Friday, BuzzFeed News’ Katie Notopoulos published a story revealing the identities of “Gordon Goner” and “Gargamel” – the two pseudonymous founders of Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project. “Gordon Goner” is Wylie Aronow, a 35-year-old from Florida, and “Gargamel” is Greg Solano, a 32-year-old writer. Buzzfeed made the discovery by going through public business records; Yuga Labs is incorporated in Delaware, with an address tied to Solano.
This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.
We’d already known a little about the founders: In interviews with Rolling Stone, CoinDesk and The New York Times, they’d shared details about their backgrounds (both men had backgrounds in writing, for example) and their path to creating the Bored Apes.
But for some of the biggest crypto influencers and investors, Buzzfeed’s revelation was a bridge too far.
The influencer “Cobie,” formerly known as “Crypto Cobain,” called Notopoulos a “whore for clicks.”
“They’re literally cartoon apes,” wrote the investor Mike Solana, apparently trying to downplay the importance of the subject matter. “There was absolutely no reason to dox these guys. The heroic language being used by journalists to describe this story as if it were some kind of massive scoop in the public’s interest is disgusting.”
Outside of crypto, the word “dox” (usually defined as “publicizing someone’s private information”) specifically connotes harassment; within the space, its meaning is slightly more complicated. Founders will sometimes make a point of doxxing themselves as a show of faith, attempting to convince investors they won’t just run off with their money (this is significantly easier when no one knows who you are).
There’s a strong culture of anonymity, in crypto, which stems from its “cypherpunk” history.
It’s weird, to the uninitiated. Traditional finance reporters pivoting to crypto in the past year have consistently balked at the idea of allowing subjects (not just sources) to remain pseudonymous in stories when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. And it’s part of why, in the public imagination, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have remained so closely associated with misuse and criminality. Why stay anonymous if you have nothing to hide?
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to stay anonymous even if you have nothing to hide. The premise of crypto is that maybe, if you feel like it, you should be able to send money without handing over your personal details to a bank.
But the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders aren’t just anyone. The Bored Apes have dominated the discourse around NFTs for months, both in and out of the crypto space. At this point, they’re de facto brand ambassadors for crypto collectibles.
The Financial Times recently reported that Andreessen Horowitz, a powerful venture capital firm with billions already invested in crypto, is in talks to buy a major stake in Yuga Labs – financing that would value the company at around $5 billion.
To me, the identity of these two founders is unambiguously a story in and of itself. The BuzzFeed article didn’t do a whole lot with the identities of these two men; Notoupolos admitted they hadn’t done anything wrong, really. But ultimately, Aronow and Solano are at the helm of a business that’s potentially worth billions of dollars. Apes have flooded the market and saturated the culture. Why shouldn’t a journalist go looking for more details?
It’s also worth noting that Notopoulos didn’t come by this information nefariously or unjustly; she found it online, in publicly available business records.
Some reporters have taken the view that doxxing is unnecessary, period, unless the person in question has done something wrong.
There’s often a real risk in outing subjects, particularly ones who stand to face personal danger if their identity is revealed (think: subjects living in Russia, who might be thrown in jail). No reasonable reporter wants to ruin anyone’s life for the sake of a story. And “burning” vulnerable sources has long been considered a cardinal sin.
In a piece for CoinDesk in 2020, Marc Hochstein (my boss and the site’s head of editorial ethics) wrote that “if you’re going to reveal someone’s personal information without their consent, you better have a damn good reason to do it.”
Larry Cermak, a crypto researcher who said he disagrees with BuzzFeed News’ decision to out the BAYC founders, suggested on Twitter that it would be similarly wrong to dox Satoshi Nakamoto, the famously pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin.
Again, I have to disagree. Satoshi Nakamoto is inarguably one of the most important people in the history of 21st century finance, and journalists have been trying to out him for years. His stash of bitcoin (now worth tens of billions of dollars) gives him significant control over the markets; he could tank it all in minutes, if he sold. The influence of that stake can’t be overstated. The revelation of Nakamoto’s true identity would be an industry-shaking bombshell about one of the richest and most powerful people in this ecosystem.
Nakamoto’s identity still hasn’t been revealed, mostly because he was incredibly careful about covering his tracks. His personal bitcoin remains untouched. And because he hasn’t cashed out, there’s no real paper trail.
