Khamzat Chimaev has been called many things—undefeated, unstoppable, wild, even bombastic, and rude (at least before the birth of his son last year). But one label you wouldn’t typically associate with the middleweight phenom? Scammer. However, you might be surprised to learn that ‘Borz’ found himself linked to a meme cryptocurrency called SMASH Coin last year, stirring up quite a controversy. Named after the Emirati’s famous catchphrase “I smash everybody,” the coin was promoted on Chimaev’s social media.
As you have guessed, this crypto coin turned out to be a pump and dump. This was evident when its value plummeted to almost zero soon after it was bought by ‘Borz’s fans. To be fair, the undefeated middleweight’s manager had said that Chimaev was in the dark about the whole scheme and has apologized to both the UFC star and his fans for it. But Joe Rogan has gone one step further. In a clear case of victim blaming, the UFC commentator thinks that it was the fault of the people who lost money in the coin.
“There was this one coin that Khamzat Chimaev, the UFC fighter released, that was, they were claiming that he did a pump of dump. And they were like ‘You ripped off your fans.’ I’m like, yeah, you can’t rip off your fans, you can’t rip off your fans obviously. But also, I don’t know if the people that are buying those coins are fans. I think they’re gamblers. I think those people are just gamblers and they’re just trying to figure out okay if I buy in now, and you know, they probably got like their finger over the sell button waiting for it to get to a certain number.” Rogan told controversial NFL star Antonio Brown on episode #2286 of the JRE podcast.
Of course, even if the people who bought the coin were gamblers, doesn’t mean that you can defraud them. The people who launched the SMASH coin, of course, had the express intent of defrauding those fans who bought the coin by dumping it as soon as it reached a certain benchmark value. That is how pumps and dumps works.
Just because the people who bought it were hoping to make money off of it, doesn’t mean they weren’t cheated. And to be fair, some fans may genuinely have bought the SMASH coin because it was endorsed by their favorite fighter. Not to mention Chimaev doesn’t come across as the kind of guy who would ruin his reputation over a few bucks. So most fans could well have believed that the coin was legit and saw it as a way to support their favorite fighter. But no, Rogan wasn’t done. He had even more bad points to make to defend ‘Borz’s honor.
Joe Rogan misunderstands how Khamzat Chimaev’s associated pump and dump worked
“It’s like the casino at that point. It’s more rigged than the casino, because the casino, like the person playing it, can’t rig it. But this, the person playing it, is rigging it,” Rogan added. Of course, he is wrong here. The people who ‘rigged’ the coin were the ones who came up with the coin, as in any other pump and dump scheme. Those people own the vast majority of the coins and sell relatively very few units of the currency to the public. So it boggles the mind how Rogan can think that the people rigging the coin were the people who bought it and not those who came up with the coin.
Then again, the UFC commentator isn’t one to do much research or look into things before making strong claims. This is why many accuse him of being a huge vector of misinformation. Moreover, his take on the Chimaev scam coin is a clear example of that. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and the UFC commentator is no exception. He did get one thing right about why the scammers behind the SMASH coin wanted Chimaev’s name associated with it.
“The person buying the coins can rig it, like, if you especially, if you get a famous guy like Khamzat or someone else to tweet about it and make it a big deal. And then the price goes up, and then you just pick a peak number, it hits that number, like that’s it,” Rogan added. What do you think about Joe Rogan’s take on the SMASH coin?
The post “You Can’t Rip Off Your Fans” – Joe Rogan Confronts Undefeated UFC Star Khamzat Chimaev on Alleged Crypto Scam appeared first on EssentiallySports.
