Since Trump, celebrity token launches seem to have become a new business model. On March 2, the famous retired football star Ronaldinho also announced the launch of his personal token $STAR10 on the BSC chain.
Author: Frank, PANews
Since Trump, celebrity token launches seem to have become a new business model. On March 2, the famous retired football star Ronaldinho also announced the launch of his personal token $STAR10 on the BSC chain. Despite the market downturn, although the circulating market value peaked at $32 million, it still fell far short of the expected buying frenzy. Instead, many conspiracy theories about this token have been exposed on social media, including rumors about a Shenzhen token issuance team, unsealed liquidity pools, unyielded minting rights, and insiders cashing out early, leading even Binance founder CZ, who retweeted the launch information, to face a barrage of attacks from users. Is this celebrity token craze really a one-way harvesting wealth code?
Is the football genius reduced to a harvesting tool? Doubts surround the professional team's operations.
Ronaldinho, once hailed as the most talented Brazilian football star of all time, is generally referred to as 'Ronny' by fans. He was beloved by fans throughout his career and was dubbed a football elf. However, rising to fame at a young age, lacking self-discipline, and indulging in a life of extravagance led to the ruin of his career, followed by squandering money and facing bankruptcy, ultimately leveraging his fame to earn money. Like many talented athletes from humble beginnings, Ronny unfortunately chose this script.
After trying various methods to make money, the rapid harvesting capability of the crypto industry seems to have become his better choice.
On February 22, Ronaldinho posted on Twitter, 'Here, cryptocurrency looks good,' beginning to preview his token issuance plan. However, due to the ongoing downturn in the crypto market, the final token was officially launched ten days later.
During these ten days, the crypto market experienced a significant downturn, and the previously hot Solana chain has also shown signs of decline. The BSC chain, meanwhile, is trying to become the new MEME hotbed amid CZ's frequent interactions. Ronaldinho's final choice suggests that there may be a team behind him well-versed in the changing patterns of the crypto market.
On February 28, Twitter user @R10coin revealed that Ronaldinho's token launch was backed by a token issuance team from Shenzhen. This informant claimed to be from another professional token issuance company, which had initially negotiated a $6 million cooperation agreement with Ronaldinho for the joint token sale. However, after another token issuance team from Shenzhen swooped in with a $10 million offer, the informant chose to expose the matter and shared some emails and signed documents from Ronaldinho. The community generally believes this is just a black-eat-black farce, but people seem to have become accustomed to such insider trading. The previous token launch farce by President Milei also exposed these insider dealings to the public. As of March 4, the user's Twitter account has been suspended.
As the user has not released any more substantive insider information, the details about the team behind Ronaldinho's token launch remain unknown. According to PANews investigations, the official website domain of the $STAR10 token is hosted by the well-known domain service provider GoDaddy, and there are two deployed IP addresses. Upon reverse lookup, these two IPs come from Amazon cloud servers, which have resolved over 80,000 domains, making it impossible to prove that they are controlled by the same person.
Interestingly, among the IPs' resolution list, another well-known MEME coin, PNUT's official website address appeared. PNUT was also one of the MEME coins launched on Binance last year. However, from the current evidence chain, there is no direct evidence indicating that there is a conspiracy group behind the issuance of the $STAR10 token as claimed on social media.
The contract hides secrets: backdoor privileges trigger a trust crisis.
However, during the token issuance process, people still seemed to feel the insincerity of the $STAR10 token issuance. According to GoPlus Security monitoring, the contract owner of the $STAR10 token still retains the right to destroy tokens, and the lock-up period for the liquidity pool is only one month.
This backdoor-like operation has led many users to believe that the project team is preparing for harvesting. This has sparked collective condemnation on social media. Binance founder CZ initially retweeted Ronaldinho's announcement without noticing this loophole and stated that this act is not an endorsement, just gratitude for choosing to launch on the BNB Chain, but he subsequently faced a collective backlash from users.
However, perhaps due to pressure from the community, the team behind Ronaldinho later stated on Twitter that they have relinquished minting rights and extended the lock-up period from 255 to 2281 years.
However, this patchwork approach seems to have gained little acceptance from the community. As of March 4, the number of token holding addresses on the chain was about 9,500, far from TRUMP's 640,000, and even fewer than LIBRA's 27,000 addresses.
Insider trading yielded a profit of 282 times; was it an early layout by internal players?
Additionally, insider trading is one of the common tactics for celebrities launching tokens. Similar signs also appeared during the issuance of $STAR10. According to Onchain Lens, an insider purchased 20 million $STAR10 tokens before the token issuance for 49 BNB (worth $29,000), and as of March 4, this address had sold $350,000 worth of tokens, still holding over $2.6 million worth of unsold tokens.
According to PANews calculations, the user's average cost is about $0.0014, with a peak increase of approximately 282 times, and the maximum holding value can reach $8.26 million, nearly a quarter of the circulating market value. More suspiciously, Ronaldinho's token issuance time is UTC, on March 2 at 22:17, while the buying time for this address was 22:17:08. This time even precedes Ronaldinho's announcement time. How did this address's player choose to invest $29,000 in a gamble without confirming the token's source? PANews found through penetration that the initial funds for this address came from Binance's hot wallet.
Overall, Ronaldinho's token launch seems to be another failed case. Similarly, NBA legend Scottie Pippen, who launched his token in August last year, saw his token $BALL's market value only reach $4.5 million, with about 1,400 holders, a 24-hour trading volume of $2,300, and only 5 transactions, making it a mess.
The recent uproar surrounding LIBRA and MELANIA has also been exposed as a scheme by a conspiracy group. People seem to have become accustomed to this harvesting tactic and no longer blindly buy in. As of March 4, the market value of $STAR10 has only remained at $11.5 million, down 66% from its peak.
From an investment perspective, celebrity tokens have almost been a 'complete failure' so far, and for those celebrities trying to quickly cash out through crypto token issuance, this exploitative harvesting model seems difficult to sustain.
Author: Frank
