Hey Celebrities, It's Never a Good Idea to Shill for Crypto

Remember cryptocurrency? Apparently, it’s still a thing, even after multiple market disasters. We could probably be here for days trying to detail the schadenfreude-worthy crash of crypto and NFTs that’s dominated financial news for the past several months. For a while, it seemed like every celebrity was suddenly shilling Bitcoin, ugly cartoon apes, or supposedly safe investments that fell apart in a spectacular manner. Tom Brady did it, as did Matt Damon. Neither of those ended well. Now, it feels like the SEC is playing catch-up in the aftermath of FTX’s failure and Sam Bankman-Fried being arrested.

Eight celebrities have been charged by US regulators with participating in an illegal crypto scheme. The culprits include Lindsay Lohan, singer Austin Mahone, rapper Lil Yachty, and general scumbag Jake Paul. The group is accused of illegally promoting TRX and BTT crypto assets ‘without disclosing that they were compensated for doing so and the amount of their compensation’, according to the SEC. All of the celebrities, apart from Mahone and the rapper Soulja Boy, have paid a combined total of more than $400,000 to settle the charges.

They were charged as part of a wider investigation into crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his companies. He is accused of fraud by manipulating the trading activity of two separate crypto tokens to make it appear as if they were being more actively traded than they were. This practice is known as ‘wash-trading.’ The SEC accuses him of playing celebrities to participate in a promotional campaign without disclosing that they were paid to do so. They’re not the only celebs being forced to pay the SEC due to crypto scams. Last year, Kim Kardashian had to shell out a fine of $1.26 million or advertising EthereumMax on her Instagram page without proper disclosure.

Can we all just agree that crypto is a mess? It’s basically unfunctional as a proper currency and doesn’t even work well as a general investment. Buying a lottery ticket is safer. This is a market prone to scams, overloaded with libertarian creeps, and built to benefit only those who are already rich. This month alone, it was reported that thousand of people have lost their savings thanks to a crypto trading app called iEarn Bot, which turned out to be a scam. North Korea-backed hackers stole $1.7 billion of crypto in 2022, according to the BBC. In January, the crypto lender Genesis filed for bankruptcy.

It’s no surprise that most celebrities will shill for anything if the price is right. Remember Reese Witherspoon pretending her NFT and crypto crap was all a big feminist girlboss move? The punishments are also pretty paltry, all things considered. $1.2 million is chump change for a Kardashian. They’ll all just move onto the next scam, whether it’s diarrhea tea, waist trainers, or magic beans. At least we still have Ben McKenzie.

Very fun. Thanks @LindseyReiser! https://t.co/4BJmkS3pye

— Ben McKenzie (@ben_mckenzie) December 15, 2022