Cryptocurrency giants Bitcoin and Ethereum have fallen in price due to what investors are calling the crypto-zim.
Cryptocurrency company Celsius Network filed for bankruptcy, cryptocurrencies TerraUSD and Luna crashed, costing investors around $40 trillion, and many unknown cryptotokens sank without a trace.
Among those who blame the collapse of investors are film and sports stars whose virtual fortunes went bankrupt.
A trio of celebrities have teamed up to promote the HyperVerse cryptocurrency, which launched earlier this year and touted the potential for "massive profits."
"I'm here to support the HyperVerse," Lance Bass, former lead singer of the boy band NSYNC, said in an online video. "I strongly believe that the Metaverse is the future and that the HyperVerse is one of the greatest of all time"
Referring to HyperVerse CEO Stephen Rhys Lewis, he continued: "Stephen and the HyperVerse team will pioneer the next hottest trend, the Metaverse is waiting, and I can't wait."
Another promoter was Chuck Norris, who starred in the 1980s hits Delta Force and Lone Wolf McQuaid. "Chuck Norris is here and I want to give a shout out to the HyperVerse," he wrote online.
"Under the leadership of CEO Stephen, HyperVerse will become a leader in the metaverse space."
"I'm here to support Stephen and HyperVerse," Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said in a video. "Can't wait for HyperVerse."
I asked all three of them if they were really in a relationship with Stephen Lewis, but they said nothing.
This does not surprise me as I suspect it is a figment of someone's imagination designed to give this claim a false sense of security.
I can find no record of such a person other than a Twitter account opened last year, and HyperVerse has refused to answer my questions about him or provide an email address so I can ask questions directly.
HyperVerse is actively marketed to small investors, particularly in the UK.
According to price tracking website Coinmarketcap.com, HyperVerse Token was trading at $7.67 at its peak and is currently worth almost nothing at $0.00003047.
No doubt the celebrity backers were just as innocently duped as the investors who lost everything, which I'm sure applies to all the celebrities mentioned here.
Hollywood actor Matt Damon stars in an ad for crypto.com, an online exchange that trades more than 250 different cryptocurrencies with 50 million users.
In the ad, he compares people who invest their savings in cryptography to great historical explorers and astronauts, saying: "Fortune smiles on the brave."
Crypto.com did not disclose how much it paid the actor, but you can estimate how much they have dropped since the announcement on October 28 of last year. If you invest $1,000 in bitcoins, when you see the ad, they will now be worth $382.
Responses to the ad included an episode of the adult television series South Park in which one character said, "My dad said he listened to Matt Damon and lost all his money," while another character replied, "Yeah, they all did. But be brave , they were in it!
The response on Crypto.com's Facebook page was: "Remember one thing: if you lose everything, Matt Damon won't be there to save you."
Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow promoted Bitcoin last December as part of a paid promotion for crypto payment platform Cash App.
Her theme was that women are somehow excluded from the cryptocurrency markets, although she didn't explain how.
"To democratize who can participate, the @Cash app makes it easy to donate Bitcoin," he wrote on his Instagram account before Christmas.
"And best of all, I can give you $500,000 in Bitcoin to spread the holiday cheer."
Women who were inspired to invest their savings in bitcoins are probably regretting it now. Since taking office, her value has dropped from more than $48,000 to less than $19,000, which is around £16,600.
Tennis star Serena Williams also joined Cash and echoed the same line as Gwyneth Paltrow: "It's important to open up Bitcoin to women and people of color," calling the cryptocurrency "a very powerful currency."
It was in April. Since then, its price has more than halved. It may recover, but that's no consolation to those who were forced to withdraw their bitcoins for real money and suffered huge losses in the process.
In one high-profile case, Kim Kardashian witnessed this online after the EthereumMax crash.
The first signal that something was wrong was the name. It's almost as if it was deliberately chosen to make people think that Ethereum is the starting point of the crypto giant.
It wasn't like that.
Among those promoting it were boxer Floyd Mayweather, who started wearing EthereumMax t-shirts, and Kim Kardashian, who promoted it to her 250 million Instagram followers.
This led Charles Randall, chairman of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, to suggest last September that it was the biggest financial act in history.
"Of course, I can't say whether this particular sign is a hoax," he said. "But fraudsters regularly pay social media influencers to help them invent and make new arguments based on pure guesswork."
He continued: "We don't know when or how this story will end, but like all new speculations, it may not end very well."
That's not the point. Mayweather and Kardashian have been named as defendants in a California lawsuit in which a group of investors is seeking compensation for damages they suffered after buying Emax.
In response, Kardashian's lawyers said her Instagram posts did not constitute investment advice, and the plaintiffs could not prove they bought Emax after seeing her posts.
According to its website, 111,000 Emax token holders have lost 99% of their value since the peak last June.
In addition to cryptocurrencies, there is another type of investment in the virtual world: exchange tokens or special digital images called NFTs.
Former England and Chelsea footballer John Terry dived into this market with his NFT Ape Kids Football Club cartoons.
One of the first problems was a dispute with the Premier League, who claimed that the use of their trophy infringed copyright. Then began the catastrophic lack of interest in the project.
Ape Kids Football Club started trading tokens earlier this year at around $656, but the price dropped quickly and never recovered, with the last sale price at around $15.
OpenSea NFT market data shows that only 2,300 people bought them.
Another footballer involved in the NFT was Paul Pogba, who last November posted a series of fantastic images of cartoon eggs hatching into dragons.
Frenchman Pogba, who was then at Manchester United, said in a video message: “I am delighted to announce my partnership with an amazing project called Cryptodragons.
"It's my first time getting an NFT so it's awesome and you can see I'm going to get dragon eggs so you know what's going to happen I'm going to be the father of dragons."
Dragons will "grow, fight, win" in the metaverse, even if the early investors see no benefit.
According to OpenSea, on December 26 of last year, the most sold crypto-dragon was 18 Ethereum. At the time it cost approximately $72,000 or £63,000.
Right now there are almost no sales and the average selling price is around 0.04 Ethereum or $55.
I contacted all the celebrities mentioned in this article for comment and the only response I got was from a representative of Pogba, who is currently at Juventus, who said: “I work for Pogba. No comments.
Parent Trap actress Lindsay Lohan hasn't been shy about promoting virtual businesses, including an NFT of real and fictional women called Bull Market Girlfriends.
“Excited to launch my exclusive #NFT with @bullgirlfriends,” she tweeted on September 2 last year.
Bull Market Girlfriends price on OpenSea rose to more than 16 Ethereum that day, or about $60,000 or 53,000 pounds.
A month later, the price has fallen, and despite occasional spikes, the average sale is about half that of Ethereum, or less than $700.
Data released by the Financial Ombudsman Service shows that more than half of the investment complaints received in the last quarter are related to cryptocurrencies.
In some cases, depositors reported losing tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Earlier this summer, Santander warned of a 61% increase in reports of cryptocurrency scams and described it as an "alarming increase" in celebrity-sponsored schemes.
"We are seeing an alarming rise in celebrity-backed crypto scams, where famous faces are used on social media to scam people, often changing their lives," said the bank's head of fraud risk management. , Chris Ainslie.
“Instead of enjoying the promised huge profits, people are losing huge sums of money after being duped by these highly skilled criminals. Always do your homework and research any investment opportunity carefully before transferring money, regardless of who backs it.”
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