Update (March 4, 12:15 am UTC): This article has been updated to add price information on ApeCoin and Yuga Labs’ NFTs.
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,” it added.
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.
Source: Yuga Labs
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 tokens, 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 floor price of Yuga Labs’ flagship Bored Ape collection saw a slight bump after the company’s post to 13.75 Ether (ETH), around $29,650, but is down over 0.5% in the past day, according to OpenSea data.
The collection is still over 90% down from its May 2022 peak floor price of 153.7 ETH, which would’ve priced the cheapest Bored Ape NFT around $430,300 as ETH traded at $2,800.
Yuga Labs’ Mutant Ape NFTs and a token tied to the company’s NFTs called ApeCoin (APE) are also both down 95% or more from their 2022 peaks, CoinGecko shows. CryptoPunks floor prices are also down over 70% from the collection’s peak.
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.
Related: US crypto reserve no substitute for SEC clarity — Industry exec
Late last month, the NFT marketplace OpenSea said the SEC closed its investigation into the platform, which came just hours after the regulator dropped its lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase.
The SEC has dismissed other crypto-related enforcement actions it launched under Gensler, having also dropped a lawsuit against crypto exchange Kraken on March 3.
The SEC and Yuga Labs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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