How Influencers Hype Crypto, Without Disclosing Their Financial Ties

moneycontrol.com:

Logan Paul had a message for his 6 million Twitter followers: He was “all in” on a new cryptocurrency called Dink Doink.

According to the project’s creator, Dink Doink investors would receive shares of a cartoon character, entitling them to a portion of the proceeds if the googly-eyed figure ever appeared in a TV show or movie. Last June, Paul, a 27-year-old boxer and social-media influencer, praised Dink Doink on Twitter and in a public Telegram chat, before endorsing it again on his podcast, “Impaulsive.”

But by mid-July, the price of Dink Doink had plummeted to a fraction of a cent, and Paul was facing an online backlash. In his endorsements, he had failed to mention some relevant information: He and the project’s creator were friends, and they had come up with the idea for the cryptocurrency together. He had also received a large allocation of Dink Doink coins when it launched.

“I don’t know what went absurdly wrong,” Paul said in an interview. “That’s the project from hell, and I just wiped my hands of that.”

The collapse in crypto prices this month has renewed scrutiny of the celebrity marketers who sell virtual currencies to the masses. Over the last year, actor Matt Damon and comedian Larry David have starred in high-profile TV commercials for crypto platforms, trumpeting digital assets as an unmissable moneymaking opportunity. Those ads drew criticism from crypto skeptics, but they were tied to mainstream companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

A far seedier form of crypto promotion has flourished on social media, rife with undisclosed conflicts of interest and exaggerated claims about skyrocketing profits. Celebrity influencers like Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather have made millions of dollars