KOLs SHAR Plummets by 96 Are You Still Following KOLs Cryptocurrency Investment Advice

CoinJieNet report:
Jessy,
The wealth effect brought by Goat has once again ignited the Meme track.
In just 8 hours from the evening of October 23rd to the early morning of October 24th, a project called Shar staged a dramatic scene with a market value of nearly $60 million, followed by a 96% plunge in just five minutes.
The reason behind this result is that a wallet address sold 500 million SHAR tokens (50% of the total supply) in one go. According to Lookonchain’s detection, this transaction came from an insider trader who consolidated SHAR tokens 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 achieve a market value of $60 million in such a short time? Investigation reveals that the Shar project mainly relied on the endorsement of well-known institutions and sought renowned KOLs to promote it in order to gain trust.
After the market crash, the project team claimed that they did not have the funds to continue the project due to being affected by FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
The biggest whale in SHAR earned 13,910 SOL tokens.
The development of the situation was too rapid. In just 8 hours, the Shar project experienced a dramatic rise in market value to $60 million and then a plunge to $3 million.
The SHAR token was deployed on October 23, 2024, at 22:00. In just one hour, the token’s price reached a peak of nearly $0.06 and a market value of nearly $60 million. By around 5 am on October 24th, the token price had dropped from around $0.035 to around $0.0018. According to Lookonchain’s monitoring, the cause of this result was an insider trader who sold 500 million SHAR tokens (50% of the total supply) at a price of 19,620 SOL (3.38 million USD).
According to the disclosed transaction details, the insider trader bought a total of 6.656 billion SHAR tokens (66.56% of the total supply) using 5,710 SOL tokens across 16 wallets and distributed them to over 100 wallets. Then, in the early morning of the 24th, they consolidated 500 million SHAR tokens from 104 wallets and sold them all at once. This buying and selling behavior earned them 13,910 SOL tokens.
This series of actions, 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 carrying out these operations belongs to the project team. However, the fact that they could afford to buy more than half of the token supply with 5,710 SOL tokens suggests that they are the largest whale and most likely the project team.
After the incident, the project team responded on X, stating that they did not have the funds to continue the project due to being affected by FUD. In the chat records provided by KOL@0xSunNF, who helped with the promotion, the project team members they interacted with stated that the project’s life ended due to tweets from a whistleblower. Currently, the project’s partners and exchanges are looking to cancel their cooperation with Shar. The project team is researching refund solutions, but there is no news yet.
The Waterloo of KOLs
According to the promotional materials of the Shar project, several well-known KOLs were supposed to support the project. However, after the incident, some KOLs came forward one after another, stating that they had terminated their cooperation with Shar, while others claimed that they had never worked with the project.
In fact, many people did buy the token based on the promotion by these KOLs. KOL@0xSunNFT, who has over 100,000 followers, stated that they had collaborated with the project team. They had posted two tweets to help promote the Shar project, but the tweets have now been deleted.
After the incident, @0xSunNFT stated on X that they had not sold the coins received from the project team and had also invested in the token with their own money.
@0xSunNFT later mentioned in the community that they had never met the project team in person. They saw the project team setting up a booth at TOKEN 2049 this year and jointly designing clothes with market maker CSL, based on which they deemed the project team trustworthy and accepted their advertisement.
They previously stated on X that they received the project team’s promotion fees in the form of SHAR tokens. They claimed to have received 1 million SHAR tokens as compensation from the project team. They also purchased 100 SOL worth of SHAR tokens. (Currently, according to @0xSunNFT’s publicly disclosed address, only records of them purchasing SHAR tokens twice with 100 SOL were found, and the receipt of 1 million SHAR tokens as compensation has not been confirmed. It is highly likely that the compensation was not deposited into their public account.)
At its peak, 1 million SHAR tokens were worth about $60,000, but currently, they are worth approximately $2,000.
A person familiar with KOL project promotion in the incubation industry said that it is a standard practice for projects to seek KOLs for promotion. Sometimes, KOLs may even collaborate together to manipulate a project.
As for CSL, they also distanced themselves from Shar after the incident, stating that they had never cooperated with Shar and that Shar’s claim of collaboration with DWF in their project promotion PPT was also false.
CSL’s staff explained that they followed Shar’s Twitter account because Shar had participated in CSL’s event, which is why they paid attention to their tweets.
According to the content posted on Shar’s official X account, they began posting messages before the Token2049 event held in Singapore in September this year. They attended the Token2049 event and collaborated with a project called @CryptoFightWeek. The Shar project was promoted through a poster at a boxing match hosted by @CryptoFightWeek.
However, buying a ticket for Token2049 does not provide any endorsement for this project.
False advertising, riding on the reputation of well-known institutions, and paying KOLs for project promotion are not expensive costs. If the compensation given to KOLs, as mentioned by @0xSunNFT, was in the form of SHAR tokens, then it was essentially nothing for the project team.
Currently, some victims in China have reported the incident to the police.
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 these mentioned KOLs and although they did not collaborate with all of them, they did receive their quotations. It is evident that KOLs receiving money for project promotion is a very common occurrence.
Currently, investors often follow the recommendations of KOLs, especially for Meme Coins that rely on emotions and hype. The participation of KOLs can quickly spread a project within the community. In this process, KOLs not only benefit from project promotion fees but also gain insider information to profit from buying and selling.
It is not uncommon for projects promoted by KOLs to exit scam, deceive investors, change their names, and continue to promote and deceive new investors. And investors, like goldfish, only have a memory of seven seconds.