USDC The stablecoin issuer Circle welcomed rapper DJ Khaled to join the “USDC team” on Monday, but the crypto community immediately erupted into controversy. However, it’s very likely that this matter is not as simple as it seems on the surface.
Here's what happened, and it's also the reason for the controversy: The official X account of USDC posted a photo of DJ Khaled wearing a Chelsea football shirt with the words “USDC by Circle” printed on the chest, accompanied by the caption “Another one”, which echoed his iconic catchphrase. About four hours later, Circle's CEO, Jeremy Allaire, posted another message, attaching a sentence addressed to this rapper: “DJ Khaled Welcome to join the USDC team.”
@ djkhaled welcome to team @ USDC https :// t.co / O5z2JR3jGn — Jeremy Allaire (@ jerallaire ) October 5, 2026
“Please do not cooperate with such scammers,” Joseph Schiarizzi wrote on X. “Do you really want those who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines to SEC for illegally failing to disclose funds collected for token issuance promotions to represent your brand?”
Schiarizzi refers to the notorious Centra token issuance scam. The founder behind Centra was imprisoned as early as 2020. DJ Khaled is just one of many celebrities who promoted that token, while Khaled was fined over $150,000 by SEC for not disclosing that it was a paid collaboration.
It should be noted that SEC and DOJ have never prosecuted Khaled on fraud charges, in order to avoid any confusion. The case regarding this rapper refers to undisclosed payments received.
In September 2017, when Khaled's Instagram fan count reached 12.4 million, he posted a photo of himself holding a Centra Tech debit card. According to the instructions in that command file, he referred to it as "the ultimate winner among encrypted debit cards" and told his fans, "Go buy CTR tokens now!"
CTR is a token issued by Centra. Token issuance, also known as Initial Coin Offering (ICO), is a financing method where startups sell their digital tokens to the public, similar to the issuance of stocks without actual shares. According to SEC, Centra paid $50,000 to Khaled for this post, yet he did not inform his fans about this. By law, if someone pays you to promote an investment, you must disclose this information, as otherwise, the promotion may be mistaken for a sincere recommendation.
And this product itself is fictional. The prosecution claims that the partnership between Visa and Mastercard that supports the Centra cryptocurrency card is fake, and its CEO is also a fake entity – a person named “Michael Edwards” who allegedly holds a Harvard MBA does not actually exist at all.
Centra raised over 25 million US dollars in total. Co-founder Robert Farkas pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year and one day in prison; Sohrab Sharma was sentenced to eight years in prison and was ordered to have 36 million US dollars confiscated. Netflix later produced a documentary titled Bitconned, which tells the story of this Centra scam.
