KOLs SHAR Recommendations Plunge by 96 Are You Still Following KOLs in Cryptocurrency Trading

Coin World Report:
Jessy,
The wealth effect brought by Goat has once again ignited the Meme track.
A project called Shar, which lasted from the evening of October 23rd to the early morning of October 24th, staged a dramatic scene with a market value of nearly 60 million US dollars in just 8 hours, and then a 96% drop in just five minutes.
The reason for this result is that a wallet address sold 500 million SHAR coins (50% of the total supply) at once. According to Lookonchain’s detection, this transaction came from an insider trader who collected SHAR from over 100 wallets into one wallet and then sold them at 5 am on the 24th.
How did this project attract community attention and reach a market value of 60 million US dollars in such a short time? Investigation reveals that the Shar project mainly relied on riding on the endorsement of well-known institutions and finding influential KOLs to promote it in order to gain trust.
After the selloff, the project team stated that they did not have funds to continue the project due to FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
The biggest whale in SHAR made 13,910 SOL coins.
The development of the situation was too rapid. In just 8 hours, the Shar project staged a dramatic scene with a market value soaring to 60 million US dollars and then dropping to 3 million US dollars.
The SHAR token was deployed on October 23, 2024, at 22:00. Within an hour that night, the token’s price reached a peak of nearly $0.06, with a market value of nearly 60 million US dollars. By around 5 am on October 24th, the token price plummeted from around $0.035 to around $0.0018. According to Lookonchain’s monitoring, the cause of this result was a single insider trader selling 500 million SHAR coins (50% of the total supply) at a price of 19,620 SOL coins ($3.38 million).
According to the disclosed detailed transaction details, the insider trader used a total of 5,710 SOL coins to buy 665.6 million SHAR coins (66.56% of the total supply) through 16 wallets and distributed them to over 100 wallets. In the early morning of the 24th, he collected 500 million SHAR from 104 wallets and sold them all at once. This buy-and-sell behavior earned him 13,910 SOL coins.
The series of distributing tokens to multiple wallets and then consolidating them undoubtedly aimed to cover up the trace of their on-chain operations.
It is impossible to accurately determine whether the wallet address performing this operation belongs to the project team, but the ability to purchase more than half of the token supply with 5,710 SOL coins indicates that it is the largest whale in the project and highly likely to be the project team.
After the incident, the project team responded on X that they did not have funds to continue the project due to FUD, and in the chat records provided by KOL @0xSunNF, the project team personnel they communicated with stated that the project’s life ended due to the tweets published by the whistleblower. At present, the project’s partners and exchanges are considering canceling their cooperation with Shar. The project team is researching refund plans, but there is no news yet.
KOL’s Waterloo
The promotional materials of the Shar project stated that several well-known KOLs would support the project. However, after the incident, some KOLs came out one after another to state that they had terminated their cooperation with Shar. Some even claimed that they had never collaborated with the project.
In fact, many people did buy the token based on the promotion by these KOLs. @0xSunNFT, a KOL with over 100,000 X followers, stated that he had cooperated with the project team and had posted two tweets to promote the Shar project, but these tweets have now been deleted.
After the incident, @0xSunNFT posted on X that he had not sold the tokens received from the project team and had also invested his own money in the token.
After the incident, @0xSunNFT stated in the community that he had never met the project team offline. He saw the project team setting up a booth at TOKEN2049 this year in a video and they also collaborated with market maker CSL to make clothes. Based on this judgment, he believed that the project team could be trusted and accepted their advertisement.
He once stated on X that he received the project team’s promotion fees in the form of one SHAR token. He received a reward of 1 million SHAR tokens from the project team. He also purchased 100 SOL worth of SHAR himself. (Currently, according to the address disclosed by @0xSunNFT, only records of him buying SHAR with 100 SOL twice have been found, and it has not been confirmed that he received 1 million SHAR as a reward, so it is highly likely that the reward has not been deposited into his public account.)
At its peak, 1 million SHAR was worth about $60,000, and its current value is approximately $2,000.
An industry insider familiar with KOL project promotion mentioned that it is common for projects to find KOLs for promotion. Sometimes KOLs also join forces to manipulate a project.
CSL, too, distanced themselves from Shar after the incident, stating that they had never collaborated with Shar and that the claim made by Shar in their project promotion PPT about cooperating with DWF was also false.
CSL’s staff also stated that the reason they followed Shar’s Twitter was that Shar had participated in CSL’s event, so they paid attention to their tweets.
According to the content posted by Shar’s official X account, they started posting messages on X before the Token2049 event held in Singapore in September this year. They attended the Token2049 event and collaborated with a project called @CryptoFightWeek. Shar’s project was promoted in their boxing match with a promotional poster.
However, buying tickets for Token2049 does not provide any endorsement for this project.
False propaganda, riding on the reputation of well-known institutions, and paying KOLs to promote the project are not expensive costs. If the remuneration given to KOLs for promotion is indeed in the form of SHAR tokens, it is essentially worthless for the project team.
Currently, some victims in China have reported the incident to the police.
In summary,
after the incident, some KOLs came forward to state that they had not collaborated with Shar, while Shar’s official X account stated that they had communicated with the mentioned KOLs and although they did not reach cooperation with all of them, they did receive their offers. It can be seen that KOLs receiving money for project promotion is a very common occurrence.
Currently, investors often follow the recommendations of KOLs, especially for Meme Coins driven by emotions and hot topics. The participation of KOLs can quickly spread the project within the community. In this process, KOLs not only receive benefits from project promotion fees but also profit from buying and selling based on insider information obtained from their proximity to the project team.
It is not uncommon for projects recommended by KOLs to exit scam, where they rip off investors in some projects, change the name, and continue to promote and rip off investors. And the investors, like goldfish, have only a seven-second memory.