A bunch of content creators are being sued by investors who did business with defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The investors are alleging that the creators pushed unregistered securities on their viewers and followers while promoting the collapsed exchange. The lawsuit is seeking $1 billion. 

Among the creators mentioned include BitBoy, Crypto creator Ben Armstrong and finance YouTube creator Graham Stephan, among seven other individuals and the talent management firm Creators Agency. This is despite Stephan claiming that he never received a dime from FTX.
“I’ve never spoken with anyone at FTX or as a marketing agent acting on their behalf. Not once,” he said via direct message on Twitter. “So the allegations against me are 100% false and it will be extremely easy to provide evidence of this.”

The defendants named in the case are responsible for damages due to “misrepresentations and omissions regarding the FTX platform” and played a crucial role in elevating the collapsed business, the lawsuit claims.

“FTX could not have arisen to such great heights without the massive impact of these Influencers, who hyped the Deceptive FTX Platform for undisclosed payments ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to multimillion dollar bribes,” it states.

The lawsuit claims that YouTube played a central role in how influencers promoted FTX, noting that the video streaming platform is more popular than network television. 

According to the lawsuit, several of the lawsuit’s defendants “scrubbed their YouTube channels of all video clips endorsing FTX and praising Sam Bankman-Fried” post FTX collapse and replaced them with apology videos.