Influencer marketing has also made inroads into the crypto sphere in an attempt to make digital money more visible and respected. Using well-known influencers like Bellychan, the marketing of Water cannot fail but attract attention and investment. However, the side effects are also immediately obvious.
The Water memecoin soared almost +219.76% in price after Lionel Messi posted an Instagram story about it, showing how one word from someone with celebrity status can trigger the market value of a cryptocurrency. The on-chain metrics by a platform called Bubblemaps posted a tweet stating that 30% of the supply of the Water token is supposedly controlled by insiders.
WATER is down 48% from the highs reached following Messi’s post on Instagram Stories. Though this phenomenon is neither inherently good nor bad, it leaves room for questions about the importance of careful investment strategies in the fast-flowing cryptocurrency market, and it has got investors thinking that investing in celebrity-endorsed memecoins is a wise decision.
Elon Musk and Dogecoin
In early 2021, Elon Musk’s association with Dogecoin began abruptly tweeted. Cryptocurrency was significantly influenced in terms of market performance during this period. Many in the media say that Elon Musk, for DOGE, has been whisper-quietly acting as a financier since 2019. It was through Musk’s tweets–whether joking or supportive–that he used to create peaks and troughs in Dogecoin prices. For instance, in April 2021, one tweet from him featuring the words “Doge barking at the moon” led to a 100% hike in prices within just 24 hours.
Dogecoin, which began as a joke in 2013, quickly gathered enthusiastic community support. Before Musk got involved, the logical denomination was fractions of a cent. But thanks to his endorsement and others like him, it became one of the few cryptocurrencies you could use for serious business purposes without being laughed out of town as a speculator or charlatan.
In May 2021, just before his appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” Dogecoin hit an all-time high of nearly $0.73. Even now, despite subsequent price falls due to the crypto winter, Musk’s occasional tweets have kept up interest in the first-ever memecoin, showcasing his celebrity influence over the crypto world.
Snoop Dogg and Shiba Inu
Snoop Dogg initially supported Shiba Inu in 2021, collaborating on social media promotions and NFT releases featuring the token’s mascot. His backing drastically elevated awareness of SHIB, fueling popularity increases and market activity surges.
Meanwhile, Snoop Dogg’s tweets and endorsements have likewise made a distinctive impact on the price and visibility of SHIB. To illustrate, the token’s value bumped when Snoop Dogg tweeted about his Shiba Inu NFT collection. This created SHIB as one of the top memecoins out there, assisting in driving adoption with the general public.
Lionel Messi and his association with crypto
In 2017, football star Lionel Messi had been a central figure within the cryptocurrency space as he was appointed brand ambassador of Sirin Labs. It came with a note to endorse that it had given PSG tokens visibility and value, which was later incorporated into his Socios.com platform.
Messi also joined the high-performing cryptocurrency exchange Bitget in 2022 to help promote education and adoption on a global scale. He also put out a series of NFTs on the platform Ethernity Chain, hinting at how blockchain applications can transcend conventional crypto assets.
Choose coins with practical use cases and not just celebrity hype
There was a time when influencer-marketed coins skyrocketed in value, often due to celebrity endorsements. Being public figures, both the coins have also faced some big blows. Dogecoin, which Elon Musk has mainly boosted, has seen its price multiply or collapse over the years. After 2022, Dogecoin’s price saw a downward trend, and as of 2024, the price stabilized at around $0.082, from its all-time high of $0.7376 (in 2021), after it received support from Elon Musk.
Most of these coins, like Shiba Inu (SHIB), have little substantive underlying technology or exciting use cases and are almost entirely driven by the virality associated with social media buzz, which is likely to be short-lived. However, there is also a significant regulatory risk related to celebrity-endorsed tokens.
Regulators could often interpret these coins as pump-and-dump schemes if they prove successful. In turn, the fickle nature of influencer endorsements only exacerbates this volatility; if influencers like Musk are not prone to consistent support, the market for these coins often needs to be more active.
Also, one must question the fundamental soundness of anointing these coins, as they are usually promoted by influencers who gain exposure to push for a higher price point, not necessarily because they genuinely believe that people should buy them over the long haul.
As a result, while coins hyped by influential persons can provide quick profits, they are very high risk and require in-depth research and careful investment. In such a case, it is always sound advice to invest in memecoins or any other cryptocurrency that provides a long-term value rather than coins that have no underlying use cases (for the most part) and instead are driven only by speculation and FOMO. Investing in coins with genuine technological progress is not vulnerable to sudden massive price swings and volatility.
Investors can capitalize on this trend by backing coins that are not necessarily functional but have a real celebrity pushing them. Just take Ethereum, for example—not only has it achieved backing from high-profile names such as Mark Cuban, but much of its value proposition comes down to the many digital assets supported by a versatile smart contract system and an expansive community of developers. Such a sensible investment choice can reduce the downside risk from speculation and foster better-balanced portfolio growth.