Per CoinDesk:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, over whether sales of its digital assets violate federal law, according to a report from Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source close to the matter.

At issue, the source said, is whether some of Yuga’s non-fungible tokens are closer to stocks and thus should follow the same disclosure rules. The key legal question at the center of the probe, according to Bloomberg, is whether NFTs are securities – a question the SEC has been investigating since March. People familiar with the matter said at the time that NFT creators and crypto exchanges were being looked at.

The SEC is also reportedly looking into how apeCoins, the Ethereum-based governance and utility tokens used within the APE ecosystem, were distributed to holders of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Kennel Club members. The tokens were announced in March with the establishment of the community-driven ApeCoin DAO and the Ape Foundation.