YouTuber Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo NFT Project Is A Total Mess • TechCrunch
Given Logan Paul’s dubious history on YouTube, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that his CryptoZoo NFT project has allegedly turned out to be a scam. Some investors ended up losing up to half a million dollars, according to independent YouTube reporter Coffeezilla. Development of CryptoZoo has been halted due to alleged non-payment of coders.
Twenty-seven-year-old Paul rose to prominence in 2013 by posting sketches on Vine; but when the short video platform was shut down, he transitioned to YouTube and even wrestles in WWE. In August 2021, Paul took to his YouTube podcast to announce his NFT project.
“It’s so fun. It pays dividends with a token, it can make you money, and as a person who understands, I think, the NFT space enough to know what works, what people want and what they’re looking for, I think my game goes to make some waves,” Paul said.
Between his main YouTube channel and podcast, Paul has around 28 million subscribers, plus another 24.6 million followers on Instagram and 16.6 million on TikTok. In other words, he had the necessary audience to create hype around a new collection of NFTs.
Paul’s fans could purchase an NFT of an egg, which hatches into an animal assigned one of five levels of rarity. These animals can be bred to produce more eggs that hatch hybrid animals, which also have specific rarity levels. When animals hatch, they give $ZOO tokens – the rarer the animal, the more it gives.
Paul promised fans that they could play games with their animals, which would eventually “enter the metaverse,” according to CryptoZoo’s product roadmap. But most of the targets on the product roadmap have not been reached.
Independent reporter Coffeezilla released a three-part video series in late December detailing his research into what went wrong with CryptoZoo. As it turns out, Paul had hired several con artists to work on the project.
TechCrunch has reached out to Paul’s manager Jeff Levin for comment.
Coffeezilla interviewed Cryptozoo’s developer “Z”, who is holding the code hostage for $1 million, since he claims Paul never paid him. In a response video, Paul claimed that “Z” is actually Zach Kelling, a convicted felon.
“I know what you’re thinking. What kind of idiot would work with an unsavory person like Zach Kelling?” says Paul in his response video. He owes this appointment to Eddie Ibanez, the former lead developer of CryptoZoo. “I guess that’s what I get for trusting the team that I trusted to vet and manage Eddie’s hiring process, who has turned out to be a professional fraud.”
But Ibanez’s dodgy past is not new information. In February 2022, Philadelphia culture blog Billy Penn—part of the regional NPR network—reported an investigation into the tech entrepreneur’s past.
While running a data analytics company called Zenabi in 2019, Ibanez was accused of sharing sensitive data about one of his clients, the Mormon Church, with another client, the International Champions Cup. He also claimed on his website to have worked with the CIA and two NFL teams — he even said he had a Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl ring from their 2018 victory. But Billy Penn reported that Ibanez never once met anyone from Eagles until after the Super Bowl, and although Ibanez had some meetings with the team, those talks never turned into an actual partnership. Ibanez also claims to have studied at MIT, but the MIT News Office told Billy Penn that he was never enrolled at the university.
Subsequently, Zenabi received a total of $1.5 million in PPP loans from the federal government. Around the same time, Ibanez’s landlord sued for $118,000 in back rent and property damage. According to a former Zenabi employee who spoke to Billy Penn, Zenabi is being investigated by the FBI over its PPP loans.
Despite a laundry list of suspicious claims, Paul continued to work with Ibanez until July 2022.
This isn’t the first time Paul has been accused of promoting crypto scams – in July 2021 he promoted a “shitcoin” called Dink Doink, which almost immediately lost all “value”.
Other influencers like Kim Kardashian have faced consequences for promoting crypto to their followers without the required disclosures. The SEC settled with Kardashian for $1.26 million over her partnership with EthereumMax. Although she wrote “#ad” at the bottom of her Instagram post, the SEC said she should have disclosed that she was paid $250,000 for the campaign.
What does the future hold for CryptoZoo? Well, nothing, until Logan Paul manages to get that code back from Zach Kelling, who Coffeezilla says fled to Switzerland. But Paul ended his response video with a promotional screen, saying that CryptoZoo is coming in 2023 or 2024.
