New leak Not all info from influencers is trustworthy

I was scrolling through X and came across a tweet from ZachXBT, who's a well-known on-chain detective. He managed to get his hands on a spreadsheet listing over 200 crypto projects that paid influencers to promote them, and many of these turned out to be scams. The names of more than 160 influencers were revealed, and they’ve all been part of these paid advertising schemes, both for legit projects and complete duds, with most being associated with failed crypto. The list shows their names, how much they got paid by each project, and their wallet addresses. They can’t just brush this off since their crypto wallet addresses are all out in the open. These so-called influencers claim to be traders and crypto investors, but they don’t actually profit from the things they preach. They’re just getting paid to shill. This is why newcomers often fall for fake projects, as they tend to trust what these people say based on their flashy online presence. Check out the list; your favorite crypto influencer might just be on it.

I was just reading that. Is anyone really surprised though? I think unless a coin is actually big already, you should automatically assume that the person tweeting about it is involved in it somehow.

I only notice one username. I am not a fan or follower, but I seem to have seen this cryptobaldwin posted here before (I'm not sure), or else I was thinking of Rudy Baldwin, a famous fortune teller in my country. This one only had 12k followers but got 750 for two posts? Such a big payment for an X post. Not a brand-new account, but still it's a big payment for two posts. I'm sure some of those influencersare using multiple X accounts to abuse this. Gaining 12k followers should be easy and earn 750 for 2 posts. The weird part is why they are hired by the scammer project without checking followers. It looks like some of the influencers' accounts have many fake followers. I mean, it looks like they use SMM panel to get followers, likes, and shares but still they are getting paid wihh fake likes, followers and shares.

This is not surprising at all, shilling is the new way your favorite influencers cash out and put their followers in pain. I was discussing with a friend who shills projects on the authenticity of the project he advertises on the social media platforms and he responded that he don't care if it is a scam or not as long as he gets paid. That is the reality and ignorant people who still take information from influencers seriously would consistently end up shooting themselves on the foot.

This isn't limited only to newcomers [from time to time, you can spot veteran members who have become victims due to their negligence in verifying & cross-checking stuff]. I'm glad none of the people I follow belong to that list, but there's always a chance they're part of another one [unfortunately]. - AFAIK, in some countries, you're obliged by law to explicitly mention if a post/video is sponsored or not.

I don't believe anyone is surprised here. Anyone who take's a so-called influencer words for granted is bound to end up scammed. Some people would sell their souls for some money, it's no surprise that they were promoting scam projects. There's also always the possibility of not actually knowing, but if you're promoting something to your audience, you should always be one step forward and research what this project is about and how legitimate it is. I personally wouldn't call it 100% scam, because if you end up spending your money is your own responsibility, you shouldn't listen to someone else, but it's fully unethical.

Nothing surprises me anymore. This is exactly why people says, "DYOR",  Do your own research. I do follow and watch many videos of crypto influences but I don't take their advice/words as my final verdict, I choose coins based on what I have learned so far. Because at the end of the day, it's my responsibility to dig deeper, verify the facts, and understand the fundamentals od each projects. Umm, at this point it's knows how these things works. And many newbies actually falls for them, following blindly like sheep..

Hmm, that's an interesting point from your friend's discussion! Because nowadays, influencers don't just care about education, but also how much they get paid for promoting something in order to earn money. Believe me, influencers don't care whether a project is a scam or legitimate, they just want to get paid... so you need to be careful.

I can't be surprised about this; from the onset, I already know that most of these so-called Twitter influencers are majorly doing shilling jobs, nothing more than that. If they are not directly paid to tweet about a new project, they just happen to buy the token at a cheaper rate and need to promote it so that innocent victims can invest, giving them the chance to dump and leave the market.

I do not trust anything or anyone anymore. Everything seems inauthentic nowadays. But I am not surprised that influencers don't care about people as long as they get paid. I know this because I used to work in marketing and most of these so-called social media celebrities are scum who would sell their own mothers. The only coin we can trust is Bitcoin. I wonder of Satoshi decided not to disclose his/her identity because they wanted Bitcoin to not be just another business logo.

All these social media influencers are after their own pocket, they don’t care about the project, their main target is to get paid for their promotion. I am not surprised with this because most projects don’t care about its community, they prefer influencers because they believe they raised the project’s awareness to the general public and as a result of that, they do give them higher allocation than the community that might participated in airdrops or testnet. The worst part of these influencers is that, any team or project that didn’t pay them huge amount of money, they end up criticizing the projects and they are also doing their best to tarnish the project’s reputation; they might even be paid to do such a job.

Just do not trust anyone. Have you not seen influencers arrested because they are promoting or advertising unlicensed gambling sites and others? All they care for is to make money and nothing else. Influencers are still better as we know what they can do for money. Do not be surprised if you see reputed news sites in some countries to be used for the promotion. It is happening in my country. Also I can see it on common sites like Cointelegraph.

Online influencers are paid to promoting or advertise fake cryptocurrencies and fake gambling site, so it is not a surprising thing to us. My advise is that never to take any information from online influencers for they are promoting those cryptocurrencies for their own benefits, don't be surprise that those cryptocurrencies all this online influencers are promoting is their own. So don't allow yourself to scam by online influencers for majority of them are scammers. I can remember back then when a popular musician name devido was promoting a coin and people who bought that coin are in lost till today, because the coin was a pump and dump coin so be wise avoid been victim.