Is Kim Kardashian the SEC's Scapegoat?

Celebrities regularly accept promotional deals, hyping products from swimsuits to weight loss tea on social media to their hordes of followers. Trouble arrived when a crypto token deemed by retugators a security entered the mix.

“Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova are joined by writer and Assistant Opinion Editor Daniel Kuhn to dissect the bull market trend of celebrity crypto endorsements, and particularly Kim Kardashian’s shilling of the ethereumMax token.

Kardashian was fined $1.26 million this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for her promotion of a security without disclosing the payment she received in return. Was Kardashian an unlucky scapegoat, or is this penalty a harbinger of broader enforcement action to come?

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This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.