Influencers, affiliate links and scams

[uneng]

One of the most common and easy ways to profit in crypto industry is to promote affiliate links to online platforms such as casinos, exchanges and micro earnings websites. Probably most of us have already done it in the past, or still do this during the present moment.

However, what if you had the reach of 1 million subscribers? Millions of views? And if you endorsed a platform to all those people which turned into scam?


That is what happened with some crypto influencers, such as "Bitboy", who promoted Celsius:

In what may have been his most consequential failed tout, Armstrong was one of the most vocal supporters of crypto lender Celsius Network. He first talked about the lending platform in a 2018 project review video. “I do have faith in Celsius and I do believe it will be a successful project,” he said. In the March 2022 portfolio reveal video, he told his YouTube audience that the BitSquad held 25,000 of Celsius’ CEL tokens (worth over $83,000 at that time and around $23,000 as of press time).

Celsius froze billions of dollars from depositors in June, and Armstrong said he was one of the victims of the lending platform’s collapse. He admitted during his show that his team “worked with Celsius for years … some partnership stuff.”

Read 'em and Weep: Five Crypto Influencers Who Dealt Their Followers a Bad Hand


Or "Lark Davis":

Then ZachXBT made a second allegation, accusing Davis of withdrawing $2.5 million from crypto lender Celsius mere days before the now-bankrupt company froze withdrawals, swaps and transfers on June 12.

Davis posted videos with a Celsius referral link as recently as June 10. He had been promoting Celsius with his own promo code, LARK, to his YouTube audience throughout the first half of the year, CoinDesk found. A Twitter user pointed out that Davis promoted Celsius for weeks after he had begun making his withdrawals.

Read 'em and Weep: Five Crypto Influencers Who Dealt Their Followers a Bad Hand




And so many other celebrities like Larry David, Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen ( FTX's ambassadors), Stephen Curry, Major League Baseball, Miami-Dade County and athletes who promoted FTX until its very end, although they weren't sharing referral links, but being directly paid by the company.
Every celebrity involved in promoting FTX crypto


What do you think about these people? Do they have any responsabilities when promoting companies which turned into scam? Should they be held accountable for that? Is it right to profit over your audience's losses? And is there more responsability involved when it's an influent person promoting affiliate links, instead of random crypto enthusiasts sharing their links in social medias?

[n0ne]

Not with cryptocurrency, this kind of problem is happening everywhere. As everything happens online it have been made simple by the so called influencers. With time more number of scams out of cryptocurrencies create fear among the common people. This finally makes common people to term cryptocurrency completely a scam. We should not allow this to happen, and the same can be understood by the learning cryopreservation .

[Die_empty]

Not with cryptocurrency, this kind of problem is happening everywhere. As everything happens online it have been made simple by the so called influencers. With time more number of scams out of cryptocurrencies create fear among the common people. This finally makes common people to term cryptocurrency completely a scam. We should not allow this to happen, and the same can be understood by the learning cryopreservation .

These celebrities don't care about the history or integrity of the firms they are promoting because they blinded by the money they would make from the publicity. Some of them in my country even partner with these fake cryptocurrency businesses to scam the people. The government should make policies that would make customers hold both the company reliable and it's promoters for loss of funds or bankruptcy. These celebrities know that they have great influence on their followers and the want to negativity use thier power to exploit their fans

Sometimes I wonder why people listen to these celebrities. Most of them have zero knowledge of the cryptocurrency industry yet thier followers blindly follow thier quack financial advices. I can never rely on the investment advice from any celebrity because they are not well grounded and only interested in thier endorsement benefit. If I cannot research and verify, then I would never invest

[DaveF]

I look it as the same way that Matthew McConaughey is doing Lincoln commercials, or Samuel L Jackson doing Capital One commercials. They are going to get a lot more attention then if they stuck me on TV and said buy this car / get this credit card / etc.

So they get these famous people to push their services.

Once you become a social media influencer  you have to keep paying the bills somehow, so when someone comes and gives you money to push some crypto project you do that. It's just what it is.

If you make investment decisions based on that you are going to get burned.

-Dave

[BlackBoss_]

It happens on other platforms, not on this forum which has its rules to prohibit affiliate links to spam and scam. The forum is not perfect but if considering about how good it is to prevent scammers and scam, it is better than many platforms. Twitter, Facebook can not compare with Bitcointalk.

