Rapper Soulja Boy has apologized for promoting dozens of crypto and non-fungible token projects flagged as scams by blockchain investigator ZachXBT in 2023.
The “Crank It” artist’s social media activity between 2021 and 2023 has several posts promoting crypto tokens and NFT collections to his millions of followers. ZachXBT alleges that many of those promotions involved projects that either collapsed within days of his messages, were abandoned, or were outright fraudulent.
Soulja Boy, whose real name is DeAndre Cortez Way, addressed the allegations in a statement posted on X early Monday morning. He said he was unaware of the fraudulent nature of the projects at the time and admitted there were failures in his past judgment.
“I want to be clear and transparent. I had no knowledge that a scammer named Sahil was involved or paying me to promote anything fraudulent. At the time, I was doing paid promos without understanding the crypto/NFT space the way I do now. This was years ago, and I’ve learned a lot since then,” the rapper-turned-crypto-investor claimed.
He continued to apologize to his followers, saying he was “genuinely sorry and it was never his intention” to promote rug pull projects. “I take responsibility for not doing deeper due diligence back then, and I’ve moved very differently since. Growth is learning from mistakes,” Soulja Boy concluded.
ZachXBT listed 5 scam projects promoted by Soulja Boy
According to ZachXBT’s X thread in April 2023, Soulja Boy promoted crypto and NFT drops at least 73 times since March 2021. The investigator said 16 of the NFT collections lauded by the rapper later became scams or failed ventures, Cryptopolitan reported.
One of the cited examples was a token known as RAPDOGE, which Soulja Boy had mentioned severally in mid-2021. “On July 19, 2021, Soulja Boy Tweeted out: “let’s pump $RAPDOGE to $.000001 and let’s get all our friends in on this, are you with me lilyachty” In the following hours the project rug pulled after receiving shills from Lil Yachty and Quavo as well,” the investigator wrote.
The RAPDOGE token has since become defunct, and investors suffered losses after liquidity was withdrawn shortly after the promotional push.
ZachXBT also talked about Soulja Boy’s tussle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which had filed a complaint accusing him and several other celebrities of unlawfully promoting tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).
The SEC alleged that the promotions failed to disclose the rapper had been compensated for endorsing the tokens, alongside actor Lindsay Lohan, WWE athlete and influencer Jake Paul, artists Akon and Ne-Yo.
Two projects known as Orion and The Life Token were also part of Soulja Boy’s cake, which he allegedly used for charitable causes.
“Orion & The Life Token, these two projects used cancer and suicide prevention charities as a means to pump the price. Within one month of the shill Orion, rugged and Twitter was deleted. The Life Token was abandoned in early 2022,” ZachXBT surmised.
Soulja Boy promoted a different project called Flokinomics that fraudulently claimed to be connected to Elon Musk and paid for media promotion to make it look real, but its liquidity was eventually taken away. Per ZachXBT’s estimates, the “Superman” rapper earned more than $730,000 from crypto and NFT promotions during the period under review.
Celebrity gets cleared from 2-year long Cryptozoo court case
There have been several famous names mentioned alongside failed crypto projects within the last year, but perhaps the most talked about was Logan Paul’s Cryptozoo frenzy. The WWE superstar and online personality closed the chapter on the defunct NFT project legal dispute after a US district judge upheld the dismissal of a class action lawsuit accusing him of misleading investors.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, alleged that Paul and his associates promoted an NFT-based game that promised profits through breeding and trading digital animals. The project never completely got off the ground, which led to claims that investors were lied to and that the effort was a “rug pull.”
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/soulja-boy-says-sorry-promoting-crypto-scams/