The BAYC founders, on the other hand, incorporated their company in Delaware using a personal address. They weren’t cypherpunks when they created Yuga Labs, they were writers and lay crypto enthusiasts, which is to say they hid themselves more sloppily.
They’re within their rights to remain pseudonymous, but reporters are within their rights to out them, too.
Reporting on the rich and powerful shouldn’t be controversial, from an ethics perspective. It’s just journalism.
Wrath of the crypto bros: Buzzfeed attacked for revealing identity of Bored Ape NFT creators
Noam Galai—Getty Images
Christiaan Hetzner Mon, February 7, 2022
In the escapist fantasy of the metaverse, digital avatars offer users the chance to be anyone or anything … bored apes included.
A core part of the libertarian allure is the greater sense of control over one’s privacy that digital avatars provide. Fake names and images shields people’s identity, including from the authorities that exert daily influence over the analogue world of the flesh.
So when Buzzfeed tech journalist Katie Notopolous fished through public records to uncover the names of two men behind the wildly successful Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, crypto bros reached for their pitchforks eager to protect their own.
“What Buzzfeed did today to the BAYC founders was not only unprofessional — it was downright dangerous,” tweeted Adam Hollander, founder of Microsoft's Incent Games, without specifiying exactly why.
The “Hungry Wolves” NFT creator—himself is a BAYC member—argued the U.S. site now had a moral duty to pay for a personal security detail to protect Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, previously known only as “Gargamel” and “Gordon Goner”.
News of their identities comes at a sensitive time when the Bored Ape founders—represented by Madonna's former PR manager Guy Oseary—and the parent company Yuga Labs—managed by Nicole Muniz—is reportedly planning to cash in on its fame.
“The backlash isn’t surprising, but it betrays deep ignorance about the function of journalism and an entitled belief that crypto must be covered on its own terms,” wrote Jeff Bercovici, deputy business editor at the Los Angeles Times.
Part of the controversy around cryptoasset vendors is that the use of fictitious identities throws the door open to criminal elements. Grifters can more easily exploit people's fear of missing out on lucrative fads and get-rich-quick schemes, while money launderers use decentralized finance (DeFi) to conceal the origins of illicit gains from tax authorities.
Other NFT minters, such as CryptoPunks creators Matt Hall and John Watkinson, do not rely on pseudonyms, for example, nor does Hollander. Buzzfeed’s decision to reveal the names of Solano and Arownow consequently raises a broader issue of privacy rights in the metaverse, also known as Web3.
The question is whether hiding behind an avatar should remain the exclusive personal choice for those playing an outsized role in this rapidly expanding ecosystem — one in which they themselves serve as gatekeepers.
Entry into the Bored Ape Yacht Club community, for example, requires purchasing one of the exclusive NFTs, currently estimated to start at over $200,000 each and running into the millions for those with greater rarity.
Minted last spring, the collection of 10,000 digital apes patterned on a template designed by Asian American artist Seneca reportedly sold out within a day. An added differentiator and part of the appeal for the Bored Ape collection is its greater utility: unlike with most other NFTs, the purchase confers holders the full rights to commercialize the image.
Hyped by celebrities ranging from Paris Hilton to Snoop Dogg, the Bored Ape collection and its four creators were featured by Rolling Stone in November, complete with the magazine’s first ever Digital Cover NFT.
Although in existence for a number of years, non-fungible tokens broke through in 2021 as a whole new asset class that grants ownership over digital collectibles with the help of the blockchain, a distributed ledger technology.
“They’re also (and sometimes primarily) an access pass to a specific community,” explained Camila Russo, author of The Infinite Machine and publisher of the DeFi news website The Defiant.
It’s precisely this broader community of crypto degens that now feels it is under attack by the increasing media scrutiny.
We Found The Real Names Of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Pseudonymous Founders
The buzzy NFT collection has raked in millions and the eager support of dozens of celebrities. But its founders’ anonymity raises questions about accountability in the age of crypto.