4. No referral code (ref link) spam. [1]

[1miau]

"Influencers" (especially on Social Media like YouTube) are people where I would be very careful of taking their opinions as granted. "Influencing" already sounds extremely shady and over the time we have seen how accurate (hint: not) YouTubers are operating. It's mostly a mix of shilling own bags of useless Shitcoins (probably pump and dump), generation of revenues from referall links or some YouTubers are directly paid for advertising coin xy or service xy.

Remember Trevon James, who shilled BitConneeeeect on YouTube? 
I guess people trusting him got screwed...

YouTube has become a shithole and in my opinion, we are better off to avoid it most of the time.

[LittleBitFunny]

It happens on other platforms, not on this forum which has its rules to prohibit affiliate links to spam and scam. The forum is not perfect but if considering about how good it is to prevent scammers and scam, it is better than many platforms. Twitter, Facebook can not compare with Bitcointalk.

4. No referral code (ref link) spam. [1]

The forum cannot be compared with major social platforms like Twitter or Facebook, the forum's user base is only a few million people, while Facebook's user base is up to billions of people. It can be said that the forum  smaller, so the management will also become a lot easier. Not only bitcointalk but even some of my local forums ban referrer spams. And called a social network, it is just like our real society, scams, fake information everywhere, there will be no way to prevent it.

[uneng]

YouTube has become a shithole and in my opinion, we are better off to avoid it most of the time.

There are so many crypto gurus and wealthy gurus in general on Youtube. It has really become a very suspicious place to find financial advices. It's so easy to fake a life of richness and success in videos of 10 minutes. Here in my country a scammer financial advisor took a homeless from the streets, who got famous for a depraved situation which gained notoriety on the media, and put him to trade Bitcoin with binary options. Then he recorded videos with this homeless, who claimed to be making 1800% profit trading daily for just one hour.

Then exhibited a hypothetical high middle-class apartment purchased for the homeless (through "Bitcoin trading" profits), a lot of ostentation in parties, shops and trips...

Everything faked and probably sponsored with money stolen by the scammer who managed the homeless. In the end, once the homeless' hype was over, the manager just kicked his ass and now he is back to the streets begging.

[goldkingcoiner]

I will never be able to understand the thinking behind the minds of people who listen to influencers who tell them how to live and how to spend their money. How much of a mindless sheep does one have to be to let someone take control of your finances and your life like that? And the only reason being that they are famous, (usually for nonsense reasons) does not provide me or anyone else with reassurance that the influencer knows what he/she is doing. That is not something that should inspire people into throwing away all they have.

Why not trust in the advice of someone who has years of experience with investing?

I guess some people have too much money...

[sunsilk]

I used to see that advertisement with Lark Davis but I'm just ignoring it.

Not with cryptocurrency, this kind of problem is happening everywhere. As everything happens online it have been made simple by the so called influencers. With time more number of scams out of cryptocurrencies create fear among the common people. This finally makes common people to term cryptocurrency completely a scam. We should not allow this to happen, and the same can be understood by the learning cryopreservation .

I agree, it happens everywhere and a few years ago I've seen content creators that are not really into crypto and it's not their niche and focus of their daily contents.

But, I was surprised to see that they've promoted some platform that's obviously runs a ponzi scheme after checking it and I messaged the pages of those that have promoted it but they seem to ignore it.

Well, that concludes that they're just there to advertise it and won't really care with their viewers being exposed to invest into potential scam platforms as long as they get paid with its advertisement.

[The Cryptovator]

Do you believe so-called influencers are concerned about investors? Do you believe their followers are genuine? I don't believe it, and I wouldn't believe them either. Yes, they may have some genuine followers, but when those followers are deceived by his affiliate links, they will unfollow that influencer. It's quite simple. As a result, we can conclude that they do not have genuine followers. Influencers are paid by the team as well as by affiliates. So they don't need to worry about his followers because he only cares about money.

[Merit.s]

These celebrities influenced people in a negative way by giving them wrong impression. It is very surprising that celebrity are promoting scam project and forgetting that this might jeopardize their reputation. Anyway,for them to do this,I don't think that they care about their reputation and the welfare of their fans,but  I see that they only care about themselves. FTX might have used these influencers to deceive people and their customers,to that they can have confidence and trust on FTX.

[pawel7777]

...
What do you think about these people? Do they have any responsabilities when promoting companies which turned into scam?

