Paul Pierce Is The Latest Celebrity To Pay Big Money For Promoting Crypto Firm, EthereumMax

As the crypto industry continues to crumble, many celebrities who promoted cryptocurrency companies are going down with it. This time, former NBA star Paul Pierce is in hot water for his link to one of them. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the Hall of Famer for failing to admit that he received $244,000 in the form of tokens in exchange for posting about EthereumMax on social media. The SEC claims Pierce made “misleading comments” about the cryptocurrency, violating several federal securities laws. The 45-year-old did not admit to any wrongdoing but did agree to a settlement. 

Pierce will pay $1.4 million to the SEC and is banned from advertising any cryptocurrency companies for at least three years. Pierce was fired from ESPN in April 2021 after being seen in an Instagram video with strippers and smoking. In a viral tweet the following month, Piece told the network he was unbothered by the termination because EthereumMax was keeping his pockets full.

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″@espn I don’t need you. I got @ethereum_max. I made more money with this crypto in the past month then I did with y’all in a year,” he wrote. This comment clearly aged horribly. 

In January 2022, a class action lawsuit was filed against EthereumMax. That lawsuit also targeted celebrities who helped push the company, specifically Floyd Mayweather, Kim Kardashian, and Pierce. In October 2022, Kardashian was forced to pay a $1.26 million fine in relation to her own Instagram promotion of the firm. Per the case, the crypto firm purposefully named their token EMAX so amateur investors would believe they were investing in Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency.

Plaintiffs accuse EthereumMax of being a pump-and-dump scheme, which Investor.gov defines as a plot that spreads misleading information to “create a buying frenzy that will ‘pump’ up the price of a stock and then ‘dump’ shares of the stock by selling their shares at the inflated price.” These operations typically lead to investors losing money when the stock price drops after the leaders of the scheme ditch their shares and stop advertising the crypto. Many crypto firms call on celebrities to make their operation appear more credible, prompting their followers to invest.