The biggest reason for the success of the cryptocurrency space is also proving to be one of its liabilities. With more influential celebrities talking about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, we are seeing more retail investors take an interest, but on the same side, we are also seeing the mass public audience being misguided in a very large way. The majority of first-time investors enter crypto markets, thinking it is a quick-rich scheme. They don’t do their financial due diligence before investing in a new or experimental project, and they seem to vastly follow someone else’s advice or “calls” to make a trade.
One such “crypto social media influencer” is Waqar Zaka, previously known for his appearances on popular television shows like Champions and Living On The Edge. Waqar Zaka is also a wannabe PM of Pakistan, and he promises to make the country debt-free. Now, how can an influencer like him make such a bold claim? It is mainly because he has heavy exposure to the crypto world and has a huge army of investors supporting him day and night. In this article, we will break down some of the downsides of following influencers like Waqar Zaka while showing some real proof to back it up.
Waqar Zaka’s Private Crypto Group
Waqar Zaka is having tremendous support from his community on different social media platforms, and that is why- he was able to build a 32k member paid subscription group. He has over 3.5 million followers on Facebook and 487k on Instagram, which puts him in a perfect position to get more reach. He also offers supporter benefits on Facebook for a nominal fee of $10, and he seems to share exclusive content on the crypto markets and gives out trade alerts for members to benefit.
While this sounds like a great deal for someone who is not familiar with the crypto market, there are a lot of questions on this group that are unanswered. It seems to us that most of the information he puts out is already available on many other platforms, which doesn’t help his credibility on the subject.
Waqar Zaka claims to be an early adopter in the blockchain industry, but he seems to never mention the risks behind taking a trade-in speculative assets. If he has exposure to the industry since 2014, he should have a clear-cut idea of how the markets work. It is true that he provides in-depth material for research purposes, but his technical analysis is completely flawed. Some of the members are also facing issues with customer support. From the feedback we received, we understood that the support team is not responsive, and some of them lost huge amounts of money.
There are many more cases where people have gambled away their money based on Waqar Zaka’s trade alerts. He is selling the dream of being financially independent and wealthy for $10, attracting thousands of first-time investors.
Is he really a Blockchain Expert and should you trust him?
The blockchain space is still something very new to the world, and the ones who have had success are people with immense experience and expertise. In Waqar Zaka, he has only been a speaker at different conferences, and many speculated that he paid the officials to be a part of the panel. However, Waqar Zaka came to the forefront and clarified that he was having a “media partnership” with these companies and was only trying to acquire more knowledge.
For someone who invested in an MLM scheme in Bitconnect and lost $60k, it is hard to believe that he understands the fundamental concepts of blockchain. Bitconnect was a scam to lure innocents into investing their savings, and Waqar Zaka is initiating a similar project. Ouicoin was one of the decentralized ecosystems started by Waqar with a lot of social media marketing. Even though he doesn’t have a proper background in the technical side of things, Waqar is a visionary founder behind Ouicoin.
This project is completely based on social presence and not on real utility. The website mentions no development team, so we dont know how they built Ouicoin. If we look at the Github code of Ouicoin, we will find that the source activity of the program is almost dead. This only clarifies that they have just hired one developer to get the job done on the technical end.
Ouicoin made no major announcements regarding their project roadmap or development status, and they always directed their focus towards marketing and social media. Some of the stories shared in the last two years on the Facebook page of Ouicoin highlight that the team behind Waqar Zaka does not support the token holders at the time of need. Still, they instantly reply when someone poses a question relating to purchasing or buying more tokens.
Waqar Zaka made the private sale on Snapchat and asked his followers to follow certain instructions before making a purchase, which is quite odd because whenever a new project is launched, we see coin offerings displayed publicly. Adding on top of that, they didn’t even have a whitepaper to showcase their expertise and the work they have done relating to Ouicoin.
Waqar Zaka also responded to these complaints regarding Ouicoin not having any technical standing in the blockchain space. He made a post to explain why there is no whitepaper or development team, and he believes that people invest in his name and trust him for his social media presence.
In the world of crypto, it is always recommended to research a project before investing. Still, in the case of Waqar Zaka, there seems to be nothing other than his social media posts promoting his own cryptocurrency.
He also launched a POS master node-based coin called TenUp, which he believes can help entrepreneurs raise funds and help the unbanked globally. The problem here is that it is completely driven by the community, who only believe in Waqar Zaka and not the actual project.
The website made for TenUp is filled with misinformation, and it misrepresents the whole idea of a decentralized ecosystem. It highlights the proof-of-stake mechanism used for developing TenUp, and it explains that it would be more expensive to attack this system compared to the PoW model. Now, that is incorrect, as the proof-of-work model used for bitcoin is the safest digital asset in the entire world.
The coins are now only listed on two exchanges- STEX and STAKECUBE, which we may see an increase in the future. Now, the real question you need to ask yourself is- Should I trust a TV actor who is now a crypto entrepreneur and invest my hard-earned money?
You can always learn from people who have experience and high-level expertise, but you still need to do your own research and understand how to manage risk. In the case of Waqar Zaka, he may show up every day to give you updates on new projects, but he will not always be present to support you when you are at a loss.
Envy and admiration can be key emotional drivers for many people in different aspects of life, but you should let them come in between your financial decision-making process. Trust the process and understand the core conceptual model of crypto to have success in the long term.
Can social media influencers negatively impact the crypto market?
Celebrity marketing is not going to slow down in this growing industry any time soon, so we have to filter out the ones that are promoting bad projects- just to gain more users investing in their platform. If someone is genuinely educated on the core fundamentals of the project, then you can trust them with information, but it is still recommended to do background research.
World famous actors and sports stars previously promoted crypto projects, and many of them have faced severe backlash from the community. If we take a look at the incidents that happened in the last three years, we see many high-level personalities like John McAfee and DJ Khaled being a part of many unethical marketing campaigns. In the case of John McAfee, he was responsible for promoting illegal ICO projects for $23 million.
In our example of Waqar Zaka, he also promoted some really bad projects like Safemoon, which is considered as one of the shitcoins in the market. He captioned the post saying, “Coin with less investment and super gains”, and that is completely irresponsible on his part to promote such a project with no real utility.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CN2rJO6AGsC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Another example of such promotions recently happened in the Mayweather VS Paul boxing fight, where Floyd openly promoted EMAX, a coin that surged around 2000% in a single day. It is completely due to hype and no real value. It makes it hard to believe that social media influencers can make the crypto industry a better place in cases like this.
That is why we need to follow early adopters who have worked on real-time projects for an extended period of time. Some of the experts on Twitter can provide some great insights, but no one will ever hand out signals and provoke this idea of making quick money.
Final Thoughts
Considering famous celebrities are entering this industry and cherry-picking individual projects, we have to be careful while making investment decisions because they are more or less likely going to be a pump and dump scheme or low-quality altcoins. The best way to promote crypto would be to educate on the fundamentals and spread awareness of managing risk when buying such volatile assets. In the future, it should be celebrities promoting crypto in general and not create hype around one project to make more money.
Born and brought up in India, Karthikeya Gutta is a crypto journalist and freelance contributor for ItsBlockchain. He covers various aspects of the industry with in-depth analysis and research. His passion towards blockchain and crypto ecosystem is mainly because he believes it can really change the world and help millions of people.
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