Celebrity crypto endorsements gone wrong; Where are they now?

Although the cryptocurrency market is slowly starting its road to recovery after the rout it went through in recent months, millions of traders are still suffering from its catastrophic effects, some of them having invested after endorsements by various celebrities.

Indeed, such endorsements, featuring some of the most prominent celebrity crypto touts that ended unhappily, including those by Matt Damon, Tom Brady, and others, were listed by Bloomberg’s Immanual John Milton in a piece published on August 1.

Actors falling for the crypto

One of the major crypto enthusiasts and the face of the digital asset exchange Crypto.com’s ‘Fortune favors the brave!’ campaign running since October 2021, was Matt Damon. 

Since Damon’s ad was first broadcast, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dropped by over 60%, earning him ridicule by TV shows South Park and Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show over promoting crypto.

Musicians weren’t safe either

Back in April 2021, The Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter supported the decentralized finance (DeFi) token SafeMoon, an altcoin project on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), in several of his tweets. 

Since then, the token declined by a whopping 99% and even faced accusations of being a rug-and-pull scheme. Contacted by Bloomberg News, Carter’s representatives responded with a statement that:

“Nick Carter was never an owner of SafeMoon and he was never recruited, paid or compensated in any way by the SafeMoon owners to be a promoter of their tokens. He simply purchased some SafeMoon tokens on his own like any other member of the public.”

Athletes not immune to crypto

Meanwhile, the famed American football quarterback Tom Brady partnered with crypto exchange FTX in June 2021 to appear in its ad campaign. Since then, Bitcoin dropped by 35%. 

In late April 2022, Brady joined 2,000 of the biggest crypto backers at the four-day Crypto Bahamas event hosted by the FTX and Anthony Scaramucci’s forum SALT, where they discussed topics ranging from Bitcoin, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), crypto regulation, and more.

Crypto ad spending goes down as celebs go silent

As Finbold reported in late May, A-list celebrities went quiet after the market’s recent sell-off, facing increased criticism that they encouraged their fans to invest in cryptos while failing to properly inform them about their risks.

In June, most crypto companies reportedly cut down their marketing spending by over 90%, including both digital and TV ad campaigns, after splurging millions on various campaign deals such as the ones with the above celebrities.

Among the top companies that had heavily invested in crypto advertisements and were forced to reduce or even pause their spending in this area are Crypto.com, Gemini, and Coinbase.