Lionel Messi’s Instagram account recently surprised fans by posting a story promoting the Solana-based memecoin WATER. With 504 million followers, Messi’s account is among the most followed on Instagram, second only to Cristiano Ronaldo.
The official WATER memecoin Instagram account also shared the story, featuring Messi alongside the memecoin’s logo peeking over his shoulder. Despite this promotion, the memecoin’s Twitter account, which has over 185,000 followers, had no new posts as of the afternoon of July 9.
Following Messi’s Instagram post, WATER’s price surged over 55% before correcting, according to CoinGecko data. There has been no further confirmation from Messi or his team regarding this promotion.
Messi’s memecoin endorsement is reminiscent of professional fighter Hulk Hogan’s mysterious memecoin promotion earlier last month. Hogan’s promotional posts were quickly deleted, and he denied any involvement. After removing his Twitter posts, the memecoin lost approximately $15 million in market capitalization.
According to a link on the WATER memecoin’s website, it was created in collaboration with the “genius minds” behind BEER, another Solana memecoin that experienced extreme volatility last month.
“WATER is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return,” the website states.
WATER can be bought and traded on Bitget, BitMart, and MEXC.
Related news: Is Watercoin another rugpull memecoin project?
