YouTuber and web persona Logan Paul has discovered himself with an enormous goal on his brow not too long ago. Paul, who’s been on one thing of a redemption arc these previous few years following the “suicide forest” fiasco in December 2017, is again in sizzling water after crypto investigator Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen revealed a three-part video sequence trying into CryptoZoo, a blockchain “sport” Paul as soon as closely promoted. There are simply two obvious issues right here: The sport doesn’t exist but, and Paul’s most ardent followers and early buyers have misplaced tons of of hundreds of {dollars} within the technique of supporting it.
Logan Paul, the older brother of boxer and media persona Jake Paul, is a YouTuber who started creating content material on Vine within the early 2010s earlier than migrating to Google’s video platform as soon as Vine shuttered. He recurrently uploads vlog-style movies through which he gives viewers a voyeuristic look into his every day life and the assorted shenanigans he engages in. Whereas already a controversial determine throughout his early content material creation days, Paul didn’t actually draw the web’s ire till December 2017 when he filmed a video in Japan’s Aokigahara Forest through which he and members of his crew filmed and interacted with a useless physique in a fashion many thought-about tasteless and inappropriate. (Aokigahara has a popularity for being a website of frequent suicides.)
This video and the following response to it completely tanked Paul’s profession for a lot of 2018. Nonetheless, since then, Paul’s been rehabilitating his picture as a media persona {and professional} wrestler, signing to WWE’s Uncooked whereas internet hosting a YouTube podcast that boasts over 4 million subscribers. Dude’s doing very effectively for himself. Nonetheless, he’s the web’s foremost character once more following what seems to be his involvement in one of many largest crypto scams that has been uncovered up to now.
Coffeezilla
In a three-part video sequence totaling slightly over an hour, Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen—a YouTuber who “uncovers scams, fraudsters, and faux gurus which are preying on determined folks with misleading promoting”—regarded into CryptoZoo. What the hell is CryptoZoo? Nicely, as Paul explains it, it’s a “actually enjoyable sport that earns you cash.” In response to the official web site, which says the sport is at present “present process upgrades to the core infrastructure of the ecosystem,” CryptoZoo is an “autonomous ecosystem that enables ZooKeepers to purchase, promote, and commerce unique animals and hybrids.” Mainly, it’s an NFT sport through which gamers buy zoo cash, CryptoZoo’s in-game forex, to purchase egg NFTs which are hatched to develop into animals. As soon as hatched, you then breed these animals collectively to make hybrids and the rarer the hybrid, the upper the every day yield of zoo cash. Money these out and growth, you’re pulling in cash. Briefly, it’s structured to work like passive revenue.
Sadly, this “play-to-earn” NFT sport stuffed with hand-made artwork—as Paul likes to closely emphasize on his podcast Impaulsive—has by no means but been playable, regardless of letting folks sink tons of cash into it. Coffeezilla found that, since CryptoZoo’s introduction in 2021, Paul stans have spent some $2.5 million on eggs alone, with the coin itself skyrocketing to a market cap of roughly $2 billion. Some of us Coffeezilla talked to shelled out tens, generally tons of of hundreds of {dollars} on CryptoZoo as a result of they believed Paul was a “modified man” and he was making a “protected place” for the everyperson to put money into cryptocurrency. Seems they had been improper, no less than on the second half, as a result of now these individuals are out hundreds of {dollars}.
Coffeezilla
Rob, or Helicopter Bob, one of many victims Coffeezilla video-chatted with, stated he misplaced “slightly below $7,000 with CryptoZoo.” Helicopter Bob defined that the passive revenue, the venture’s core mechanic, “by no means did [work] from the start and wasn’t even written into the contract the place it confirmed you had been really yielding with Zoo.” He went on to say that “there was no strategy to declare your yield [and] there by no means was.” Mainly, folks had been placing cash right into a system that was offering zero returns.
Worse but, as an unnamed particular person informed Coffeezilla in a separate video name, those that invested in CryptoZoo couldn’t even hatch the eggs they purchased. “It’s only a image,” the particular person stated concerning the eggs. “There’s nothing I can do with it. It’s principally value nothing in anyway.” So, you’ve obtained diehard Paul followers pining to play a nonfunctioning sport and dropping cash within the course of. A sport, thoughts you, that also doesn’t work to at the present time.
Coffeezilla
In Coffeezilla’s movies, we hear Paul clarify sure points with CryptoZoo’s improvement. Particularly, he says a “developer fled to Switzerland” with the supply code and held it hostage for $1 million, and that is why the sport’s been damaged. However this developer, who Coffeezilla spoke to in the midst of his investigation, claims that he hadn’t been paid in any respect for his work on CryptoZoo, regardless of bringing on a staff of 30 engineers and burning $50,000 per week to construct the NFT venture. One other CryptoZoo developer Coffeezilla spoke with corroborated the declare, saying he additionally hadn’t been paid in any respect. Not solely had been Paul’s followers discovering holes of their wallets after investing in CryptoZoo, however it seems that the folks engaged on the venture weren’t even being paid adequately or on time.
Kotaku reached out to Findeisen and Paul for remark.
Paul, for his half, has stated that the report is “merely not true” and that, “when acceptable, all unhealthy actors shall be uncovered, defined, & held totally accountable,” promising extra particulars in his January three podcast. On December 26, Paul publicly invited Coffeezilla to seem on the Impaulsive podcast to hash the whole lot out, although Coffeezilla responded by saying that he’d already invited Paul onto his present the day earlier than. It stays to be seen whether or not or not something will come to fruition from these exchanges.
