Author: Josh O'Sullivan, CoinTelegraph; Translated by: Wuzhu, Golden Finance
The recent launch of celebrity tokens on the Solana blockchain has come as a shock to new investors as most tokens have lost more than 99% of their value.
Famous figures including 50 Cent, Caitlyn Jenner, Andrew Tate, Iggy Azalia and Barron Trump have backed the token launch, prompting fans and followers to invest.
The 30-plus celebrity-endorsed tokens launched on Solana in June have seen their prices drop by no less than 73.23%.
Only a few are still valuable
An article published on X by cryptocurrency analyst Slorg revealed the dismal performance of these celebrity coins, noting that only a few celebrity coins have barely retained more than 25% of their value.
According to the analyst, even the “best performing” celebrity coin “is down more than 70%, but the extent of the losses is staggering.”
"Half of them are down more than 99 percent, and seven are down more than 90 percent. And I have to remind you that this is only the past month."
Scammers, insiders, buyers…oh my!
From Jason Derulo denying the sale of his JASON tokens to Waka Flocka Flame’s insider activity with the FLOCKA token, the celebrity coin space is fraught with uncertainty for investors.
In a written Q&A, Waka Flocka spoke about past promotions of dubious crypto projects and undisclosed paid promotions.
"My previous management would bring me projects that looked real in early 2021, but the team didn't do what they said they would. I now have to do my own due diligence and homework."
Despite promises of future due diligence, the program will not compensate unsuspecting investors who lost money in past scams and those who suffered losses from the recent Celebrity Coin crash.
50 Cent X account hacked to promote scam
On June 21, Curtis James Jackson III, who goes by the moniker 50 Cent, claimed that his X-account and website were hacked to promote a cryptocurrency pump and dump (PnD) token scam.
The fraud developers used Jackson’s X account to create the PnD token (GUNIT) to attract investments from the celebrity’s 12.9 million fans, and then the funds were stolen.
Jackson posted to his Instagram followers on June 21 that he had “nothing to do with this cryptocurrency,” and Twitter immediately locked his account after being alerted to the incident.