YouTuber and web character Logan Paul has discovered himself with a large goal on his brow just lately. Paul, who’s been on one thing of a redemption arc these previous couple of years following the “suicide forest” fiasco in December 2017, is again in scorching water after crypto investigator Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen revealed a three-part video sequence wanting into CryptoZoo, a blockchain “recreation” Paul as soon as closely promoted. There are simply two obtrusive issues right here: The sport doesn’t exist but, and Paul’s most ardent followers and early buyers have misplaced lots of of hundreds of {dollars} within the strategy of supporting it.
Logan Paul, the older brother of boxer and media character 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 often uploads vlog-style movies through which he gives viewers a voyeuristic look into his day by 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 way many thought-about tasteless and inappropriate. (Aokigahara has a popularity for being a website of frequent suicides.)
This video and the next 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 character {and professional} wrestler, signing to WWE’s Uncooked whereas internet hosting a YouTube podcast that boasts over 4 million subscribers. Dude’s doing very nicely for himself. Nonetheless, he’s the web’s most important character once more following what seems to be his involvement in one of many largest crypto scams that has been uncovered to this point.
In a three-part video sequence totaling somewhat over an hour, Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen—a YouTuber who “uncovers scams, fraudsters, and pretend gurus which might be preying on determined individuals with misleading promoting”—regarded into CryptoZoo. What the hell is CryptoZoo? Properly, as Paul explains it, it’s a “actually enjoyable recreation that earns you cash.” In response to the official web site, which says the sport is at the moment “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 recreation through which gamers buy zoo cash, CryptoZoo’s in-game foreign money, to purchase egg NFTs which might be hatched to turn into animals. As soon as hatched, you then breed these animals collectively to make hybrids and the rarer the hybrid, the upper the day by day yield of zoo cash. Money these out and growth, you’re pulling in cash. Briefly, it’s structured to work like passive earnings.
Sadly, this “play-to-earn” NFT recreation full of hand-made artwork—as Paul likes to closely emphasize on his podcast Impaulsive—has by no means but been playable, regardless of letting individuals 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 lots 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 unsuitable, a minimum of on the second half, as a result of now these persons are out hundreds of {dollars}.
Rob, or Helicopter Bob, one of many victims Coffeezilla video-chatted with, stated he misplaced “just below $7,000 with CryptoZoo.” Helicopter Bob defined that the passive earnings, the challenge’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 option to declare your yield [and] there by no means was.” Mainly, individuals had been placing cash right into a system that was offering zero returns.
Worse but, as an unnamed individual 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 individual stated concerning the eggs. “There’s nothing I can do with it. It’s mainly value nothing by any means.” So, you’ve acquired diehard Paul followers pining to play a nonfunctioning recreation and shedding cash within the course of. A recreation, thoughts you, that also doesn’t work to this present day.
In Coffeezilla’s movies, we hear Paul clarify sure points with CryptoZoo’s growth. 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 workforce of 30 engineers and burning $50,000 every week to construct the NFT challenge. 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 individuals engaged on the challenge weren’t even being paid adequately or on time.
Kotaku reached out to Findeisen and Paul for remark.
Paul, for his half, has said that the report is “merely not true” and that, “when acceptable, all unhealthy actors shall be uncovered, defined, & held absolutely accountable,” promising extra particulars in his January 3 podcast. On December 26, Paul publicly invited Coffeezilla to look on the Impaulsive podcast to hash every part out, although Coffeezilla responded by saying that he’d already invited Paul onto his show the day earlier than. It stays to be seen whether or not or not something will come to fruition from these exchanges.
