• A Redditor going by the moniker Loose-Imagination781, has reported Kim Kardashian West to the SEC for her involvement in a crypto scheme.
• Kardashian posted on her Instagram, “Are you guys into crypto????” promoting, but not promoting a project known as EthereumMax.
• In the last four months, EthereumMax (EMAX) has lost 97.87% of its value.

Shilling arguably obscure projects looks to not be as profitable as it might seem in the first place.

Social media influencer and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian is still receiving community backlash for the promotional post she did for the EthereumMax token on June 13th, 2021.

A Redditor, identified as Loose-Imagination781, announced on Reddit, that they reported the media personality, socialite and businesswoman to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for her involvement in EthereumMax. The user also urged others to do the same.

The initial post has received more than 10K upvotes so far.

EthereumMax is a yield based token that claims to provide up to a 6% distribution of every transaction to existing eMax wallet holders just for owning it.

Other Influencers Under Fire As Well

The aforementioned Reddit post has garnered more than a thousand comments. The crypto community shared their sentiments regarding such behaviour, pointing out that other big names, such as actor Steven Seagal, and  boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. have done similar campaigns.

Other redditors were sceptical regarding the reporting procedure, stating that this might not result in anything significant.

DailyCoin has reached out to both the SEC and the Kardashian team for comment, but did not receive any statement before publication.

UPDATE: On September 15th, the SEC spokesperson has informed DailyCoin via email, that the SEC does not comment on the existence or nonexistence of a possible investigation.

What Did Kim K Do?

Earlier this year, Kardashian, who has over 250 million followers on Instagram, asked her followers: “Are you guys into crypto????” The post was, however, flagged as an advertisement by Instagram.

In her post, the socialite didn’t disclose that ethereum max was a speculative digital token, created a month before by unknown developers. EthereumMax is one of hundreds of such speculative ‘pump-and-dumps’ that fill the crypto space.

Even before Kim K was reported to the SEC, Charles Randell, the head of the UK‘s Financial Conduct Authority, opined that Kardashian was “paid to ask her 250 million Instagram followers to speculate on crypto tokens by ’joining the Ethereum Max Community.‘”

Where is EthereumMax Now?

Following the quick pump that EthereumMax received from social media promotion, EMAX has steeply plunged, becoming almost useless in the process.

The year-to-date price chart of EthereumMax (EMAX). Source: Coinmarketcap

At its peak, EMAX was valued at $0.00000092, at the time of writing the coin is trading at $0.00000001966. The coin has lost 97.87% of its value over the last four months.

On The Flipside

• Social media, especially Twitter, has been a significant part of the rise of cryptocurrencies. More often than not, crypto projects take to social media to share their white paper, give updates to their community, developmental stages, partnerships, and upcoming events.
• As cryptos became popular, attracting famous figures, many saw it as an opportunity to publicize their projects. The goal was to get influencers to promote a project to their fanbase, promising millions of users that the coin is going to the moon.
• Out of this influence, hundreds to thousands invest in the project without even knowing what it is about, or considering its prospects. While a fraction of these projects do seek to solve real-world problems, they are overshadowed by the great proportion of worthless, pump-and-dump projects.

Decentralization (the delegation of authority to a distributed network) was one of the first selling points of cryptocurrencies, what better place for the distributed network to communicate on than an existing community: social media.

Why You Should Care?

Fraudulent developers have leveraged the influx of influencers into the crypto space as an opportunity to promote their projects. These projects are mostly pump-and-dumps, offering little, to no use. Before investing in any project, it is advisable to first read the whitepaper, or be convinced by its prospects.