Celebrity meme coin rug-pulls continue as Nigerian sensation Davido becomes the latest victim
Nigerian musician Davido has become the latest celebrity to fall victim to a rug-pull orchestrated by Sahil Arora, an Indian national suspected of being involved in several recent pump-and-dump schemes.
With a massive following of over 15.3 million on X and 7.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Davido launched a memecoin called “DAVIDO” on May 29. The launch came with the tagline, “The pump stops when time stops.”
According to chain tracker Lookonchain, DAVIDO was launched on the popular Solana memecoin generator pump.fun. The token address received 7.5 SOL as startup capital after its launch.
DAVIDO wallet SOL transfers | Source: Solscan
Out of the 7 SOL received, 203 million DAVIDO tokens were purchased, accounting for 20.3% of the total token supply.
Davido proceeded to promote the token to his followers on X, encouraging them to hold onto DAVIDO and predicting that the token would reach a market capitalization of $30 million.
However, just 11 hours later, the singer sold 121.88 million DAVIDO tokens for 2,791 $SOL, which was worth around $474,000 at the time. The token’s price plummeted over 90% from its all-time high of $0.003297 on Wednesday.
At present, the token is trading at $0.002343, down 37% from its all-time high. Lookonchain also discovered a transfer of 20 million DAVIDO tokens to an address labeled as “dead1111…1111.”
The significant price crash has raised concerns about a rug-pull orchestrated by Davido, who has yet to address the situation.
In related news, celebrity-themed tokens have been in the spotlight recently due to multiple instances of these tokens being dumped on unsuspecting investors.
American media personality Caitlyn Jenner also launched a SOL-based meme coin called JENNER on pump.fun. However, shortly after its launch, the token’s price crashed when developers sold large amounts of pre-acquired tokens.
It was later revealed that Sahil Arora, the alleged scammer, was behind the incident, taking advantage of Jenner’s lack of knowledge about cryptocurrencies and abusing his position as a middleman to profit from the token.
The same scammer also raised over $300,000 in a token presale under the guise of Australian musician Iggy Azalea. Sahil launched the IGGY coin, which initially surged over 30,000% but ultimately turned out to be a pump-and-dump scheme. The token is currently down over 70% from its all-time high on May 29.
American rapper “Rich the Kid” has also accused Arora of hacking his X account to promote a scam token called “RICH” in his name.
Interestingly, a report from Magazine revealed that Arora circulated a list of celebrities for whom he claimed he could secure endorsements. The list, shared by a crypto exchange listings manager, included celebrity endorsement fees ranging from $6,000 to $315,000 for major names like Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and Lindsay Lohan.
Davido was also listed with a price of $8,000. This connection raises the possibility that Arora may be behind the recent rug-pull incident involving Davido’s meme coin.
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