Paid to Shill? Celebrity Antonio Brown NFT Mishap Exposes Greed

Former Super Bowl champion and NFL player Antonio Brown (AB) has mistakenly revealed that he was paid to promote a new non-fungible token (NFT) project dubbed BoredPunksNFT. The Antonio Brown NFT incident comes at a time of exploding popularity of these assets, with many projects paying influencers to drive massive attention.

In a recent tweet, AB told his Twitter followers that he had “found” a new NFT project with huge potential. He claimed the project was already gaining traction among investors and urged his followers to check it out.

However, he failed to cut out the part that read “Twitter Caption,” which revealed that his post was just a caption given to him by the project’s promoters to tweet.

Although he quickly took down the tweet and made the needed changes, several sharp-eyed Twitter users had already taken screenshots of the first post and pointed it out in reply to his subsequent tweet.

100k Discords? Seriously?

Fans were also quick to point out another mistake in AB’s promotion of the BoredPunksNFT.

In a video attached to the tweet, AB was seen praising BoredPunksNFT, commenting that it has several “really cool characters” with “swaggy looks.”

However, what really struck out as weird was his next statement where he said that the project has “100 Discords… 100,000 Discords”, instead of 100k Discord members.

This second mistake solidified speculation that AB had no idea about the details of the project he was quite unenthusiastically promoting, infuriating his fans.

Antonio Brown NFT Tweet Sparks Backlash From the Twitter Community 

Twitter users quickly expressed their displeasure with AB’s latest promotion and the fact that he made no effort to find out more about the project before urging them to invest.

One commenter with the username @ABigThingBadly tweeted,

“Please tell us the story about how you found this NFT collection. The more detail the better.  Also, would love to hear you elaborate on their roadmap from the heart!”

Others pointed out AB was more concerned about the money he was paid for the promotion and could care less about his unsuspecting die-hard fans who could potentially lose their funds while investing in the project.

Another user added,

“I understand you’re about the bag AB and you got paid for this.. but you’re encouraging people to invest their hard-earned dollars into what will most certainly be a loss. Why purposely do that to your fans?”

Just “Like Soulja Boy all Over Again”

Amid all the chaos, some Twitter users spotted similarities between this latest Antonio Brown NFT incident and the Soulja Boy saga that occurred almost a year ago.

In May 2021, popular American rapper Soulja Boy mistakenly revealed the amount he would be paid if he helped a newly-launched crypto project reach its fundraising target.

Several celebrities have ventured into the crypto marketing space, helping new and existing projects to promote their products. However, some of these celebrities had found themselves in the SEC’s net because of their promotions.

In 2018, former professional boxer Floyd Mayweather and popular American DJ, DJ Khalid, were both fined $614,755 and $152,725 respectively by the SEC for promoting an ICO without proper disclosure.