Rapper Soulja Boy has apologized to his followers for promoting a series of crypto and non-fungible token projects flagged as scams by blockchain investigator ZachXBT in 2023.
According to his social media activity between 2021 and 2023, Soulja Boy has several posts promoting crypto tokens and NFT collections to his millions of followers. ZachXBT alleged that most of those promotions involved projects that either collapsed within days of his messages, were abandoned, or were outright fraudulent.
Soulja Boy says sorry for promoting scam projects
Soulja Boy, whose real name is DeAndre Cortez Way, addressed the allegations in a statement posted on X on Monday morning. He said he was unaware of the fraudulent nature of the projects at the time and admitted there were failures in his past judgment.
“I want to be clear and transparent. I had no knowledge that a scammer named Sahil was involved or paying me to promote anything fraudulent. At the time, I was doing paid promos without understanding the crypto/NFT space the way I do now. This was years ago, and I’ve learned a lot since then,” the rapper claimed.
In his apology, Soulja Boy highlighted that it was never his intention to introduce his users to projects like that. “Genuinely sorry, and it was never his intention” to promote rug pull projects. “I take responsibility for not doing deeper due diligence back then, and I’ve moved very differently since. Growth is learning from mistakes,” Soulja Boy added.
According to ZachXBT’s X thread in April 2023, Soulja Boy promoted more than 73 different crypto and NFT drops since March 2021. The investigator said 16 of the NFT collections lauded by the rapper later became scams or failed ventures, Cryptopolitan reported. One of the examples was a token known as RAPDOGE, which Soulja Boy mentioned several times in mid-2021.
“On July 19, 2021, Soulja Boy tweeted out: ‘let’s pump $RAPDOGE to $.000001 and let’s get all our friends in on this, are you with me, lilyachty.’ In the following hours, the project rug pulled after receiving shills from Lil Yachty and Quavo as well,” the investigator wrote. The RAPDOGE token has since become defunct, and investors suffered losses after liquidity was withdrawn shortly after the promotional push.
ZachXBT highlights some bogus projects
ZachXBT also talked about Soulja Boy’s tussle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which had filed a complaint accusing him and several other celebrities of unlawfully promoting tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT). The SEC claimed that the promotions failed to disclose the rapper had been compensated for endorsing the tokens, alongside actor Lindsay Lohan, WWE athlete and influencer Jake Paul, artists Akon and Ne-Yo.
Two projects known as Orion and The Life Token were also part of Soulja Boy’s cake, which he allegedly used for charitable causes. “Orion & The Life Token, these two projects used cancer and suicide prevention charities as a means to pump the price. Within one month of the shill Orion, rugged and Twitter were deleted. The Life Token was abandoned in early 2022,” ZachXBT added.
Soulja Boy promoted a different project called Flokinomics that fraudulently claimed to be connected to Elon Musk and paid for media promotion to make it look real, but its liquidity was eventually taken away. Per ZachXBT’s estimates, the rapper earned more than $730,000 from crypto and NFT promotions during the period under review.
