When KOL advocates for 'KOL round' rights protection, there are no winners in the Bear Market.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

The president paints the door, the celebrity issues coins, the long and short positions explode, and AI is silent… In the crypto market since the beginning of the year, any one of them can easily make a big profit for the general public.

As a senior leek, it’s also very difficult not to drink these pots—weaknesses such as not getting enough information, believing rumors, lack of trading discipline, etc., are more likely to be greatly magnified in Scam Season and bear markets, making losing money a high-probability event.

But the injured are not only leeks.

When the market is down, most people, no matter how hard they try, may not be winners, including KOLs.

KOL, who has always been regarded as standing on the same reaping front as the project party, has also started losing money and complaining in this round of bull and bear alternation;

And what makes them become “big leeks” is something that you once had no chance to touch, but now it has become a hot potato:

KOL round.

KOL round, from win-win tool to multi-lose trap

Bear market is characterized by a lot of infighting and rights protection, but I didn’t expect KOLs to start self-rights protection as well.

ChainDoctor let out a sigh on March 4, 2025: "Don’t envy the KOL round, I invested in more than 10 KOL rounds last year, and all of them lost money. Most of them didn’t even issue coins, and they just disappeared. ”

Perhaps the loss tolerance of KOL is higher than that of leeks, but this does not change the fact that they are also losing money.

Of course, you can see it as a performance and acting pitiful, but more KOLs venting their spleen indirectly prove that they are indeed being scammed as well.

After this post was released, various KOL big shots in the encrypted Chinese community started a collective criticism and ridicule of KOL rounds in the past few days. For example, well-known KOL yuyue directly criticized:

Some KOL rounds are disguised as paid promotions by the project party, selling take-over rounds and high-priced fundraising coins to KOLs, using the resources of people around them to profit from…

You may still doubt the logic of KOLs losing money, but in the entire token listing chain, KOLs are actually also in the downstream of the ecosystem.

The entire chain typically includes:

Seed round (early investors such as friends and family participate), private placement round (targeting venture capitalists and strategic partners), KOL round (project party sells to KOL at a discount in exchange for promotion), public offering round (retail investors), and exchange listing (token listing for trading).

KOL rounds usually appear after the private placement round, with the project party selling tokens to KOL at a low or discounted price, and KOL using its influence on X and Telegram to promote the project and increase its impact.

In a bull market, KOL rounds may be a win-win tool. The project party raises funds through KOL rounds, KOL makes money by the cost price of tokens and the secondary price difference, and retail investors may also get a share when the market is good.

But in the bear market, the situation is not so optimistic.

Liquidity dries up, secondary market trading volume shrinks, token prices plummet, project parties often cash out and run in the early stages, while KOLs are locked up with tokens - usually a locking period of 3 to 6 months that prevents KOLs from selling in time, rendering the token value to zero.

In the above post, you can also see sharp comments:

“The current KOL round is a typical case of losing both the wife and the soldiers. The project party cannot raise money, cannot cut from the secondary market, so they start with the KOL who eat ads. KOL equals to investing money, effort, and people.”

This is no longer a passive stage of poor market understanding among everyone, but some project parties have even taken the initiative to have evil intentions, treating KOL as part of the liquidity exit.

Even worse, KOLs are also in a dilemma of being squeezed from both ends: the projects know that KOLs are aware of the risks of this model, but still use the greed or survival pressure of KOLs (demand for traffic realization) to promote cooperation. KOLs hope to “take a risk,” but the results often turn out contrary to their wishes.

On the other hand, retail investors’ blind trust in KOLs has decreased, and even a phenomenon of ‘reverse indicator’ has emerged (projects recommended by KOLs are considered to fall). The promotional effect of KOLs has declined, making it difficult for token prices to rise, further exacerbating their damaged reputation.

If you don’t consider cutting a wave and leaving, who doesn’t want to cherish their feathers and make money together?

From win-win tools to multi-losing traps, in the bear market, most of the people standing at the downstream of the value chain may have no winners.

Agency, professional ethics of intermediaries

You may not know, behind the scenes of the KOL in the crypto market, there is another unknown role: Agency.

To put it simply, their responsibility is to undertake the promotion needs of the project party and help find suitable KOLs in the market for promotion.

But the agency’s role is much more than matchmaking. They need to balance the interests of the project party - hoping to attract the maximum traffic at the lowest cost, and the demands of KOLs - hoping to obtain stable income through promotion, capital preservation and even profitability.

For example, Dov, the representative of Agency, posted saying:

“I’ve never let my KOL lose a penny, either by paying U to promote it directly, or because the KOL round has a guarantee, and in the worst case, the principal is returned.”

From here, you can see that the motivations and business capabilities of practitioners in any cryptographic ecosystem are actually mixed.

Excellent Agencies will try their best to consider the guarantee mechanism to ensure KOLs do not lose money, such as direct cash payment or KOL rotating principal refund. However, if the Agency lacks professional judgment and picks inferior projects, KOLs may face token depreciation, lock-up risks, and ultimately losses.

The fate of a worker often depends on the professional quality of the person assigning the work.

In the chain of encrypted marketing, perhaps only scammers hope to do “one-time deal”. Continuously deceiving people will make their business less and less, and the road will become narrower and narrower.

After all, everyone is not a fool, and long-term win-win cooperation is the way to wealth.

But perhaps everyone is a good broker in the downstream link, but it seems inevitable to become a victim in the upstream link.

There are no winners, but there is no endgame

The cruelty of the bear market lies in the fact that it not only makes ordinary investors (leeks) feel the chill of the market, but also forces KOLs who once stood at a higher position in the interest chain to bow their heads and face reality.

In this cycle of bull and bear alternation, project parties, KOLs, retail investors, and even agencies are playing different roles, but in the end, there are no winners.

The ‘rights protection’ of KOL is actually a microcosm of the entire encrypted ecosystem.

From the ‘win-win tool’ in the bull market to the ‘multi-losing trap’ in the bear market, the distortion of the KOL circle has exposed a deep trust crisis in the cryptocurrency market. The short-sighted behavior of the project party, the profit-seeking mentality of KOLs, blind follow-up by retail investors, and even the inadequate professional capabilities of agencies are all magnified in this game.

When the market is down, everyone is trying to protect themselves, but it is difficult to escape the fate of being harvested.

The “cutting” of KOLs is not just a simple dispute of interests, but a manifestation of the ecological imbalance of the crypto market in a bear market environment. When liquidity dries up and the capital chain is broken, all those who stand downstream of the value chain will become passive victims.

Looking back, the controversy over the KOL round is essentially a pain in the development of the industry.

When KOLs defend their rights, they are also speaking up for the entire ecosystem in disguise. Perhaps it is only after such a bear market that everyone can truly understand that in a market without rules and trust, short-term winners will eventually become long-term losers.

But in the longer term, it may also be an opportunity to reshuffle the cards. The trough of the market is often the starting point of ecological optimization, and only by reflecting and adjusting in pain can we usher in the next round of prosperity.

Will the next bull market come as scheduled? Perhaps it depends on whether every participant today can truly learn from the lessons of this bear market and find a new balance of “win-win”.