In late January, Paris Hilton appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show. In a segment that was widely mocked for its boosterism, Hilton and host Jimmy Fallon each pulled out printouts of their “Bored Apes” — digital images from a collection of 10,000 unique drawings. Fallon had purchased his last fall for around $216,000, and Hilton had just bought hers for over $300,000. Together the pair had spent half a million dollars on nonfungible tokens, or NFTS: unique digital assets that exist only on the blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger with no trusted intermediary.
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), a collection of simian avatars created by four pseudonymous founders, has quickly become an extremely lucrative venture in a fast-growing space. It recently surpassed competitors to become the most expensive NFT collection — the floor price to buy the cheapest ones is now over $280,000, and the collection currently has a market cap of about $2.8 billion. Yuga Labs, the company that makes BAYC, is reportedly in talks with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz about an investment that would value it at $5 billion (Horowitz, also an investor in BuzzFeed, did not respond to a request for comment). How do you hold them accountable if you don’t know who they are?
BAYC makes money not just from the initial sale (approximately $2 million) of its NFT apes, but also from a 2.5% royalty on future trades. It has real-world licensing deals with the likes of Adidas and was involved in a concert event with Chris Rock and the Strokes. Now held by dozens of celebrities, the Bored Apes have become a flashpoint for both excitement and skepticism about NFTs, which boosters say will revolutionize art and commerce by creating a level playing field free of race and gender, and detractors say are a speculative bubble at best and a scam at worst.
As the value of the asset they produced has skyrocketed, the identities of BAYC’s founders have become the subject of intense interest — not all of it positive. People have pointed out that apes in streetwear-inspired outfits and gold teeth is a racist trope (representatives for Yuga Labs vigorously denied this). Others have expressed concern that Seneca, the young Asian American artist who actually drew the main artwork, has been underacknowledged and undercompensated for her work. Nicole Muniz, the public-facing CEO of Yuga Labs, told BuzzFeed News, “Every single artist of the original five were compensated over a million dollars each." (Seneca did not respond a request for comment.) This reveals a unique problem with the idea of a billion-dollar company run by an unknown person: How do you hold them accountable if you don’t know who they are? BuzzFeed News can now reveal the identities of BAYC’s two main founders: Greg Solano, a 32-year-old writer and editor, and Wylie Aronow, a 35-year-old originally from Florida.
Neither man immediately responded to a request for comment.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon via YouTube / Via youtube.com Jimmy Fallon shows a printout of Paris Hilton’s Bored Ape on The Tonight Show.
BuzzFeed News searched public business records to reveal the identities of the two core founders, who go by the pseudonyms “Gordon Goner” and “Gargamel.” According to publicly available records, Yuga Labs, the company name behind BAYC, is incorporated in Delaware with an address associated with Greg Solano. Other records linked Solano to Wylie Aronow. Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz confirmed the identities of both men to BuzzFeed News.
Speaking as Gordon Goner and Gargamel, the founders have given interviews to outlets like Rolling Stone and the New Yorker discussing the origin story of the idea of a group of rich apes living in a swamp clubhouse. The broad strokes of their biographies fit Solano and Aronow: They’re both in their 30s, met while growing up in Florida, and both had literary aspirations (one completed an MFA degree in creative writing, the other dropped out for health reasons, according to their interview in CoinDesk). They both were interested in crypto and wanted to create some sort of NFT collection. They came up with the concept of rich apes living in a swamp clubhouse, hired a freelance illustrator to draw the apes, and partnered with two engineers as cofounders to execute the collection. The identities of the two engineer cofounders, “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” and “No Sass,” remain unknown.
Greg Solano, or “Gargamel,” appears as an editor and book critic on a few literary websites, and attended the University of Virginia. He coauthored a book about World of Warcraft along with one of the game's designers.
Wylie Aronow, 35, is also from Miami. Aronow lived in Chicago for a while, where he was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune in a “Readers of the Week” story where he and a friend were asked about what books they were reading (he said he had recently enjoyed a translation of the work of Russian author Nikolai Gogol).
In May 2021, a crypto company called Bitmex took Aronow to arbitration over a disputed domain name. Aronow had bought the domain name bitmex.guru in 2018, which Bitmex argued was clearly designed to trick people looking for the real Bitmex website. Aronow did not appear, and the arbitrator ordered that the domain name be transferred after his default in the proceeding.
