There’s no doubt that Kim Kardashian is a social media influencer regarding fashion, make-up, lingerie selfies, and other aspects of luxuriant living.
There’s equally no doubt that with every glamour shot she posts to her 230+ million Instagram followers, she positions herself to become the butt of jokes (no pun intended…), and undermines her own credibility.
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I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and question what little credibility she had earlier this summer when she posted this message to her Instagram followers:
“This is not financial advice but sharing what my friends told me about the ethereum max token!” the post read. She again added different hashtags, including #ad, which is required to reveal that her post is paid for, along with #emax and #disrupthistory."
Ever since that post in June 2021, EthereumMax (eMax) has gotten all the wrong type of publicity.
In fact, CoinMarketCap data show that EthereumMax originally launched with two quadrillion tokens and is currently ranked 3,168th out of all cryptocurrencies.
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Its price per token at the time of writing is $0.00000002657 — and prices have fallen by 96.89% since it’s all-time high of $0.00000092 at the end of May. Regardless, based on these facts alone, eMax is barely eeking by as a “joken” let alone as a bona fide ERC-20 token.
According to a story in the Financial Times, it’s these circumstances that led the chair of the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Charles Randell, to chastise celebrities – specifically naming Kardashian in particular – for shilling “assets” such as eMax. In a statement, the regulator called for urgent action to combat risky crypto tokens and protect investors.
"It’s difficult for regulators around the world to stand by and watch people, sometimes very vulnerable people, putting their financial futures in jeopardy, based on disinformation and fear of missing out. Social media influencers are routinely paid by scammers to help them pump and dump new tokens on the back of pure speculation,”
said Randell.
Kardashian clearly stated in the post that it was not financial advice, and it had no direct call to action other than “Swipe Up.” She also informed her Instagram feed that the eMax message was a paid advertisement using the notation – #Ad.
Still, Randell stated that existing regulations don’t go far enough to require celebrities to provide more details about the digital currencies they promote, whether the celebrity is a hodler of the coin or token, and if they were given the tokens for free or invested in them.
While no one is alleging that Kardashian did anything wrong or illegal, what she did was probably ill-advised given her reach and influence.
On The Flipside
- The old adage remains true, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
