Last year, millionaire socialite Kim Kardashian promoted fraudulent Ethereum-based coin EthereumMax on Instagram. While battling the class-action lawsuit, Kardashian is pleading her innocence in the case.
On Friday, her lawyers filed a motion in a California U.S. District Court in an attempt to have the complaint against her dismissed.
Kim Kardashian’s Defense
One year after the EthereumMax promotion, Kim Kardashian still finds herself battling the lawsuit, which alleges that she promoted the “pump and dump” token.
According to the filing made on Friday, July 4th, Kim Kardashian’s defense asserts that her followers were only exposed to two such Instagram posts by the celebrity—neither of which, it is claimed, gave investment advice. The filing further emphasizes that none of the token’s buyers specified that they saw Kim Kardashian’s posts ahead of time, and that it cannot be proved whether the post influenced anyone’s decision to buy EMAX tokens.
"Crucially, no named plaintiff alleges that they, in fact, viewed either Instagram post before purchasing tokens during the relevant time period," the filing reads.
Additionally, she clarified in the post that it was “not financial advice,” which may or may not be of assistance to her in the case:
"Moreover, platforms like Instagram and Twitter are laden with puffery and exaggeration, such that ordinary consumers should know that they are not trustworthy sources of financial advice."
Sued by Misled Investors
Prior to this, several investors filed a lawsuit against Kim Kardashian, including legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather and former basketball star Paul Pierce. According to the suit, the plaintiffs experienced “investment losses”, which they attributed to celebrities’ social media posts about EthereumMax.
At the time of the alleged promotion, the celebrity shared “a big announcement” to her 228 million followers via an Instagram story in which she talked about EMAX’s tokenomics.
Sponsored
EthereumMax (EMAX) is a token that no one knew anything about until celebrities promoted it. The token runs on Ethereum, which hosts thousands of Altcoins, but doesn’t appear to have any utility. At the time of writing, the coin is trading as low as $0.000000004702, according to CoinMarketCap.
Why You Should Care
Influencers have the power to impact investors’s decision to invest, as many individuals are still investing emotionally, and based on hype. With such enormous audiences, influencers run the risk of unwillingly convincing their followers to invest into meaningless pump and dump schemes.
