Are Celebs Sacrificing Ethics for Fast Cash?

The last couple of weeks have been tumultuous for crypto Twitter. Celebrities were seemingly flocking towards crypto to release their own token on the recently popular pump.fun

It all began with 74-year-old Caitlyn Jenner and her $JENNER token. Jenner seems to have inspired numerous celebrities to follow suit. Soon after, you could join in tokens by Iggy Azalea, RichTheKid (Dimitri Leslie Roger), Antonie Brown, Trippie Redd, Davido, SPEAK, Soulja Boy and Ivana Knöll.

Many of these personalities mentioned above have been involved in past crypto projects, which were often fraudulent or abandoned.

Iggy Azalea

Due to all the buzz, the team at Bubblemaps examined Iggy Azalea’s token $MOTHER on May 29, one day after its inception. We soon found that 20% of the supply was bought well before the launch was announced to the awaiting investors. Our initial investigation was posted here.

Shown below are $MOTHER transfers, with wallet JEEt3D1 owning 109T $MOTHER (10% of the supply) before splitting it into 7 wallets. Out of these wallets, 89T tokens were sold just a few hours after launch for $1.4 million.

Additionally, wallet JEEt3D sent SOL to other wallets, as shown in the image of SOL transfers below. These wallets were incredibly profitable, including but not limited to:

• DbT9xdK
• 3nsX9zG
• 4YozmZV

Combined, the wallets sold 8% of the supply, netting ~$800k.

Davido

Similar to Iggy’s $MOTHER, David Adedeji Adeleke Oon a.k.a. Davido, launched $DAVIDO on May 29. By sniping the launch, he acquired 20% of the supply, which he sold for $500k.

Davido is well-known in his country of origin, Nigeria, where he’s regarded as one of the most important Afrobeats artists of the 21st century. The launch of $DAVIDO was not his first web3 venture, which we will revisit shortly.

However, only 20 minutes into the $DAVIDO launch, he began plotting his exit by transferring portions of his 20% supply to other wallets. Within 1 hour, he began selling his tokens, showing little regard for his fans and investors.

• $210k sold from GfEoC
• $141k sold from 3ZqyM
• $150k sold from CyrCe

He has used his influence to deceive investors in 2021 already and seemingly launched $DAVIDO with similar intent.

In July 2021 he encouraged his fans to invest and hold the token “RapDoge” on ETH. Those who listened to his advice would soon regret it and end up with a loss as the token never increased in price again. He took no further initiatives to push the project or communicate with the investors.

However, Rapdoge was not Davido’s first promotion in 2021. In June, he promoted Racksterli, a platform that promised investors double returns within just 45 minutes of depositing funds to their website. Nigerians have urged law enforcement to arrest celebrities, including Davido, for promoting RackSterli.

Another project by Davido is Echoke, which he also abandoned. Fans and followers were promised monthly rewards in the form of concert tickets, NFTs and other giveaways.

Getting reported to law enforcement in the past didn’t stop him from getting right back at it through $DAVIDO.