A federal court judge ruled in the Dapper vs SEC that these emojis: 🚀📈 objectively mean "one thing: a financial return on investment," per Lisa Braganca.

She shared this image from the trial:

This is despite Dappers’ lawyer’s claims that “Basketball cards are not securities. Pokémon cards are not securities. Baseball cards are not securities. Common sense says so. The law says so. And, courts say so,” Judge Victor Marrero decided to let the case go forward.

In totality, the economic realities of this case support the Court’s conclusion that the AC’s allegations pass muster at this stage. In sum, Plaintiffs adequately allege that Dapper Labs’s offer of the NFT, Moments, was an offer of an “investment contract” and therefore a “security,” required to be registered with the SEC, the judge wrote.

In their counterarguments, lawyers for Dapper Labs and Gharegozlou wrote, “When Dapper sold its Moments, it was selling formed products not as part of capital fundraising but as products. This was not a capital investment drive, not an appeal to passive investors, but the sale of cards to collectors.”