Pseudonymity is an ingrained part of Web3, the umbrella term for a vision of a decentralized, user-owned internet with cryptocurrency payments and NFTs at its core. Proponents of Web3 see this as a chance to cure some of the ills of Web2’s toxic social platforms. Holyn Kanake, a former Twitter employee and influential crypto enthusiast, wrote in her Substack newsletter about the potential for communities not required to use their legal names — but held accountable by their blockchain reputation — to reduce harassment.
Playing with the concept of identity has also been a wellspring of creativity for NFT artists. One popular NFT artist who only goes by “shl0ms” sold an NFT of an image revealing his true identity details — but all that information was written in illegible white font. Other artists have used this to toy with the concepts of traditional copyright, from things like copying Damien Hirst’s famous polka dots to selling images of Olive Gardens. (Disclaimer: This reporter owns one of those Olive Garden NFTs.)
Artistic value aside, the people behind BAYC are courting investors and running a business that is potentially worth billions.
Noam Galai / Getty Images People walk by a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT billboard in Times Square on Jan. 25, 2022.
As NFTs continue to expand into popular culture and Web3 goes mainstream, the issue of pseudonymously run companies dealing with real money — and lots of it — is a new economic and legal reality.
There are reasons why in the traditional business world, the CEO or founder of a company uses their real name and not a pseudonym. For publicly traded companies, executives must be named in Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures and reports. For even smaller private companies, there are banking regulations and “know your customer” laws that require real names for banks lending money or holding accounts for companies. These laws are in part to prevent terrorists, criminals, or sanctioned nations from doing business in the US.
Solano and Aronow don’t appear to have any particular red flags (apart from Aronow domain name squatting). But what if in a different NFT collective, the founders turn out to have a long criminal history or extreme political leanings that might make collectors regret spending huge sums of money on their products?
“It should not be difficult to know who you are dealing with,” Gary Kalman, director of the US office of the advocacy group Transparency International, told BuzzFeed News. “This is a pretty basic thing.” While a fancy VC firm might be able to find out more about who is really behind a company, the average NFT holder can’t. “Without transparency and openness, then everyday people that can’t do the due diligence that major corporations are doing, then that can create problems — and there’s no reason for it.”
“It will meaningfully open up opportunities for people who otherwise have the odds against them.”
Some believe that the blockchain heralds a new and improved form of corporate transparency. “Yes, there can be accountability,” said Mark Cuban, entrepreneur and owner of two Bored Apes. “The reason is that all transactions are based on smart contracts and written to the blockchain, which is the antithesis of traditional business. What other collectibles business publishes all their sales and business processes?”
It’s possible that pseudonymous companies could become our new reality. Soona Amhaz, a partner at crypto-focused venture capital firm Volt Capital, believes there might be some benefit in that. Unlike the traditional startup world, it frees founders from judgments of their physical appearance, where they went to school, and their social class, gender, or race. “It will meaningfully open up opportunities for people who otherwise have the odds against them because they didn’t come from the right school, right corporations, or because they live in a place where unstealthing yourself could mean becoming a target,” she told BuzzFeed News.
According to Amhaz, it’s possible for investors to learn how to do due diligence with pseudonymous founders; they just need to adjust and adapt. In the recent case of a founder of a decentralized finance protocol being revealed to be someone previously convicted of fraud, the information had been sitting there in the blockchain if someone had just pieced together the links. “It’s an unfamiliar way of doing things and relatively new,” Amhaz said, “but I truly believe it will be a meaningful part of the future of work.”
Emily Baker-White contributed reporting to this story. Katie Notopoulos is a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. Contact this reporter at katie@buzzfeed.com
REAL LIBERTARIANS BELIEVE IN CHILDREN RIGHTS
‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’: meet the teens of the Banned Book Club
Adam Gabbatt with photographs by Hannah Yoon Mon, February 7, 2022, 1:00 AM·7 min read
“Napoleon’s use of the sheep was notable,” says Jordan Daughtry, 14. She’s clutching a copy of Animal Farm, and referring to the authoritarian Berkshire boar who seizes control of an English acreage, before bending his fellow animals to his will.
The sheep, who represent the unwitting masses in George Orwell’s critique of Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian rule, are “ignorant buffoons”, Daughtry says.
Jordan’s sibling, Kiara Daughtry, 16, continues the thought.
