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Days ago, Afrobeat Super Star Davido and his team created a crypto coin named after him.

The idea behind the project was to leverage his fame to sell it in the block chain industry.

The project's developer, who I believe is a member of his team, sent him $1,275 in start-up capital.

Davido used that amount to purchase 7.5 SOL to create the token, then proceeded to the Pump Eco System, where he spent an additional 7 SOL for $1,190, thereby purchasing 203 million DAVIDO (20.3% of the total supply).

After securing his bag, Davido went on Twitter to use his influence to announce the launch of the crypto project.

Immediately after he tweeted it, the market cap went up as his fans started buying the project associated with his name.

In the frenzy that followed, the token's price went up by over 1000%.

Seeing that the $1,190 he spent to secure 20% of the total supply of the Davido token has gone up, Davido dumped on his followers by first cashing out $200,000 (300 million naira in profit).

The first dump he did raised a red flag among his followers, who were wondering why their idol was dumping on them.

Davido reassured them that everything was well and they were in this project to make money together, which is why the price of the token increased again last night.

Sensing blood and another opportunity to make free money, Davido dumped another $245,000 on the guillable investors holding the bag last night. He then sent another 20 million of the tokens to wallets he controlled. At the moment, he only has $207k worth of Davido left in his wallet.

So in one night, Davido defrauded innocent retail investors, who had purchased a project he personally promoted, of over 700 million naira.($445,000)

Davido engaged in a practice known as grifting, and ironically, this is not the first time he has scammed his gullible followers.

In November 2021, he launched $echoke on the Binance Smart Chain to “provide access to giveaways, NFTs, festivals, exclusive merchandise, and other entertainment, media, and hospitality benefits.” The short-lived project was soon forgotten.

He also promoted Racksterli, a Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded users of 1 billion naira on YouTube, prompting backlash and arguments for a more responsible use of his star power.

With Davido, coin holders are grappling with the possibility that they may have fallen victim to a phenomenon known as "rug pull," in which project developers abandon their projects and take all the invested funds with them. Davido and the experience of the retail investors who are holding the bags that are worthless are a further setback to crypto adoption in Nigeria.

A lot of people  in Nigeria are cynical about crypto; they don’t understand what it is.

They believe it to be a scam or Ponzi scheme, and Davido's actions, which leave his followers holding the bag, support the claim that cryptocurrency is a fraudulent investment.

No, we can’t leave the trenches this way.

What Davido did not know is that, if not for greed, he could have made more than $500,000 in profit if he hadn't dumped on his followers.

Davido token reaching an all-time high of $100 million in market cap could have given him an easy $20 million to cash out, and the retail investors holding the token would also make money, so everybody wins, but the shortsightedness of a black man strikes again.

Davido has a well-known saying:

We rise by lifting others up.

But for the singer, it appears to be the opposite; he rises and makes more money by scamming his followers.