Ronaldinho Gaúcho is the latest soccer legend to promote the Solana token Water Coin (WATER) on Instagram following a similar post from Lionel Messi’s Instagram account.
A July 9 Instagram story to his 76.6 million followers showed a photo of him with Water Coin’s mascot peeping over his shoulder, which tagged the token’s Instagram account.
WATER rallied 38.8% to $0.0012 one hour after Ronaldinho’s post but has since dropped below $0.00083, CoinGecko data shows. Its price is now down 71% from its June 26 all-time high.
WATER’s price is up 158% from Messi’s Instagram post on July 8, which shared a similar picture to Ronaldinho’s post.
Water Coin is supposedly focused on raising awareness for water-related issues, including supporting sustainable projects that prevent deforestation and help water distribution in Africa, according to its website.
Water Coin’s roadmap outlines its plans to form celebrity partnerships before becoming a charity-focused environmental token to achieve its goal.
While the Water Foundation supposedly only distributed 5% of the 88.88 billion WATER tokens to itself, YouTuber Ajay Kashyap was among the industry critics who flagged WATER as a potential pump-and-dump token.
“Is this real or another pump and dump shit,” added crypto commentator Ponga. “Stay cautious boys.”
In August, Ronaldinho, a Brazilian national, appeared before a Brazillian parliamentary committee inquiry over an alleged $61 million crypto pyramid scheme that used his likeness.
The scheme, “18kRonaldinho,” promised 2% daily returns to investors and used images of the retired soccer star in its marketing.
Ronaldinho denied any involvement in the scheme, saying he never partnered with the project and argued he was also a victim as it used his likeness without his permission.
Related: Celebrity crypto tokens will ‘absolutely’ catch SEC’s eye — Lawyers
It comes as multiple high-profile figures have launched and promoted crypto tokens, including former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner.
UFC fighter Khazmat Chimaev recently uploaded a video to his Instagram promoting a crypto token using his name — Khazmat Chimaev (SMASH) — but later claimed he didn’t have any involvement with the memecoin.
According to crypto sleuth ZachXBT, the SMASH token distribution had characteristics of a pump-and-dump scheme, with the SMASH team allegedly owning 78% of its supply.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base memecoins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities