Football star Lionel Messi shills token on Instagram and price soars 400%

Key Takeaways

• Lionel Messi's Instagram post of Water (WATER) token led to a 400% price surge in three hours.
• On-chain tracker warned of 35% supply concentration in a group of wallets.

Football star Lionel Messi shared with his 504 million followers on Instagram the image of a Solana-based meme coin named Water (WATER), as reported by X user Degen News. The token soared nearly 400% in just three hours, although its price is down 80% since its all-time high. Additionally, a group of wallets controls 35% of the token’s supply.

Messi’s Instagram story post shilling WATER

The on-chain tracker Bubblemaps reinforced the warning in another X post, urging its followers to send WATER to zero. However, investors ignored the supply concentration and decided to buy the token after Messi’s post.

Recently, hackers allegedly breached celebrities’ profiles to promote meme coins. After recovering access to their accounts, the celebrities removed all the posts from their profiles, even the ones unrelated to token-shilling activities. Notorious examples are actress Sydney Sweeney and the rapper 50 Cent.

Yet, it doesn’t seem like the case for Messi. At the time of writing, the post made on the football player’s stories on Instagram is still up, and Messi didn’t claim to be hacked.

The meme coin claims its objective is to promote a “net-positive impact on the real world,” although it doesn’t specify how. Over the last 24 hours, WATER’s trading volume is nearly $97 million, with an over $80 million market cap.

Notably, other Solana-based meme coins with two-digit growth in the last 24 hours include Zazu (ZAZU), Zoomer (ZOOMER), and Jeo Boden (BODEN), with 63%, 29%, and 16% price leaps, respectively.