Here is an overview of the origin, although no mention of 4chan, it seemed the owner of BAYC made worrysome tweets.
“Nothing weird at all that the grinning apes are made by a guy whos name is an anti semitic joke and whos company name is a nazi obsession (sic),” Ryder Ripps writes in a January 3 tweet. “Totally normal.” The tweet is accompanied by two images: an article from the neo-Nazi news site the Daily Stormer, titled ‘Symptoms of the Kali Yuga’, and a screenshot of BAYC co-founder Gargamel’s Twitter account.