International football superstar Lionel Messi has joined the meme coin craze, promoting WaterCoin (WATER), a meme coin based on the Solana blockchain, on his Instagram last night.

Although this restriction brought a short-term increase of over 350% to the WATER meme coin, most of the gains were quickly recovered, and judging from the trend since the opening, the overall currency price performance is still not ideal.

According to WaterCoin’s official documentation, the project claims that it is committed to raising people’s awareness of water resources issues and trying to become a fully ecological coin in the future. WaterCoin’s development roadmap is divided into four stages, from the initial pre-sale of the token, listing through centralized exchanges, cooperation with celebrities, and finally becoming an environmentally friendly currency centered on charity.

Despite providing this high-level overview, the roadmap is still rather lacking in details on how to achieve these goals and the token’s price behavior. It is unclear whether Messi is being paid for publicity or whether his IG account has been hacked, but according to analysis by Bubblemaps, 30% of the supply of WATER tokens is in the hands of insiders, and investors must remain vigilant.

Messi just promoted $WATER to his 500 million followers 30% of the supply controlled by insiders Send it to zero pic.twitter.com/fNl30eBTCt

— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) July 8, 2024

Celebrities weigh in on meme craze, SEC watching

Many American Internet celebrities have participated in this meme coin craze. However, such issuance and promotion of cryptocurrencies is likely to attract the attention of U.S. securities regulators. And even if you do not participate in distribution, you may still be fined for promotion. Previously, American socialite Kim Kardashian was accused of violating securities laws by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for participating in the promotion of a cryptocurrency called EthereumMax (EMAX) and had to pay a fine of $1.26 million.

However, Messi did not add any description or anything that may involve securities laws in his restriction, so it may be difficult for the SEC to take action against him, but it still does not rule out that investors who have lost money will file a class action lawsuit in the future. possibility.

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