Celebrities, Influencers Push Crypto Ads On Social Media

Celebrities and influencers, including Kim Kardashian West, are now posting advertisements for various digital coins and exchanges, CNBC reported.

Kardashian West has 228 million followers on Instagram, according to CNBC. Her Story on the platform Sunday (June 13) included a clip of her speaking about EhereumMax, including the hashtag #ad on the bottom of the screen, CNBC reported. The same story had text asking: “Are you guys into crypto???”

Floyd Mayweather is among the other celebrities endorsing crypto. The boxer brought up EhereumMax during a Bitcoin 2021 conference earlier this month. However, Mayweather was booed off stage for that incident, according to CNBC.

EthereumMax is an altcoin which redistributes a small percentage of transactions to token holders, CNBC reported. In May the coin launched with a total supply of 2 quadrillion.

Even though it has the backing of Kardashian West and other celebrities, the coin still isn’t viewed as a particularly stable or trustworthy one. CNBC reported that Decrypt wrote that EthereumMax is “mostly just a marketing campaign,” and the coin doesn’t have a white paper like other cryptos have.

The pool of people getting into crypto also includes Generation Z and millennial influencers, who are getting their mostly younger followers into crypto via paid ads, according to CNBC, which posited that EthereumMax and other altcoins often need even more caution, especially when the influencer may or may not have been paid to post.

“I’d be concerned that at least some of that audience is both financially unsophisticated and has limited access to funds, which is why this has for years been an area of regulatory action,” said James Ledbetter, editor of FinTech newsletter FIN and a CNBC contributor, according to CNBC.

PYMNTS previously reported on celebrities and crypto acceptance, writing that the bitcoin highs from earlier this year were largely powered by tweets from people like billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.