Steve Aoki Slapped with Class Action Lawsuit Over NFTs

Photo Credit: Steve Aoki by Stephen McCarthy for Collision via Sportsfile / CC by 2.0

Steve Aoki faces a class action lawsuit alleging that he and DraftKings co-founder Matthew Kalish promoted NFTs without disclosing their affiliation.

Now that the hype surrounding cryptocurrency-backed non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has mostly died down, it’s rare that they pop up in the news anymore except as the subject of a lawsuit. That’s certainly the case with cake-throwing DJ Steve Aoki, who has been named in a class action lawsuit alleging he used his social media influence to promote NFTs from a now-defunct company without disclosing that he was being paid to do so.

MetaZoo Games, which was initially founded in 2000 to sell a collectible card game, has sold skate gear and clothing as well as NFTs. During the peak of the NFT craze, the company was selling a full set of 10 MetaZoo Coin NFTs for 20 Ethereum, which was worth around $80,000 at the time.

The lawsuit’s class representative, Evan Berger, says he bought at least 26 NFTs, influenced by Aoki and DraftKings co-founder Matthew Kalish, who is also named in the suit, believing they would increase in value. According to Berger, the tokens are now worthless, and he and other plaintiffs in the suit say they’ve suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses.

“There is a specific set of rules that are in place to protect consumers, and it’s of great importance that influencers know and understand those rules, because they are requirements and not suggestions,” said Berger in a statement to Law.com. “There are a number of class actions now against viable companies where the same thing has happened.”

Aoki became an equity partner in MetaZoo in 2021. The company released a collectible card game series for the DJ’s HiROQUEST: Genesis album the following year. That same year, Aoki said he’d made more money from NFTs than he had in a decade of music royalties. MetaZoo filed for bankruptcy in January 2024.