Logan Paul via GettyImages
YouTuber Logan Paul, who has been trying to redeem himself in recent years after his December 2017 setback in “Suicide Jungle,” is facing a new problem since cryptocurrency investigator Stephen Findizen of “Coffeezilla” posted three videos investigating the CryptoZoo, which is a blockchain “game” Paul used to promote.
Cryptozo problems
There are two big problems with the game. The first is that he didn’t exist yet, and the second is that most of Paul’s fans – who are early investors in CryptoZoo – have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to support him.
In a three-part series of videos, Findeisen, a YouTuber who has “discovered scams, scammers, and fake gurus preying on desperate people with misleading ads,” investigates CryptoZoo.
Cointimes has already published articles on some of Findeisen’s analysis, most recently on the FTX crash: In an interview, SBF is trying to restore its good image.
According to Paul, CryptoZoo is “a fun game that makes you money.” According to the official website, which says the game is “currently undergoing updates to the infrastructure of the ecosystem,” CryptoZoo is “a standalone ecosystem that allows Animal guards Buying, selling and trading exotic hybrid animals.
In short, it is an NFT game in which players buy Zoo Coins, the original currency of the game, to buy NFT eggs that hatch into animals. Once you discover animals, you then cross them to make hybrids, and the rarer the hybrid, the higher the daily return of Zoo Coins. By converting these currencies into fiat money or other digital currencies, it will be possible to consider this structure as passive income.
What did Covesela discover?
Unfortunately, this play-for-profit game was not playable despite the excessive amount of investment it received. Coffeezilla, as Findeisen is known, found that since the introduction of CryptoZoo in 2021, Logan Paul fans have spent about $2.5 million on eggs alone, causing the zoo coin’s market cap to rise to around $2 billion.
Some of the people Kovizela spoke to have spent tens, and in some cases hundreds, of thousands of dollars on CryptoZoo because they believed Paul was a “changing man,” and that he was creating a “safe place” for more people to invest in cryptocurrency.
One of the victims said he lost about $7,000 with CryptoZoo, and explained that passive income, the primary mechanism of the project, “never worked,” and that “there was no way to get your income back, there wasn’t any.” Basically, people were putting money into a system that gave zero returns.
Another victim told Coffeezilla that those who invested in CryptoZoo couldn’t even hatch the eggs they bought. “It’s just a picture,” said the person. “You can’t do anything with them and they are worthless.”
In the Coffeezilla videos, we hear Paul explain some of the issues with CryptoZoo development. Specifically, he says that a “developer ran off to Switzerland” with the source code and held him hostage for $1 million, which is why the game doesn’t work. But this developer, who Coffeezilla spoke to during the investigation, claims he wasn’t paid for his work at CryptoZoo, despite bringing in a team of 30 engineers and burning $50,000 a week to build the project.
Another developer for CryptoZoo, whom Covesela spoke to, confirmed the claim, saying that he, too, was not paid. So not only were Paul’s fans extorted after investing in CryptoZoo, but the people working on the project also didn’t get paid.
Interestingly enough, Paul, or whoever works on his team, decided to subscribe to Coffeezilla’s Patreon. The theory is that since it is necessary to collect as much information or evidence as possible to file a defamation lawsuit, and thus subscribe, which will allow them to access the exclusive content of the channel.
Findeisen, as indicated in the tweets above, canceled Paul’s subscription and refunded his money.
Paul, on the other hand, Claims that the investigations are “simply incorrect” and that “all bad actors will be exposed and fully held accountable,” promising more details in an episode of his podcast, due out Jan. 3. Just this week, on December 26th, Paul called publicly Covesela to appear on the podcast and talk about everything. Covizela, however, answered saying that he had already invited Paul to appear on his channel and received no response.
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