“It did kind of remind me of the whole ‘stop the steal’ thing,” Kiara says, referencing the January 6 insurrection, when Donald Trump’s supporters, spurred by a wave of lies by the then president, besieged the US Capitol. “And all that nonsense.”
The Daughtrys are sitting in the back of Firefly bookstore, a gem of new and used literature in the small town of Kutztown, central Pennsylvania. Huddled together on foldout chairs, facing down a table laden with muffins, pretzels and a stuffed toy pig, they’re members of Kutztown’s Banned Book Club, which meets every two weeks to read and discuss literature that conservatives across the country are working to ban from school libraries.
Kiara Daughtry, left, and Lena Cackley.
The book club members, all aged between 13 and 16, are gathered at a time of crisis. In the past year the book-banning movement has already seen works that mostly address race or LGBTQ issues removed from libraries in Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming and Pennsylvania.
Like many young people in the US, the members of the Kutztown Banned Book Club feel the censorship closing in. In December, the Pennridge school district, 30 miles from Kutztown, removed the children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies, a picture book about a lesbian couple and their child, from elementary school libraries.
Last year, Pennsylvania’s Central York school board banned a long list of books, almost entirely titles by, or about, people of color. The ban was overturned in September after students protested.
“I love to read, so it’s kind of frustrating to see the bans, especially because a lot of adults are banning it, but they’re not asking teenagers our opinion on these books,” Joselyn Diffenbaugh says. A softly spoken 14-year-old, sporting bangs and a plaid shirt, she founded the Banned Book Club in response to the sweeping prohibition in the US.
“It’s scary to know that all these people who might need these books for a reason, because maybe they’re just learning about themselves, and they need something to read, they don’t have access to that.”
Joslyn Diffenbaugh. ‘I love to read so it’s kind of frustrating to see the bans.’
Last week the issue gained extra attention, after the Pulitzer-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale was banned from classrooms in McMinn county, Tennessee, by the local school board. The board objected to “rough, objectionable language” in the book, which describes the experiences of author Art Spiegelman’s parents in Nazi concentration camps, and his mother’s suicide. Maus has since become a bestseller on Amazon.
At Firefly, the book club is discussing Animal Farm when I join them. The allegorical novel has not been targeted in the recent banning wave, but it was banned in the USSR until the Soviet Union fell, and in the UK during the second world war – when the government felt its publication could anger their Soviet allies. It was later banned in Florida – where it was seen to be “pro-communist”.
Next on the reading list will be The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, an award-winning young adult novel about the shooting of a young unarmed black man by a white police officer, which has been removed from various school libraries. But right now the conversation moves from Napoleon’s hold over Animal Farm’s sheep to why none of the animals simply left the farm.
A copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Right, Jesse Hastings.
Bridget Johnson, who at 13 is the youngest in the group, shows no fear in joining in the conversation: “I can kind of see that happening with real people in real life. Not knowing, not risking it, not changing anything.”
There are echoes of Animal Farm’s manipulation, mistruths and – as one book club member put it – “gaslighting” in the movement to outlaw books in the US. The effort has been spearheaded by groups, which claim to be grassroots efforts, petitioning school boards or elected officials to remove certain books. In reality, many of the groups involved in banning books are linked to and backed by influential conservative donors.
Most of the books relate to race or gender equality, at a time when some Republicans are mounting an effort to prevent teaching on race in schools by launching a loud campaign against critical race theory, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society.
The book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, which tackles the hardship of coming out and discovering one’s gender identity, is one of the most banned. Since it was published in 2019, it has been challenged by groups in at least 11 states, including Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Clockwise from left: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Handmaid’s Tale, Thirteen Reasons Why and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Elsewhere, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, a novel which addresses racial and gender oppression, was recently ordered to be removed from school libraries in Florida and Missouri. Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez chronicles a love affair between a Mexican American girl and a Black boy in 1930s Texas. Over the past year it has been banned in multiple states.
“I was disappointed that it was being allowed to happen, it just didn’t make sense to me that it could happen like that,” Johnson says of the spate of bans. Johnson, whose mother is waiting in a car outside the bookstore while the group meets, likes reading but says she is a slow reader. “I find it way easier to read with other people, and then talk about it. So I have a whole group of people to talk about it with.”
