Out of nowhere, Lionel Messi's Instagram account posted a story on Monday seemingly promoting the Solana memecoin WATER.
Messi's Instagram account has 504 million followers, the second-most of any person behind fellow footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
The Instagram account connected to the WATER memecoin also shared the story in a post that shows a picture of Messi with the memecoin's logo peeking over his shoulder. The memecoin's X page has more than 185,000 followers but no posts appeared as of Monday afternoon.
WATER jumped by more than 55% shortly after the post from Messi's Instagram account, though it gave back half of those gains as of publishing time, according to CoinGecko's data. Without any additional confirmation from Messi or his team, the memecoin's promotion echoes the mysterious and alleged promotion of a similar memecoin by legendary pro wrestler Hulk Hogan at the beginning of last month.
Posts promoting the Hogan memecoin were promptly taken down, and the wrestler denied involvement. After posts from Hogan's X account were deleted, the memecoin lost about $15 million of market cap.
Attempts by The Block to contact those behind the WATER memecoin and Messi's team were unsuccessful.
According to a link connected to the WATER memecoin's website, it was created "in partnership with the masterminds" behind the Solana memecoin BEER, which experienced extreme volatility last month.
"WATER is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return," according to the memecoin's website. The token can be bought and traded on Bitget, BitMart and MEXC, also according to the website.
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