Lionel Messi Pumps Solana ‘Charity’ Memecoin WATER Coin

Messi — who is currently the second-most followed person on Instagram after fellow footballer Christiano Ronaldo — shared with his 504 million followers on Monday about some obscure memecoin called WATER Coin.

Lionel Messi, the international soccer superstar, promoted the Solana-based memecoin WATER Coin (WATER) on his Instagram story on July 8. The token’s price soared nearly 400% within just 3 hours following Messi’s post.

Messi, who is currently the second-most followed person on Instagram after fellow footballer Christiano Ronaldo, shared with his 504 million followers on Monday about the obscure memecoin. Messi’s story included an image displaying WATER’s logo, a cartoon glass of water, peeking over his shoulder, with a link to the token’s Instagram page.

The goal of WATER Coin seems curious as its creators have dubbed it a “charity token.” According to WATER’s website, the project aims to raise awareness for water-related problems and become a full-fledged ecological coin in the future. WaterCoin’s roadmap highlights four phases from the initial presale of the token, through centralized exchange listings and celebrity collaborations, to the final stage of becoming a “charity-focused environmental currency.”

“WATER is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return,” the token’s website reads. One of the exchanges where WATER Coin can be purchased and traded is Bitget, which might explain Messi’s public shilling of the meme coin, given he has partnered with Bitget since October 2022.

WATER rocketed by almost 400% shortly after Messi’s post on Instagram, though it had pulled back and hovers at $0.0009104 at press time, according to CoinGecko.