In his third go-around in crypto, Afrobeats superstar Davido backed and promoted “Timeless Davido,” $DAVIDO a crypto token—or memecoin, depending on who you ask—on Wednesday night. While the token’s utility was unclear—the use cases appeared to be linked to an unknown website and telegram group—it was launched on the Solana blockchain and immediately broke through the noise of other obscure crypto tokens.

“Solana just ships. Welcome Davido,” Solana’s Twitter handle wrote to the superstar on Wednesday night as $Davido raced to a $10 million market capitalisation four hours after its launch. It seemed like the only way from there was up, with the Grammy Award nominee endorsing the coin in several tweets.

The excitement was short-lived. By Thursday morning, $Davido’s valuation had dipped 90 and per DEX screener, the coin’s liquidity was $291,000 at the time of this report.

It is not the singer’s first crypto rodeo. 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, on YouTube, prompting backlash and arguments for a more responsible use of his star power. 

With $Davido, coin holders are coming to terms with the possibility that they may have been victims of a rug pull, a phenomenon where the project developers abandon it and take all the invested funds with them. 

“Davido does not need this type of negative publicity. Whatever money he made from it is not worth it,” a crypto expert told TechCabal. 

Davido’s management did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Many people who bought the coin were under no illusions that this was a long-term project, but they expected it to ride a wave and at least increase its valuation, allowing holders to profit from it. That would have required the developers to resist the temptation of pulling a pump-and-dump on users.

In the world of crypto tokens and meme coins, pump-and-dump schemes are par for the course and involve someone or a group of people artificially inflating the price of a token before selling their tokens at those high prices. It leaves anyone who bought into the hype holding the bag. 

Memecoins often have periods of huge valuation jumps before cooling, but three crypto experts told TechCabal that in many situations, the promoters of those coins structure them so that many ordinary users can also make a profit. For the $DAVIDO coin, the creators appeared to be willing to take profits at the expense of coin holders from the jump. 

Popular Nigerian singer, Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, also known as Wizkid has presumably taunted fellow singer David Adeleke, Davido over the deflation of Davido’s recently launched cryptocurrency coin, $Davido.

Davido partnered with Phantom and Solana to bring $DAVIDO whose market value surged past $10, and ranking number one on the DEX screener as of Wednesday night to fruition.

In a recent twist of the event, over 80% of that value has been wiped out with the coin’s market capitalization dropping to $2.1 million amidst a massive selloff by Davido’s piled-up social media followers.

Dailycoin, a crypto data outlet, has shown that Davido himself extracted a sum of whooping $474,000 from the token before cutting ties.

Prominent voices in the cryptocurrency space have taken to social media to assert that $Davido was a “Crypto Scam” from the very start.

Justin Gallum, a cryptocurrency analyst did not mince words in stating that Davido should be put in jail.

“If you bought the $DAVIDO meme coin expecting to cash out profits, in here to tell you that you were outright scammed by Davido himself. This is textbook behaviour for a crypto rug pull scam,” said Rume, an Analyst on Channel TV and other media platforms.

Wizkid also took to his X handle to post “Work smart make you no go dey hustle like fool,” he said presumably sending a message to his colleague.

While fans who cashed out from $Davido have expressed their happiness through social media posts, some others have also expressed their losses in like manner.

Davido has not officially responded to “scam” tweets making rounds, however, the singer took to X on Thursday night to thank everyone who patronised $Davido.

“I want to thank everyone that joined the $DAVIDO community last night!” he said.

The value of the coin was still fluctuating as at the time of this report.

Popular Nigerian singer, Davido has made waves in the cryptocurrency arena with the introduction of his own meme coin, $Davido.

Launched on May 29, 2024, the coin is currently priced at $0.007783 USD and has quickly gained popularity.

Davido has partnered with prominent blockchain platforms Phantom and Solana to bring his vision to fruition.

Since its release, the $Davido meme coin has been on an upward trend, attracting significant interest from fans and investors alike.

Enthusiasts are closely monitoring the coin’s performance, eager to see its trajectory in the competitive cryptocurrency market.