Minimum prices for the popular collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT) "Milady Maker" plummeted by nearly 70% last week after it emerged that its creator was a controversial figure linked to a popular online cult.
Miladys are sold at a minimum price of 0.26 ether (ETH), equivalent to about $511 at the time of writing, compared to an all-time high of more than $6,000 in April, data from tracking tools show. Trading volume has dropped 57% in the past 24 hours, while one milady sold for just 0.037 ETH last week.
The prices of other popular collections such as CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) changed only slightly last week, suggesting that Milady's crash is an isolated incident unrelated to the broader NFT market.
Last week, pseudonymous DeFi developer 0xngmi claimed that Charlotte Fang, the creator of Milady, was "Miya" - a pseudonymous online entity that allegedly spreads hate against blacks, homosexuals, and Jews.
0xngmi compiled his findings on GitHub.
On Twitter, there were unconfirmed reports that accounts linked to Miya appeared to be pushing young girls toward anorexia and that the persona was involved in "systemspace," an alleged online cult popular on bulletin site 4chan.
Fang came clean in a tweet over the weekend. "Full disclosure: I was Miya. And the toxic baggage that hurt the milady community and poisoned the mood. I apologize for trying to hide my former account," Fang wrote.
In another tweet, Fang wrote that the Miya profile had "nothing to do with" the milady maker, adding, "My real views leave no room for hate, and I detest abusers and grooms - trolling about it was juvenile, but in reality I've never hurt a fly."
Some prominent investors in the industry suggested that Fang's past experiences may have influenced the look of the Miladys project:
"That's fucking disgusting," said DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong. "Given the founder's history, I can understand Milady's aesthetic style now."
The collection of more than 10,000 anime-inspired regenerative avatars has caused controversy in the past. Some of the avatars in a spin-off collection ("Milady, That B.I.T.C.H.") wore shirts with the word "Treblinka" - a Nazi concentration camp, as previously reported.
However, these claims were denied by the creators, who insisted that the term was randomly generated by a computer.