invezz.com
A popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee has accused TRON (TRX) of paying him to promote the platform without any disclosure.
Brownlee said Tron told him celebrities like Lil Yachty, NeYo, Lindsay Lohan, and Amanda Cerny have already endorsed their participation in the paid promotion.
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Marques Brownlee has more than 13.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Brownlee added that he had received several email follow-ups regarding his participation in the crypto coin campaign. From the series of emails he has received, Brownlee said he started doubting the clarity and type of promotion the company is asking for.
“We need not make it look like a ‘sponsored tweet’ Brownlee reveals one of the messages on the tweet.
Brownlee said the promotional campaign seemed sketchy
He was told the promotional activity is for trading Tron (TRX) cryptocurrency they are paying people to promote. He added that the promotional campaign seems sketchy to him.
Brownlee said what finally turned him off was when the unidentified Tron “partners” told him part of the project was to not disclose it as a sponsored project, but coming genuinely from him.
He stated that he would have gone against the law if he had accepted the terms of the promotion. The regulation set by the Federal Trade Commission states that it is illegal to promote a service or product without revealing that they are getting paid for the promotion.
Justin Sun denies involvement
But Tron founder Justin Sun has come out to deny any form of payments issued to celebrities to promote Tron.
There have been rumors lately of third party celebrities being paid to promote #TRON. #TRON Foundation is not involved in these activities. Nor is the foundation aware of the actors behind this.
— Justin Sun🌞 (@justinsuntron) February 16, 2021
He said he or his foundation doesn’t have any idea about the undisclosed promotional arrangements.
“There have been rumors lately of third-party celebrities being paid to promote TRON,” he said.
Sun also said if these promotions were true, the Tron foundation is not aware of the actors pushing for such promotion.
This is coming amidst the price hike of Bitcoin and other competing altcoins. The Prices of Bitcoin and altcoins like Dogecoin (DOGE) have increased in value mainly due to the recent comments by Tesla’s Elon Musk on both tokens.
It’s not clear who is running the promotion, but the motive could be to engineer a rise of the TRX token for more profit.