There's a list floating around with 200+ crypto influencers and their price sheet for paid promotion. $50 to $60,000 per post, depending on reach. Of the 160+ who took the deal? Fewer than 5 disclosed it was an ad.
Read that again. Not "some didn't disclose." Fewer than five out of over a hundred and sixty.
This isn't a gray area. The FTC Endorsement Guides require disclosure. Jake Paul got fined $400K for exactly this with Justin Sun. Kim Kardashian got hit by the SEC for the same thing with EthereumMax. The law is clear, the precedent is clear, and somehow the entire influencer economy in this space still runs on "forgetting" to mention who's paying them.
Here's why this matters more than a gotcha thread: every time you see a "I've been researching this project for weeks and I'm really bullish" post from someone with 200K followers, you have no way of knowing if that's their genuine conviction or a $15,000 invoice. The rug pulls that follow — like the $143M CR7 collapse — don't happen because retail is dumb. They happen because the people retail trusts for signal are structurally incentivized to lie about why they're posting.
The uncomfortable part: this platform runs on creators too. The instinct to assume "at least the person I follow is being real with me" is exactly the assumption this leak just gutted, at scale, industry-wide.
Not naming names — the leak already did that. Just asking: next time someone's "personal take" conveniently aligns with a token launch, do you check who's paying, or do you just trust the vibes?
#CryptoInfluencers #Transparency #DYOR #CryptoNews
Read that again. Not "some didn't disclose." Fewer than five out of over a hundred and sixty.
This isn't a gray area. The FTC Endorsement Guides require disclosure. Jake Paul got fined $400K for exactly this with Justin Sun. Kim Kardashian got hit by the SEC for the same thing with EthereumMax. The law is clear, the precedent is clear, and somehow the entire influencer economy in this space still runs on "forgetting" to mention who's paying them.
Here's why this matters more than a gotcha thread: every time you see a "I've been researching this project for weeks and I'm really bullish" post from someone with 200K followers, you have no way of knowing if that's their genuine conviction or a $15,000 invoice. The rug pulls that follow — like the $143M CR7 collapse — don't happen because retail is dumb. They happen because the people retail trusts for signal are structurally incentivized to lie about why they're posting.
The uncomfortable part: this platform runs on creators too. The instinct to assume "at least the person I follow is being real with me" is exactly the assumption this leak just gutted, at scale, industry-wide.
Not naming names — the leak already did that. Just asking: next time someone's "personal take" conveniently aligns with a token launch, do you check who's paying, or do you just trust the vibes?
#CryptoInfluencers #Transparency #DYOR #CryptoNews