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YouTube detective Stephen "Coffeezilla" Findeisen's recent three-part long exposé of Logan Paul's CryptoZoo has rocked the online crypto and influencer world. With allegations of stealing tens of millions of dollars being brought forward through screenshots and other pieces of communications acquired by the YouTuber, he has dubbed it Logan Paul's "biggest scam" as per the title of his first video.
With clips such as these floating around the internet, the accused individual(s) and the failed CryptoZoo game, which was promised to be a pay-to-earn game for investors on the blockchain, have become major talking points in recent online circles.
While the failure of CryptoZoo as a game was not exactly a secret, Coffeezilla's high-profile investigation has certainly brought broader media attention to both the victims and those accused of ripping them off of millions of dollars of real-life money. This article will explain the complete controversy behind Logan Paul's "scam" for those looking for a simple and concise timeline of all the events.
Explaining Coffeezilla's investigation of Logan Paul's CryptoZoo scam: The who, the how, and the where
Self-styled YouTuber Detective Coffeezilla is well-known for his content where he attempts to expose shady crypto deals while uncovering any other major scams that he can find online. Interestingly, he was the one who confronted IShowSpeed's Paradox Crypto staff for their "scammy" game.
Stephen's opening statement in the first video, titled Investigating Logan Paul's Biggest Scam, hints towards a web of complicated connections that he makes to ultimately find out what went wrong with CryptoZoo. Here is his definition of the game and the goals of the investigation:
"Today we are investigating Logan Paul's CryptoZoo, a blockchain game that made millions, but never worked."
Therein lies the core of the scam, the fact that so many people invested a lot of their money into the project, mostly because of the presence of the popular influencer Logan Paul. Ultimately, it didn't work out and failed to make any money.
The almost 25-minute-long video begins with Logan's claims about the game making money and then immediately shows a montage of several of the game's investors who claimed that the game did not work as intended and that they lost thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in real-life money.
CryptoZoo: The state of the game
As established by the testimonies provided by numerous investors, the game was supposed to give players a passive income by simply playing and obtaining unique items in-game. Coffeezilla explained the mechanics of the game as:
"You started by buying this crypto token called Zoo, which is their in-game currency, and you use Zoocoins to then buy Egg NFTs which you can then hatch to become animals. You can then breed those two animals to become hybrid animals. For example, if you breed a gorilla and a kitten, you get a Gor-Kitty, and the more rare the NFT, the higher the daily yield of Zoo tokens that animal earns you every day."
However, testimonies from investors who bought tokens to purchase eggs and then hatch animals claimed that the system didn't work as intended and that there was no "daily yield." This meant that CryptoZoo failed to live up to the pay-to-earn promises that Logan Paul made during his marketing and subsequently lost several fans large amounts of money.
In Coffeezilla's video, numerous people came forward to state that they had lost significant amounts of their savings while buying tokens, with some even claiming that the game never worked and failed to do so to this very day.
The montage at the start of the second video had multiple people listing out their losses, including GBK, who lamented losing 50k USD in CryptoZoo; Emilio, who was short 40k USD; and Josh, who was poorer by 50k AUD. When asked about the eggs and various hatched animals in the game, one investor said:
"I'm telling you, it's just a picture. Nothing I can do with it."
The blame game: Who is responsible for the "scam?"
While conducting the investigation, Coffeezilla's primary challenge was finding out who was responsible for the loss of such a large amount of money. While some might be quick to blame Logan Paul for the entire incident, the real answer is far more complicated. For simplicity's sake, here's a list of the main people the YouTuber found enough evidence on to accuse him of foul play:
- Logan Paul
- Crypto King
- Eddie Ibanez
- Jeffrey Levin
Without getting into the nitty gritty of each person's history, Eddie Ibanez was the team's Lead Developer for quite some time. According to Coffeezilla's information, he's a fraud who has lied about his past to get into high-ranking positions at organizations before.
Eddie's inability, or rather his unwillingness, to not pay developers on time led to great harm being dealt during CryptoZoo's development, which likely resulted in its failed launch. However, the YouTuber notes that even after Eddie was fired by Jeffrey Levin, the new developers were not paid on time.
Levin, Logan Paul's manager, is yet another person in Coffeezilla's crosshairs who appears to have ignored red flags while hiring Ibanez. He also subsequently failed to keep the development team running, and is directly responsible for the broken game that's CryptoZoo.
Before coming to Logan Paul's involvement, Crypto King needs to be discussed because, according to Coffeezilla, he was the one who sold most of the tokens to make large sums of money. According to screenshots acquired by Coffeezilla, Crypto King also accused Logan Paul of stealing $40 million dollars from him by withholding tokens.
As for the boxing sensation, Logan's involvement was what led to so much credibility being assigned to the game in the first place. Being a popular figure within the community, he was the first to announce the game through his podcast Impaulsive, making him responsible for advertising it as a pay-to-earn game.
Coffeezilla also pointed out how Logan Paul's claims that the game uses hand-painted assets were a lie, and that CryptoZoo was basically using code to fuse stock photos of animals together.
The most egregious mistake on Logan Paul's part were the allegations leveled by investors in the videos. It appears that the influencer stopped talking about the project when it became clear that the game would fail, allowing fans to continue investing their time and money into a literal money pit.
Here's how Coffeezilla wrapped up his summary of the scam:
"It's like the Avengers assemble for the worst possible team you can imagine to make a crypto game."
The allegations in the video have led to Logan Paul promising to address the matter on his podcast early next year on January 3. It appears that he'd asked Coffeezilla to be present, but the YouTube sleuth has publicly rejected the invitation, claiming that the accused four of Logan Paul, Eddie Ibanez, Crypto King, and Jeffrey Levin should attend his livestream instead.
