Kanye West Rejects $2 Million Deal to Promote Fake Solana Memecoin Named After Him

Popular American rapper Kanye West, a.k.a Ye, has revealed that he turned down a $2 million contract to promote a fake Solana meme named after him

American rapper Kanye West has disclosed that he turned down a $2 million contract to promote a fake Solana meme named after him via his X social media account. The scam was intended to net tens of millions of dollars in his community, but the rapper said he quit working with the proponent.

“I was proposed 2 million dollars to scam my community, those left of it. I said no and stopped working with their person who proposed it,” said West.

Based on a screenshot of the rapper’s conversation with this company, he was to receive an advance payment of $750k and $1.25 million 16 hours after posting about this $YE memecoin. The idea was for the post about this memecoin to stay 8 hours on his X handle, after which he’ll follow up with a post that his account was hacked and the post was not from him.

West’s potential acceptance of this malicious deal would have rocked the crypto world, considering his mammoth following of over 32.7 million followers on X and how strongly people drift towards celebrity memes with the hope of multiplying their stakes.

Mixed feelings trail the billionaire rapper’s disclosure with many assuming it is just another publicity stunt pending an actual launch of the said memecoin as is common with celebrities and influencers. Others salute him for being transparent with his community and not succumbing to the scam deal.

Celebrity Memecoin Scams On The Rise

In June last year, a similar incident occurred with American rapper 50 Cent. He alleged that the scammer used his X account to promote the pump-and-dump memecoin ($GUNIT) which resulted in the multi-million-dollar scam. With approximately 13 million followers at the time, it was easy to draw investors to the project and subsequently drain the liquidity.

The Rapper would later claim his X account was hacked and that he had “no association” with the crypto. According to him, the mastermind of the hack and scam walked away with a whopping “3,000,000 in 30 minutes.”

One of the latest cases of these celebrity rug pulls was that of Haliley Welch, popularly known as the Hawk Tuah Girl. Welch earned hundreds of thousands of social media followers after a funny interview that brought her into the limelight.

She leveraged this massive following to draw liquidity of over $400 million into the $HAWK token and allegedly scammed investors of over $50 million. After the incident, Welch did not take direct responsibility for the scam but claimed she was “taking this situation extremely seriously” and committed to helping “hold the responsible parties accountable.”

With West’s recent revelation and the increasing number of celebrity memecoin scams, it is possible for the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) or other relevant agencies to step in with limiting regulations to curb this fraudulent activity.