For the cryptocurrency community, another serious blow to its credibility comes from a new report providing substantial evidence of a lack of transparency among crypto influencers. The bombshell leak from report contributor ZachXBT dropped on Sept 1, 2025, and was the talk of the town for a week after it was incepted. It showcased a serious disconnect by showing publicly promoted engagements of crypto influencers with paid collaborators where no one disclosed it was paid.
ZachXBT said a price sheet from an unnamed project exposed more than 200 crypto influencers with the wallet addresses linked and paid amounts to promote the features of a project. The investigation found that while there were 160 accounts who accepted the deal to promote the project, just under five disclosed the paid posts — which is a dramatically unsettling unintended phenomena that not only does this wholesale acceptance of non disclosed paid endorsement raise widespread ethical issues but doing so encapsulates a working environment that not only allows numerous scams to develop, continues to allow investor trust issues to press on.
The Allure of Undisclosed Endorsements
For quite some time, the crypto space has been rife with social media promotion. Influencers in this space have considerable power over their followers’ investment choices. To many, seeking the advice and recommendations of a favorite online personality is perceived to be more relatable and trustworthy than traditional financial advice. However, this also creates an ideal environment for manipulation. When an influencer promotes a token or project and is compensated without disclosing these terms, it misrepresents a seemingly genuine belief or unbiased advice from someone who may well be an expensive advertisement but the ad is not disclosed. Consequently, followers might mistake the visible enthusiasm as an endorsement and not an advertisement at all, only to place their money into riskier investments than they’d done so rationally.
Navigating the Regulatory Landscape
This scandal highlights the need for urgent regulation and enforcement of crypto marketing. Although decentralized finance (DeFi) is a type of peer-to-peer financial system, the regulatory issue with DeFi lies with the fact there is no structure to regulate. The SEC and FTC have well-established rules around influencer and endorsement agreements that include complete disclosure of how payment was made. However, the global, and often disguised nature of cryptocurrency makes it extremely difficult to enforce those market rules. The SEC, for example, has an anti-touting provision that makes it illegal for a promoter to publicize a security for payment without disclosing how much they were compensated and in what manner. If we include the lack of a consistent global regulations and the generally decentralized aspects of many of the projects allow bad actors to operate with relative anonymity and with limited consequences.
The Growing Risk of Crypto Scams
The rise of undisclosed paid advertisements is inextricably linked to the broader problem of crypto crime. According to the FBI, Americans lost billions to crypto-related scams in 2024. Many scams trick individuals with social engineering and impersonation of trusted entities; This is instrumental to the scam working as the unsuspecting investor overshoots fact-checking because of promises of large returns from a celebrity endorsement; An absence of clear disclosure, gives additional credence to this deception making it easier for scam to take shape. Fortunately, some parts of the world are laying down regulation like European Union Markets in Crypto-Assets or MiCA as well as the GENIUS Act in the United States, which is creating some semblance of clarity in the space; however, this remains a large problem for investors.
Call for Community and Individual Responsibility
Although regulation is an important factor, so much of the responsibility must come from the crypto community itself. As investors, it has never been more important to be weary about what you invest in. This means really doing your research or in the crypto world, DYOR, before you invest in any project, regardless of who or what is promoting it. It also means that you need to start demanding more transparency from the influencers you follow; when you come across a post promoting a token, ask yourself, is this a real endorsement or an ad? If it’s the latter, is it clearly marked as such? The power of the community to self-police and demand accountability is one of the most effective tools against deceptive marketing.
The Path Forward: Transparency is Key
The release of ZachXBT is an uncomfortable reminder that while the crypto space has possibilities on the horizon, it still is not entirely future-proof, and can be taken advantage of by market scam types of old. The threat to trust needs to be dealt with, or else the industry will never mature or be taken seriously as a forward-thinking industry. It will take everyone’s effort from here out: regulators need to find ways of enforce disclosure laws, project need to take ethical marketing tactics, influencers need to set a precedent of accepting responsibility, and the most important of all is that the community continues to advocate for transparency and demonstrating that failing to disclose paid promotions is grossly unexceptable. If no reputable shift occurs, sceptics from the fraud perspective will continue to perpetuate for the decentralized finance industry and the focus of this video from CNBC is about how identified social media influencers can be paid thousands to promote crypto projects and the regulatory warnings that the platform and influencers are leaving them responsible for.