Her dad, who used to serve on the Kutztown school board, has been particularly animated on the topic.
“I hear him rant about it,” Johnson says.
As for the efforts, which are happening increasingly close to home, Johnson said any attempts to ban books at her school would be misguided.
“It would suck!” she says.
Elijah Sicher, left, and Jillian Rager.
“And usually it’s out of hate from that person, like against a community. A little kid, it’s not going to make them a certain way, it’s going to help them find out they’re a certain way.”
After an hour and a half, the book club draws to a close. The pig, placed on the table to represent the pig elites of Animal Farm, is removed, and relegated to a place on a shelf.
Jesse Hastings, a tall 16-year-old with dark glasses, holds a new copy of The Hate U Give – all the book club’s literature is funded by a wave of donations – as she heads out into the brisk Kutztown night. Hastings, who had offered assured commentary during the Animal Farm discussion, says she was “shocked” by the spate of bannings: “And especially for some of the ridiculous reasons that some books are being banned.”
“A lot of the books were banned just because they had Black representation of LGBTQ representation,” she says.
“Especially for young kids who are queer, or are people of color, it’s really important to see representation if books, and if you aren’t allowed access to that then that can be detrimental.”
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Right, Bridget Johnson, who at 13 is the youngest of the group.
As well as the impact on people who might have found kinship with banned authors, or representation in now-restricted books, Hastings says there is another unsavory aspect to all of this.
“It is a major issue, because already there’s a huge lack of representation of minorities in novels. And you know, there’s banning of books that discuss politics and things.
“I think it leads to a lot of kids being a lot more closed-minded.”
Sámi National Day, but many Michiganders might not know what that is
Elissa Welle, Detroit Free Press Sun, February 6, 2022, A Sámi flag flies outside Finlandia University in Hancock, MI in celebration of Sámi National Day.
Today is Sámi National Day, a day of celebration for the thousands of members of the indigenous group from northern Norway, Finland, Sweden and the Kola Peninsula in Russia.
What Michiganders might not know is the Upper Peninsula is home to the highest concentration of Finns -- many of whom are Sámi -- in the U.S. Between 16% and 34% of residents of Marquette, Baraga, Gogebic and Keweenaw counties list Finnish ancestry, according to U.S. census data between 2015-2019.
James Kurtti, Honorary Finnish Consul for Upper Michigan and former director of the Finnish American Heritage Center at Finlandia University in Hancock, Michigan, said the presence of Sámi descendants in northern Michigan is significant but not necessarily noticeable. Sámi immigrants began to arrive in northern Michigan in the 1860s to work in copper mines after a decline in the mining industry in Scandinavia, Kurtti said. They also left the region to escape governmental pressure to assimilate to Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish culture. Many Sámis lost their land and languages through land seizures and forced residential boarding schools, similar to what indigenous tribes experienced in Northern America by the U.S. and Canadian governments.
In moving to the U.S. in the late 1800s, many Sámi people buried their cultural identities, Kurtti said. The Sámis were often mistaken as Finnish, despite having distinct languages and culture. This mischaracterization continues today in Michigan.
"There was a time when it wasn't popular to be (Sámi) and people saw it as something that was fading away," Kurtti said. "It's only been in recent years that there's been this rekindling and exploration of people into their Sámi roots."
Sámi National Day commemorates the first Sámi congress held in Trondheim, Norway, in 1917 to discuss problems common across the Sápmi region. Despite never having their own country, the Sámi worked to establish their own parliament in Finland, Sweden and Norway.
The Sámi continue to fight for land rights in the Sámpi region. As recently as Feb. 4, Sámi activists were joined by Greta Thunberg to protest the proposition of a new mine in northern Sweden.
A resurgence of interest in Sámi culture in the last several decades has led cities in northern Michigan to include Sámi traditions in annual events. Kurtti said the Sámi flag is raised outside the Finnish American Heritage Center in Hancock on Sámi National Day. The center also offers programming on Sámi culture.
Since 1999, Hancock has hosted a Finnish-American celebration called Heikinpäivä around the time of St. Henrik’s Day, a day that signifies winter's halfway point. It has been canceled for two years due to COVID-19. Kurtti hopes it can resume next year.
