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The company behind the Bored Ape crypto art craze has said it is looking into reports that some attendees suffered “eye burn” from bright light displays at an event it hosted over the weekend in Hong Kong.
The ApeFest event was targeted at holders of so-called non-fungible tokens — artwork linked to blockchain technology that soared in price and popularity at the height of the now-deflated cryptocurrency bubble.
About 2,250 people attended the Saturday evening party at a cruise terminal, said organiser Yuga Labs, one of the pioneers in this market. Since then, more than a dozen have posted on social media complaining of a burning sensation in the eyes and sometimes also impaired vision.
“We are conducting a thorough investigation,” Yuga Labs said, adding that the 15 people it has been in contact with so far “represent less than 1 per cent” of guests and it is “too soon to comment on the . . . cause”.
Chloe Ge, who attended ApeFest on a visit from Shanghai, told the Financial Times the party was “very crowded” when she arrived after 7pm. Ge said she and her friends were close to the stage when a rapper performed, and noted that stage lights were “quite strong”.
“Everyone was so hyped at the moment and no one mentioned feeling uncomfortable immediately,” she said. But by about 3am after the party, she started feeling like her eyes were “being burnt with spicy chilli”. The pain eased after she returned to Shanghai on Sunday but she said she was still experiencing discomfort.
Another attendee from Hong Kong told the FT she felt a “dry and burning” sensation hours after attending the party, where she stayed for more than four hours.
Images and videos of the event online appear to show a stage adorned in UV lights. People encounter some types of UV light every day, but the US Food and Drug Administration notes online that UVC radiation “can cause severe burns of the skin and eye injuries (photokeratitis)” and advises people to “never look directly in to a UVC light source, even briefly”. Yuga Labs did not comment on which types of lighting it had used but said it was looking into the “root cause” of the eye pain suffered by attendees.
Adrian Zduńczyk, a crypto analyst, wrote on social media platform X on Monday that he “got diagnosed with ‘photokeratitis over both eyes, accident related’,” by a clinic in Hong Kong after the party. “My vision was tested as close to perfect with no serious cornea damage, luckily,” he wrote.
During the wildly popular bull run in 2021, NFTs, which can be purchased only with cryptocurrencies, briefly garnered pop culture status, even though the tokens link to an image that can be freely copied and shared online.
One artist known as Beeple sold a collection of NFT images through auction house Christie’s in March 2021 for $69mn.
Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the best-known markets in this space, famed for its collection of thousands of very similar cartoon images of apes, which were snapped up by enthusiasts sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece in a buzz backed by celebrities in the US and elsewhere. They now sell on platform OpenSea for about $55,000.
Since the peak in May 2022 global NFT sales have collapsed by 98 per cent, according to data tracker CryptoSlam.
The Yuga Labs event came as Hong Kong seeks to build itself into Asia’s premier crypto hub, launching a new licensing regime for retail trading of crypto assets and pressing top lenders including HSBC and Standard Chartered to take on crypto exchanges as clients, in contrast to a broad US regulatory crackdown.
The party — part of a three-day Yuga Labs event — was attended by ape NFT holders including overseas and mainland Chinese visitors. It coincided with Hong Kong’s FinTech Week conference, at which Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters and Crypto.com chief executive Kris Marszalek were speakers.
Additional reporting by Scott Chipolina
