A new trend where social media influencers ask for Ether (ETH) in exchange for nothing has taken over Twitter, grabbing the attention of many onlookers. The trend sparked various theories from being a publicity play to money laundering.
Attempting to get a slice of some of the recent “memecoin magic,” an influencer tried to promote their wallet address and promised to deliver nothing. A wallet address called “yougetnothing.eth” has received more than $1 million worth of ETH in 24 hours since it was created.
Since the account received a lot of funds, many other social media accounts attempted to do the same, hoping to get some ETH themselves. One asked for ETH to buy a nonfungible token (NFT) while another promised to spend it all on hookers and cocaine.
In the midst of the trend, many others deployed satire and started to promote an Ethereum-burning wallet, making fun of people who may be sending their funds to random addresses.
Raised 0 eth (0%)
Ordering a new life once I reach $1,000,000 so my life can change
Send me eth: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
(You get nothing in return. This is a donation)
— Emperor.SOL (@Solana_Emperor) May 30, 2023
Meanwhile, another influencer claimed that they did it as an experiment and only had one person donate to them. The social media account concluded that this trend was only a strategy by to get traction and attention by sending ETH to themselves.
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On Reddit, the trend received negative feedback from the community. A Redditor highlighted that the Twitter account only had around 68,000 followers and did not believe that the funds were from the community. The Reddit user suggested that this could be a money laundering attempt, where “dirty ETH” are being sent in as donations.
A community member shared that one of the accounts was only a week old and had received 544 ETH from an exchange that didn’t require KYC. Furthermore, the community member suggested that there seemed to be a pattern in the donation amounts.
On May 31, a former executive of the Securities and Exchange Commission warned social media influencers who manipulate the prices of crypto securities. According to former SEC chief John Reed Stark, these influencers will eventually be caught and face penalties.
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