Iggy Azalea, the popular Australian rapper who caught attention with the MOTHER token, has announced the relaunch of a telecommunication company. The firm will now accept payments in MOTHER, alongside Solana [Sol]. Along with that, Azalea also teased an upcoming ad campaign and rollout later in the week. This move marks a significant step in integrating cryptocurrencies into mainstream consumer services.
“Tomorrow I’m finally relaunching the telecommunication company I co-founded and you will be able to purchase phones, or month-to-month cell plans using $MOTHER or Sol 🥳.”
The rapper’s new crypto venture is among the growing list of celebrities-backed tokens. However, this has come under intense scrutiny after the controversies surrounding Catelyn Jenner’s JENNER coin and wrestler Hulk Hogan’s linked HULK meme coins. Both Azalea’s token and HULK were alleged to be a pump and a dump-scheme with many regarded their online feuding as fake.
Launched on the Solana platform, MOTHER hit a market cap of $200 million, with a 90% price surge in just 24 hours. Despite criticisms of celebrity cryptocurrencies and their lack of inherent value, Azalea has continued promoting MOTHER to her 8 million followers, contributing to its success.
MOTHER: Ethereum Criticizes Celebrity-Backed Tokens
Crypto’s vocal entrepreneurs like Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and others have criticized the trend of celebrity tokens, saying: “I’m feeling quite unhappy about with “this cycle’s celebrity experimentation” so far. “Financialization as a means toward an end”, I can respect if the end is worthy (healthcare, open source software, art, etc). Financialization *as the final product*. From my observations, many of these recent celeb coins have been scams. Either run in part by the celebrity or they were getting scammed too along with their fan base.
Following Buterin’s critique of the celebrity meme coin craze, Azalea defended the move and questioned the hypocrisy of “rich people” not doing anything about expensive gas fees-citing Ethereum’s notorious high transaction costs. “it’s so rich of you to have an opinion on charities and hospitals, whatever, but let’s talk about the gas fees…the gas tax,” she added.
