Famous basketball player, 2008 NBA champion and most valuable player in the 2008 NBA Finals with the Boston Celtics, Paul Pierce, is accused of NFT fraud, the New York Times reports.
The lawsuit stems from an alleged scam (manipulative fraud) involving EthereumMax tokens. One of the founders of the project are also considered one of the best boxers Floyd Mayweather, as well as reality TV and Instagram star Influencer Kim Kardashian. Such fame and popularity of the founders allowed to attract decent attention to the token in the world.
Nine traders who bought tokens sued the founders of the EthereumMax project (judging by the roadmap, the project is related to the creation of the NFT marketplace). The victims accuse the founders of “misleading” buyers and fraud.
The bottom line here is pretty simple. Paul Pierce and other celebrities promoting the tokens allegedly not only promoted the project, but were also the largest holders of the tokens. They attracted widespread interest in the project. Ordinary people began to buy these tokens, which began to increase their value.
After the rate rose, again according to those who sued Celebrity, Paul Pierce sold the tokens he owned in large quantities. “Dumped them on the haystacks,” to use the lingo of crypto-enthusiasts. As a consequence, of course, the exchange rate dropped. And those who bought tokens after his advertisement lost money.
So far, this is the information that can be obtained from public sources. There is no information that Floyd Mayweather and Kim Kardashian sold their tokens.
Now let’s try to understand a little bit.
Scam projects in the cryptocurrency world abound. In the past, celebrities of this level have not been accused of them. And the most important thing here is whether all three were the founders of the project. This is the most important point.
The fact is that now it is common practice to pay for cryptoproject advertising to popular people (Influencers) partly with “cash” and partly with project tokens/cryptocurrency.
If these tokens were part of the celebrities’ payment and they sold it afterwards – there is nothing criminal about it. They are their tokens, they do what they want with them, if they do not declare that they will hold them (not sell them) for a long time, because they are essentially the same holders as those who bought them on the exchange. But if they are the founders of the project and the idea was to promote the coin (to raise the token rate), and then drop it on haircuts (sell it at the highest token/cryptocurrency rate), with the understanding that the token will collapse in value after that and will not grow for certain reasons, then this is already fraud.
But these questions will already be answered by court proceedings.