CRYPTOCURRENCY

Soulja Boy And Lil Yachty Are Being Sued For An Alleged Cryptocurrency Scam

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Cryptocurrency is still one of the hottest commodities on the modern digital market, despite no one really knowing what it is or how it works. It’s also highly susceptible to theft and scams — as a slew of celebrities including Lil Yachty and Soulja Boy are finding out via a class-action lawsuit against them, according to Complex and ClassAction.org. The two Atlanta rappers, along with YouTubers Jake Paul and Ben Phillips, as well as former Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, are all named as promoters of SafeMoon, a cryptocurrency founded by Braden John Karony, in exchange for tokens.

According to the suit, the SafeMoon currency ultimately amounted to a pump and dump scheme, which is when scammers hype up an effectively worthless commodity to artificially raise its price, then pull out of the commodity before it crashes. The movie Boiler Room explains it pretty well. This is more or less what happened with SafeMoon, which was created in March 2021 and had completely crashed by December, hitting a low of $0.0000006521 per token on New Year’s Eve. “As of the filing of this Complaint,” the lawsuit reads, “the trading volume for the SafeMoon Token has plummeted to around only $60,000.” The height of volume, $191.6 million on April 22. The key to SafeMoon’s “slow rug pull” was “token burns,” removing a certain number of tokens from circulation.

As tokens were “burnt,” more investors bought in, inflating the price of the remaining tokens. As the value began to drop, another “burn” was employed to bump the value again. Eventually, as trading volume fell, chief technology officer Hank Wyatt resigned, selling off his tokens to investors ahead of the failed launch of SafeMoon’s digital wallet. According to the suit, Wyatt would have or should have known that the wallet would not be ready. A day later SafeMoon COO Jack Haines-Davies also resigned, which dropped the price of the tokens from $0.000000153 to $0.00000119.

A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie Is All-In On Cryptocurrency, Saying He’ll Only Take Booking Fees In Ethereum

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A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie has always been somewhat of a maverick in the hip-hop game. When his album Hoodie SZN reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 while setting a record low for physical sales, he smartly spun the news with a progressive outlook that appears prescient in hindsight. Meanwhile, in an interview with Uproxx that year, A Boogie shared a number of surprising observations pointing to his willingness to defy expectations as a rapper and a businessman.

His latest future-thinking move will likewise undoubtedly raise some eyebrows, but if it pans out, he could look like a genius in a few years’ time. Hopping aboard the burgeoning blockchain movement, he declared he was hitching his wagon completely to cryptocurrency. “Only accepting Ethereum for shows now for those who been trying to book me,” he tweeted, informing anyone looking to put him on an event bill to invest in an online wallet. Technically, Ethereum is the name of the blockchain, while Ether (ETH) is the designation for its currency, but the point stands.

But while A Boogie is possibly the first rapper to limit his income in this particular way, he’s far from the first to invest in blockchain. That NFT craze you’ve been reading so much about is actually based on the technology, with everyone from Eminem to Steve Aoki joining the train (although Kanye remains skepticaldrawbacks to go with the benefits, but if A Boogie can navigate the potential pitfalls, his decision could prove lucrative in the long run.

Meek Mill Buys $50,000 Of Dogecoin As Prices Inflate Due To Increased Media Attention

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Crypto mania continues to tighten its hold on hip-hop as more and more jump on the blockchain wave in the hopes of a big payday. Just a week after Eminem reportedly pulled down almost $2 million selling a collection of NFTs and Nas purportedly made out like a bandit thanks to early investment in the cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase (prompting him to dub himself the “Cryptocurrency Scarface” on DJ Khaled’s “Sorry Not Sorry”), Meek Mill has joined in the feeding frenzy, buying $50,000 worth of the meme currency Dogecoin as prices rise in the wake of increased media coverage (but not scrutiny).

The rise was precipitated by this year’s flurry of coverage of the Reddit-shorted GameStop stock, as offshoots of the movement turned their focus to Dogecoin (“To the moon!”), like a rabbit hole with enticing lighting strewn up around it. After Elon Musk and his cultis– er, fans — sent the price flying thanks to a tweet from the SpaceX mogul, it looked like Dogecoin might actually be worth something, and noticing this Meek felt a fierce case of FOMO.

“I just grabbed some doge I’m tired of missing out,” he said on Twitter. Meanwhile, on Instagram, he posted a screenshot revealing both his investment — $50,000, or the price of a midsize sedan, or more than many Americans make in a year, depending on how you look at it — and his chronic misunderstanding of investment practices (buy low, sell high, Meek!).

We’ll see if it works out for him but for now, it looks like he’s another person who’s bullish on cryptocurrency and betting he can cash out before the casino closes.