Nigerian Afrobeat singer, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, has announced his presence in the cryptocurrency world with the introduction of his own meme coin, $Davido.
However, his meme coin has faced significant criticism from Nigerians after its value plummeted just a day after its release.
The Pump.fun platform, the coin quickly garnered attention but saw a steep decline of over 93 percent in its value, trading at $0.000010 as of Thursday morning.
The launch of $Davido, will mark Davido’s third go-around in crypto after he had earlier backed and promoted “Timeless Davido” crypto token with the release of his globally acclaimed album last year.
The $Davido coin was launched on the Solana blockchain and immediately broke through the noise of other obscure crypto tokens.
The platform which welcomed the rollout of the coin said on X (formerly Twitter): “Solana just ships. Welcome Davido,” as the $Davido raced to a $10 million market capitalisation four hours after its launch and by Thursday, had continued to soar with several celebrities endorsing the coin.
The excitement on the $Davido was short-lived as its valuation had dipped 90 and per DEX screener, the coin’s liquidity was $291,000 at the time of this report.
According to Lookonchain, Davido created the token on May 29 using the popular memecoin launchpad Pump.fun. The singer received 7.5 SOL ($1,275) as start-up capital and spent 7 SOL ($1,190) to buy 203 million DAVIDO (20.3% of the total supply, and barely 11 hours after creating the meme coin and promoting it on his X (formerly Twitter) social account, the singer had gained 15.3 million followers while offloading 121.88 million and generating about $474,400 from the sale.
This was not the “Unavailable” crooner’s first crypto rodeo. In November 2021, he had launched $echoke on the Binance Smart Chain which he said was to “provide access to giveaways, NFTs, festivals, exclusive merchandise, and other entertainment, media, and hospitality benefits.”
He also promoted Racksterli, a Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded users of N1 billion, on YouTube, prompting serious backlash from Nigerians.