Celebrity sued after celebrity coins returned to zero - is there a precedent for compensation?

Author: Cookie; Source: Blockbeats

On November 13, British citizen Naeem Azad and Romanian citizen Mihai Caluseru filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Federal Court in California, accusing Caitlyn Jenner and her agent Sophia Hutchins of fraudulently soliciting financially immature investors in the United States and abroad to purchase unregistered securities.

Caitlyn Jenner is a former Olympic champion, but she is better known as the stepfather of Kim Kardashian and other members of the Kardashian family, as well as a transgender woman. Her token JENNER was launched on Solana through pump.fun on May 27. As soon as it was launched, it caused huge price fluctuations due to the controversy over whether it was launched by her (Related reading: 160 times in 8 hours, Kardashian's transgender stepfather issued a coin?). After a series of dramatic stories, according to dexscreener data, the market value peaked at $40 million.

But as the craze for celebrity coins faded, as the indictment claimed, "Jenner appears to have completely abandoned the project and is no longer actively promoting it, causing serious losses to holders that are unlikely to be recovered."

Since rebounding to a market value of $10 million in early June, $JENNER's price and trading volume have been falling, with a long-term market value of only more than $200,000. But after the news of the lawsuit came out, $JENNER has seen a 30% increase due to this wave of "black traffic", and its current market value is about $800,000.

The two investors claimed to have lost more than $56,000 by investing in JENNER tokens. In the lawsuit, they mentioned that if it were not for Caitlyn Jenner's public propaganda and "false and misleading statements", they would not have made such an investment decision. They also said that Caitlyn Jenner's deliberate failure to register with the SEC made it lack sufficient transparent information to assess investment risks.

But is it just Caitlyn Jenner "calling orders and playing badly"? No. The indictment also mentioned that Caitlyn Jenner once tweeted that "no token will be launched again", but in the end, she launched another $JENNER token on Ethereum.

In addition, the existence of $JENNER tokens on Ethereum has a 3% transaction fee for each transaction, and Caitlyn Jenner has never disclosed the existence of transaction fees.

Currently, the market value of $JENNER tokens on Ethereum is only about $100,000, and at its peak, the market value was about $8 million.

Of course, it cannot be said that all "celebrity coins" are "short-lived". Another star project in the "celebrity coin" craze six months ago, rapper Iggy Azalea's $MOTHER, still has a market value of $80 million. Although it is far from the market value of $300 million at its peak, it has at least formed a stable meme in operation.

Looking at the history of Crypto, "Celebrity Coins" are just examples of celebrities using currency circle players as ATMs, accounting for the vast majority. Kim Kardashian, another member of the Kardashian family, was accused by the SEC in 2022 of promoting $EMAX without disclosing publicity compensation. In the end, Kim Kardashian paid a fine of $1.26 million and agreed not to promote any cryptocurrency within 3 years. NBA star "Shaq" O'Neal was also sued for promoting the NFT project "Astrals" on Solana. He said in Discord after FTX collapsed that "he would not leave", but since then, he has not said a word in Discord.

In the cruel crypto market, the only one we can trust is ourselves.