Logan Paul says his NFT game is not a scam, he just hired scammers to build it and they did some scamming
Internet personality Logan Paul doesn’t just trade punches in the boxing ring. Now he’s scrambling to defend his NFT game CryptoZoo — and we can hardly put down our popcorn.
YouTuber Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen, who investigates cryptocurrency scams, uploaded a scathing three-part series of videos last month accusing Paul’s CryptoZoo app of being a scam.
Advertised as a “really fun game that makes you money,” the app was intended to provide players with passive income by allowing them to hatch and breed NFT “eggs.” Sounds legit, right?
However, for now, the app has failed to materialize as it “undergoes upgrades to the core infrastructure of the ecosystem.”
In short, it’s exactly the kind of thing we expect from generic-sounding games that promise to miraculously earn you digital money, much like countless others in the NFT space. Do you remember Axie Infinity? And it’s also just weirdly anachronistic to see all this drama about NFTs after the market has thoroughly crashed this year.
After two weeks of radio silence – plenty of time for him to consult his lawyers – Paul has released a response video, in which he lashes out at Findeisen, accusing him of spreading gossip without adequate research.
Paul’s explanation? He says he accidentally hired his own scammers to develop the app, who then did some fraud. Paul called out several “bad actors,” who he says may or may not have stolen millions of dollars from investors — he remained vague while doing so in his video — but was later fired.
Paul throws his CryptoZoo team under the bus in the line, saying “that’s what I get for trusting the team that I trusted to vet and manage” new hires.
Paul’s claim is that he and his manager Jeff Levin “made no money and will never make money from CryptoZoo. In fact, we just lost money trying to pick up the pieces.”
In other words, Paul is saying he is innocent because he accidentally hired crooks who did all the dirty work, not him.
If true, it’s yet another damning indictment of the crypto industry writ large, which talks a big talk but is time and again mired in scams, scams and general drama.
Also, accusing someone of failing to do their homework while admitting you mistakenly hired scammers is mildly ironic.
“The fact that Logan is suing me instead of the criminals and crooks he hired says it all,” Findeisen said Kotaku. “He took zero responsibility. Zero apologies. He just wants to save his own reputation.”
It’s a bad look for an internet personality who has already struggled to maintain his reputation. Paul has spent years trying to salvage what was left of his image after visiting and uploading footage of a ‘suicide forest’ in Japan back in 2017, a horrific misstep that made him synonymous with frivolous YouTube clickbait.
So far, it doesn’t look like his foray into the NFT is destined to help much.
READ MORE: Logan Paul says some of his NFT game developers were “scammers” but he didn’t cheat [Kotaku]
More on NFTs: It turns out that Trump’s crappy NFTs were plagiarized
