Yet-to-collapse cryptocurrency, EMAX, has just gotten another celebrity in hot water. Short for EthereumMax, the bullshit scheme was promoted on Twitter by former NBA player Paul Pierce, except he rather forgot to say he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing so. As reported by The Verge, he U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has fined him $1.4 million.
A way to get rich quickly would be to create a new cryptocurrency, pay celebrities to hype it such that many gullible chumps buy in hoping to make a buck, and then quickly sell all your original tokens at that moment and walk away.
In other news, when EMAX launched in 2021, its creators paid celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Paul Pierce to tweet saying just how completely extraordinary it was. Attempting to ride on the name “Ethereum,” an alternative pretend-o-coin which it has nothing to do with, its launch was plenty concerning.
Since then, EMAX has cost its celebrity endorsers millions, while presumably making them significantly less. In October last year, Kim Kardashian agreed to settle with the SEC for a figure of $1.26 million for her undisclosed tweeted promotion of the currency, and now it’s cost Paul Pierce even more.
For context, Paul Pierce was fired from a presenting job on ESPN in 2021, after he shared an Instagram video of himself in some rather inappropriate circumstances, and then allegedly went on a misogynistic Twitter tirade. A month later, he tweeted his EMAX promo, declaring,
.@espn I don’t need you. I got @ethereum_max I made more money with this crypto in the past month then I did with y’all in a year. TRUTH shall set u Free” [goofy emojis] my own Boss EthereumMax.org check it out for yourself
The SEC reports that Pierce was paid $244,000 in EMAX tokens for this tweet, which he should have declared as a paid promotion, while directly accusing him of lying about how much money he’d made.
“This case is yet another reminder to celebrities,” says SEC’s chair, Gary Gensler, “the law requires you to disclose to the public from whom and how much you are getting paid to promote investment in securities, and you can’t lie to investors when you tout a security.”
The tweet violated “anti-touting” and “antifraud” laws, and as such Pierce has agreed to pay a total of $1.409 million, and to not promote anything to do with crypto for the next three years.
Meanwhile, just in case you were still wondering if there’s money in them their hills, here’s how EthereumMax has performed over its lifetime:
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