Russian MMA fighter Khamzat Chimaev faces scam claims as token dives 94%

Russian freestyle wrestler Khamzat Chimaev has found himself at the center of controversy as the affiliated token nosedives 94% amid accusations of insider activity.

Khamzat Chimaev, a Russian mixed martial artist and freestyle wrestler, faces fraud accusations after blockchain sleuth ZachXBT noticed that nearly 80% of the supply of Solana-based memecoin SMASH —promoted by Chimaev — was purchased quietly by insiders associated with the SMASH team.

In an X thread on Jul. 4, the blockchain analyst revealed that based on timing analysis over 70% of insider and the SMASH development team wallets were “directly linked as they were funded by same address on Ethereum.” As per ZachXBT’s data, the insiders’ wallets have been funded through centralized trading platforms such as Binance and SideShift.

“Khamzat your team is incompetent as you directly linked the team wallets with the insider wallets buying up 78%+ of the supply. Why do all of you instantly nuke your reputation with meme coin scams?”

ZachXBT

Chimaev has been repeatedly promoting the SMASH token in multiple posts on X as well as on Telegram. As of press time, he made no public statements on the matter. Amid scam accusations, SMASM token plunged by over 90% and is now trading at $0.0003460, according to data from DEXScreener.

The Chechen-born fighter has a long history of shilling various digital assets via his social media. In April 2023, he announced on X that he’d become an ambassador for CAIZcoin, described as an “Islamic compliant cryptocurrency” with potential partners including CertiK, Fireblocks, Elliptic, and Ledger among others, as per the project’s website.

In a commentary to crypto.news, a spokesperson for Elliptic said that it “does not have a partnership or any other affiliation with this [CAIZcoin] entity.” Crypto.news reached out to the other mentioned firms to confirm their partnership status with the project and will update the article if we hear back.

A spokesperson for Fireblocks denied any partnership relations with CAIZcoin in a statement to crypto.news, saying, “we have repeatedly asked them [CAIZcoin] to remove any mention of Fireblocks from their website.”