- Several influencer-pushed DeFi coins have crashed in recent weeks, yet they are still trying to push the same kind of token on followers
- Tokens that used to pump on Uniswap listings are now just dumping, losing followers money
- The DeFi craze is coming to an end, and no amount of shilling is going to change that
Influencer power has been the driving force for crypto price pumps since time immemorial, and the DeFi craze has been no different. Twitter influencers have been multiplying their bags by double figures or more for months now, either getting in early and promoting it off their own back or being paid (without saying so) by the projects themselves. However, as the recent performances of Meta, Lazarus, and Dracula Protocol show, even influencer power can’t save the death of DeFi shitcoins.
MTA Crash Lit the Match
DeFi tokens have of course been the talk of the town in the past few months, and anyone on crypto Twitter during that time hasn’t been able to move for influencers relentlessly shilling their own bags to drive up their profits. That time could be coming to an end however if the performances of Meta (MTA), Dracula Protocol (DRC), and Lazarus (LZRS) are anything to go by.
MTA is the elder statesman of the three, emerging in mid-July and being picked up and promoted by more Twitter accounts than you could shake a sponsored DeFi-shaped stick at. Everyone seemed to own some, with astronomical price predictions and bullish charts naturally following.
The token soon hit $10, and despite all the talk of this being just the start, the token collapsed soon after wicking up to $11 and has been on a downward trajectory ever since:
All talk of ‘adding to my bags’ has long since ceased as the token has drifted into obscurity, now wallowing at around $1.40, leaving a great many out of pocket. In many ways this has proved to be the warning klaxon to the rest of the DeFi space.
LZRS Fails to Rise
Among the plethora of DeFi failures since MTA are LZRS and DRC. LZRS is more of an example of the changing landscape of presales, which just a few short weeks ago were selling out and would enjoy a huge pump on listing, much like ICOs in 2017. As it was back then, influencers were queuing up to pay tribute to LZRS and what it would achieve in the DeFi space:
LZRS has proved to be more of a 2018 ICO however as it has collapsed spectacularly since listing, leaving all those who followed these influencers into the presale very much out of pocket:
LZRS is far from the only contender for the title of worst performing presale, with plenty of other DeFi coins suddenly forsaking the pump and going straight for the dump. Suddenly the tokenomics and the buzzwords that were working a few weeks ago are failing to inspire a DeFi market now saturated with copycats and rug pulls.
DRC Has No Bite
Another poor bunch of souls currently being drained of their funds are buyers of DRC. This DeFi coin was promoted in some groups as something of a secret project, with only a privileged few able to get in so early:
Ooh, a ban…spooky.
This attempt to create exclusivity appeared to have succeeded at first as the token raced to $1.70, during which time certain influencers took their profit, before it crashed 92% just hours later. It was soon revealed that the developers had made a mess of the minting process and coins were being created by the bucketload, but that didn’t stop the pushers from wringing every drop of optimism out of a dire situation:
Don’t worry followers, there’s a deflationary mechanism being implemented soon. And look who’s excited about it:
All the deflationary mechanisms in the world haven’t been able to pull DRC out of its terminal slump however, with every failed breakout pushing the coin’s price down further:
DRC seems to be doing nothing but sucking the money out of its investors, despite all the lies from influencers about what they’re seeing and their belief that it is about to moon.
DeFi Isn’t Dead, But the Hype is Over
The stark facts are that the buzzwords that used to be enough to propel a DeFi project to a 10x no longer work, and when these internal mechanisms begin to fail then users look to intrinsic value propositions.
Needless to say, these tokens have none. If you take them out of the DeFi bubble in which they exist they have zero use cases, and in a dying market only those tokens that can actually be used will survive. Deflationary systems, high APYs, code audits, and token burns no longer have the impact they did just a few short weeks ago, and neither, it seems, do the influencers who peddle them.
It’s time that influencers stopped using these now meaningless DeFi buzzwords to try and drag their followers into what is fast turning from a jungle to nothing more than a quicksand pit.
