Kim Kardashian's long-running legal headache over the cryptocurrency EthereumMax is not going away. The reality star and business mogul has failed to persuade a judge to throw out a lawsuit in which she is accused of scamming investors by falsely hyping the digital tokens, according to Bloomberg Law.
U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald in Los Angeles ruled that investors who claim they paid 'inflated prices' for the blockchain-based digital assets can proceed with key parts of their case. Kardashian's bid for dismissal was denied, while co-defendant Floyd Mayweather Jr. fared better: the judge found that the ex-boxing champion's public statements about the growth prospects for the EMAX token were mostly harmless. However, investors will get a chance to revise and refile their allegations that Mayweather failed to disclose he was being paid to promote EMAX.
The case centers on the creators of EMAX, who recruited Kardashian, Mayweather, and former NBA star Paul Pierce to promote the digital asset. The plaintiffs argue that the trio used misleading claims to 'artificially inflate the price of the token,' leaving ordinary investors holding losses when the hype faded.
Kardashian has been here before. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission previously took her to court over her involvement in promoting EMAX, saying it violated the anti-touting provision of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which requires paid promoters of securities to disclose their compensation. The episode became one of the defining cautionary tales of the celebrity-crypto boom, when stars lent their massive followings to speculative tokens with little apparent diligence.
The ruling is the latest sign that courts are taking celebrity crypto promotions seriously as a source of investor harm. An earlier version of the class action was dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs' arguments did not meet the heightened pleading standards for fraud cases, but the judge allowed room for refiling — and the revived case has now survived Kardashian's attempt to kill it.
For Kardashian, whose business empire spans SKIMS, private equity ventures, and a carefully managed public image, the case is an unwelcome reminder of the crypto era's excesses. For the industry, it is another data point in an ongoing reckoning over where influencer marketing ends and securities fraud begins.
The EMAX saga has become Exhibit A in the debate over celebrity crypto endorsements. At the height of the 2021 bull market, tokens competed for star power the way brands once competed for Super Bowl slots, and EMAX's recruitment of Kardashian, Mayweather, and Pierce was among the most aggressive plays of the era. Kardashian's Instagram post touting the token reached her hundreds of millions of followers; the SEC later said the promotion violated touting rules because she did not disclose she had been paid $250,000 for it — a charge she settled in 2022 for $1.26 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing. The private class action now advancing in Judge Fitzgerald's courtroom picks up where the regulators left off, with investors arguing the hype artificially inflated prices before the inevitable collapse. Mayweather's partial reprieve — his statements deemed 'mostly harmless' — shows courts are willing to distinguish between enthusiastic promotion and actionable deception. For Kardashian, who escaped dismissal, the case will now test whether her EMAX posts crossed that line.