After the meme coin went to zero, the celebrity was sued. Is there any precedent for compensatory damages?

On November 13, British citizen Naeem Azad and Romanian citizen Mihai Caluseru filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing Caitlyn Jenner and her manager Sophia Hutchins of fraudulently soliciting financially inexperienced investors in the United States and abroad to purchase unregistered securities.

Caitlyn Jenner is a former Olympic champion, but she is more well known as the step-parent of Kim Kardashian and other Kardashian family members, as well as a transgender woman. Her token, JENNER, was launched on Solana on May 27 through pump.fun, and immediately faced significant price volatility due to controversy over whether it was genuinely launched by her (related reading: 8 Hours 160x, Did Kardashian's Transgender Step-Parent Release a Coin?). After a series of dramatic events, according to dexscreener's data, its market cap peaked at $40 million.

However, as the celebrity coin craze gradually subsided, as claimed in the lawsuit, "Jenner seems to have completely abandoned the project, no longer actively promoting it, causing holders to suffer significant losses that are unlikely to be recovered."

Since rebounding to a $10 million market cap in early June, the price and volume of $JENNER have been steadily declining, with a long-term market cap of only over $200,000. But following the news of this lawsuit, $JENNER saw a 30% increase due to this wave of "black traffic," currently with a market cap of approximately $800,000.

These two investors claim to have lost over $56,000 due to investing in the JENNER token. In the lawsuit, they mentioned that if it weren't for Caitlyn Jenner's public promotion and "false and misleading statements," they would not have made such investment decisions. They also stated that Caitlyn Jenner intentionally failed to register with the SEC, resulting in a lack of sufficient transparent information to assess investment risks.

But is it just Caitlyn Jenner "shilling and rug pulling"? Not quite. The lawsuit also mentioned that Caitlyn Jenner had previously tweeted that she "will not launch a token again," but in the end, she did launch another $JENNER token on Ethereum.

Moreover, the $JENNER token on Ethereum imposes a 3% transaction fee on every transaction, a fact that Caitlyn Jenner has never disclosed.

Currently, the $JENNER token on Ethereum has a market value of only about $100,000, whereas at its peak, the market value was around $8 million.

Of course, it cannot be said that all "celebrity coins" are short-lived. Another star project from the "celebrity coin" craze six months ago, the $MOTHER from the rap artist Iggy Azalea, still holds a market value of $80 million. Although far from its peak market value of $300 million, it has at least established a stable meme in operation.

Looking back on the history of Crypto, "celebrity coins" mostly serve as examples of celebrities treating crypto enthusiasts as ATMs. Another member of the Kardashian family, Kim Kardashian, was accused by the SEC in 2022 of promoting $EMAX without disclosing her promotional payments. In the end, Kim Kardashian paid a $1.26 million fine and agreed not to promote any cryptocurrency for three years. NBA star Shaquille O'Neal was also sued for promoting the NFT project "Astrals" on Solana; he once said in Discord after the collapse of FTX, "he isn't leaving," but since then, he has not said another word in Discord.

In the harsh crypto market, the only thing we can trust is ourselves.

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