NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal, also known as Shaq, will have to defend allegations in a class-action lawsuit related to his involvement in the Astrals non-fungible token project.
What Happened: A U.S. court has partially granted and partially dismissed a class action lawsuit against O’Neal concerning his role in the NFT project, Coindesk reported Monday.
The project, which included a collection of 10,000 NFT 3D avatars and a decentralized autonomous organization for incubating innovative projects, is at the center of the lawsuit.
The suit alleges that O’Neal, who was the face of Astrals, encouraged investors to join the project. The lawsuit further claimed that O’Neal abandoned the project following the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, causing a significant drop in the value of Astrals’ financial products.
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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division, dismissed the claim that O’Neal was a “control person,” but upheld the allegation that Astrals sold unregistered “securities.”
Why It Matters: The ongoing dispute has been going on for more than a year. The plaintiff Daniel Harper claimed that O’Neal was aware of potential regulatory concerns surrounding the selling of unregistered securities but still promoted them to expand his cryptocurrency business.
Prior to this, the former NBA star was sued over his alleged involvement in promoting FTX, the trading platform that plummeted into bankruptcy in the fall of 2022. O’Neal stated that he just acted as a paid spokesperson for a commercial.
O’Neal wasn’t the only sports celebrity embroiled in a legal dispute with NFTs. Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo was named in a $1 billion class-action lawsuit, for allegedly promoting investments in unregistered securities on the Binance BNB/USD network.
Price Action: At the time of writing, the floor price of Solana SOL/USD-based Astrals NFT collection was $17.16, up nearly 4% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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