On Monday, professional soccer player Lionel Messi promoted the Solana-based memecoin to his 504 million Instagram followers. The Argentine soccer player shared a link to Watercoin (WATER), increasing the token’s value by 350%. The cryptocurrency community has expressed concern about Messi’s support for the project.
World football stars promote WATER
Lionel Messi, one of the best footballers in the history of football, promoted Solana’s project called Watercoin. The footballer’s Instagram account shared a photo of Messi with the project’s logo and a link to his Instagram page.
After the post was published, the value of memecoin increased by over 350%, from $0.00032 to $0.0015 in a few hours. WATER’s market capitalization increased by 325%, exceeding the $100 million mark.
Users were quick to express their concerns and doubts about the posts, with many speculating that Messi was a novel victim of hackers who have been relentlessly targeting the social media accounts of public figures this cycle.
However, Messi’s Instagram story has not been deleted at the time of writing, and no official reports of the hack have been made public, suggesting the post was authorized. Additionally, several uses have pointed to the footballer’s past support for crypto projects.
In February, the Inter Miami player announced its partnership with the Real-World Assets (RWA) tokenization platform. During this time, the PLANET platform token saw high volatility after increasing by 1500%.
What’s more, on Tuesday morning, it appears that the legality of Messi’s promotion has been confirmed. Earlier this morning, retired Brazilian star Ronaldinho promoted WATER on his Instagram account. The post follows the same format as his former teammate’s story, with a photo of the player and the WATER logo.
Is WATER another Solana scam?
Regardless of the legality of the posts, the cryptocurrency community remains concerned about the project. Many users have noticed that the team behind Watercoin is the same team behind another Solana-based memecoin, Beercoin (BEER).
As reported by NewsBTC, BEER crashed last month when whales began selling enormous amounts of the token. Apparently, wallets associated with the team began withdrawing the money, which caused the price to plummet and fueled deep concerns about the project. Since then, BEER has seen a 95% drop in price.
Like Beercoin, WATER is surrounded by insider trading concerns. Cryptocurrency analytics firm Bubblemaps urged users to be vigilant about the Solana token. Insiders control 30%, according to the post Total amount of WATER deliver.
It is worth noting that WATER raised over $40 million in pre-sales and reached a market capitalization of $1 billion after launching last month. However, the token apparently experienced “significant internal activity” that caused the token’s valuation to drop by 97%.
Still, some market watchers believe WATER is “starting to look solid” based on current trading activity. VikingXBT he suggested that the token could double its price if it manages to break through the resistance level of $0.0011.
At the time of writing, WATER stock is trading at $0.00095, up 198% in the last 24 hours.
Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com
