Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo promoted the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance. A US class action lawsuit now states: This led him to make costly and unsafe investments.
Cristiano Ronaldo has been sued in the US over advertising for the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. In a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida, the soccer star is demanding $1 billion (around 910 million euros) in damages.
Binance’s partnership with celebrities like Ronaldo seduced them into making costly and unsafe investments, the plaintiffs argue. With his advertising for so-called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) from Binance, Ronaldo behaved fraudulently and illegally. In addition, he did not show how and to what extent he was compensated by Binance.
Ronaldo NFT for up to $10,000
NFT in German means “non-exchangeable tokens” that are stored using blockchain technology, a digital database. The process is intended to turn NFTs into unique collectibles. Digital tokens experienced a brief boom, but the NFT business has largely collapsed, especially as the crypto industry has recently been rocked by scandals and market collapses.
Before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Ronaldo presented his first NFT collection with his abbreviation “CR7”. Seven animated statues depicting him at key moments in his sporting career have been put up for sale. The starting prices for Ronaldo’s NFT series were between the equivalent of around $77 and $10,000.
“Fabulous success” of advertising
The lawsuit speaks of the incredible success of advertising its partnership with the cryptocurrency exchange. Search queries with the keyword Binance increased by 500 percent after Ronaldo’s NFT campaign was announced.
Just last week, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance agreed to pay a fine of almost four billion dollars following allegations of violations of US securities laws. Its founder and boss Changpeng Zhao resigned and admitted that he had not taken action against money laundering on the platform.