If it can be proven that they new the venture they were promoting was a scam - then yes, they should be held responsible and face consequences.
Orherwise, the benefit of a doubt should be given, as we cannot expect anyone providing advertising service to know the intentions of their clients.
But it's a good opportunity to remember that celebrity endorsements are meaningless and aren't adding any credibility.

It happens on other platforms, not on this forum which has its rules to prohibit affiliate links to spam and scam. ...

Scams are actually allowed on this forum. Simply because moderators cannot evaluate each case. Plus, it could create an impression that if some posts/threads are not removed by mods, they are legit and not scams.

[rat03gopoh]

Celebrities are only good at representing, if they wanna be paid then follow the instructions. Yep, we know that they have limited knowledge in this field, but is it entirely their fault? What if they're also part of the victim?
I believe that many seasoned millionaires (not influencers) have also fallen for the scams of these companies.

[Sarah Azhari]

What do you think about these people? Do they have any responsabilities when promoting companies which turned into scam? Should they be held accountable for that? Is it right to profit over your audience's losses? And is there more responsability involved when it's an influent person promoting affiliate links, instead of random crypto enthusiasts sharing their links in social medias?

this matter made me and us think Bitboy or another influencer made money with the same thing in the past. we know it's not hard for the influencer because the follower and subscriber think the Idols have trust and has invested their money on the tokens. So in this case we must be mature to face the situation, warn them on his post and comment can not clear the situation, that makes us bullied. just let them get scammed, maybe that experienced make the follower be cured after lost alot of money.

[Fundamentals Of]

I don't think they will ever be held responsible for whatever happened to the companies they promote. They're paid advertisers of a licensed company. We will see but I won't expect Tom Brady, Steph Curry, etc to be meted penalties for promoting FTX, for example. It is unfair to also accuse them of profiting from the losses of others.

If marketers would be held responsible for the products and services they are promoting, then many actors would have already been in jail by now or are repeatedly fined for promoting all things, from food to medicine, liquors, cigarettes, gambling sites, etc.

As always, caveat emptor.

[bittraffic]

They were promoting a real project and at that time they have no idea whether a project like Celsius is going to scam. While there were signs, FTX also bought them which is probably now the fault of FTX since they already saw it coming yet they made it worse for the investors.

However, people have to really realize the "Not your Key, Not your coins" phrase. They have been warned about it many times and everywhere. If they still go for centralized and Defi platforms where they have no hold of thier keys, I think they really have not understood well. Blinded by the future profit.

[takuma sato]

I doubt Gisele Bundchen or Floyd Mayweather know anything about crypto. They probably have a team of people that pick up marketing gigs for them, and they got told "this is the next big thing, get on it". And so they did, and they will pay the price.

These people probably have enough in savings to hire good lawyers and don't go bankrupt from this, but lower level affiliate marketers like Bitboy could get wreckt in a class action lawsuit if they aren't careful with what they promote.

[peter0425]

However, what if you had the reach of 1 million subscribers? Millions of views? And if you endorsed a platform to all those people which turned into scam?

Affiliate links are tend to be two sided, one is legit and the other is scam and those people that promotes this? are having best time in the beginning but surely this will effect their trustworthiness in time.

remember that there are no permanent growth , fall will come if you abuse the system .

millions of viewers are indeed high numbers, but sooner this will lessen till gone in the future.

[DaNNy001]

I will never be able to understand the thinking behind the minds of people who listen to influencers who tell them how to live and how to spend their money. How much of a mindless sheep does one have to be to let someone take control of your finances and your life like that? And the only reason being that they are famous, (usually for nonsense reasons) does not provide me or anyone else with reassurance that the influencer knows what he/she is doing. That is not something that should inspire people into throwing away all they have.

Why not trust in the advice of someone who has years of experience with investing?

I guess some people have too much money...

Some people are just too naive and they just believe or follow what these so called influencer or celebrities tell them and act out of ignorance of not knowing if the actual person telling you about the firm or business truly  has experience or is grounded on what he or she is saying. Some just have this stupid nature in them that's tell them whatever a celebrity says online or in a social media platform is  true.
  These influencers don't care less if the platform they are advertising or promoting are actually fake and scam projects, so the real damage is actually done to me and you who are the common man. They inspire you to throw away your funds without even caring less while some i believe even endorse these projects and they patner together to collects your funds just in the name of they fucking famous.