Crypto influencers have the power to make or mar a project but apparently this isn’t true in all cases, and influencer opinion can have the opposite effect.
On 29 October, Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) told his followers not to buy a memecoin named after him, shortly after which the market cap went up 10x.
Turning down a statue
The team behind the said memecoin made a golden statue of CZ and offered to ship it to his address.
However, the crypto mogul interpreted the gesture to mean that the team wanted to take advantage of his popularity to make a quick buck, so he turned down the offer.
His response to the team almost instantly led to many of his followers buying the memecoin, which caused the market cap to rise in an unexpected twist.
Apparently, all that was required was for CZ to interact with the memecoin regardless of his opinion about it.
Interestingly, CZ’s rejection of the statue was right because the project known as CZSTATUE is actually a scam with a previous history of rugging investors.
The team is said to have dumped the coin from $2 million market cap to $50,000 before building the statue to get new investors.
Golden Statues: A new trend
CZ is not the first to get a golden statue, it started with president Donald Trump.
Last month, a group of crypto investors sponsored a golden statue of the president that was put on display in front of the White House in DC.
The scammers in CZ’s case must have taken a cue from that incident to try and get his attention with their statue of him, which clearly did not work.
They will however definitely get new scam victims who have rushed to buy the coin since CZ’s disapproval of the project.
What do you think?
Join Techgaged on Telegram
Get first-access to daily trending tech stories, AI breakthroughs, and more, before it hits your feed.
