Coffeezilla accuses Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo of being a scam

Influencer’s cryptocurrency game under fire
Coffeezilla accuses Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo of being a scam
Coffeezilla accuses Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo of being a scam /

Shady dealings surrounding his cryptocurrency game called CryptoZoo have put Logan Paul into hot water recently. The unfinished project was envisioned to allow players to buy into a new cryptocoin, with which they could then purchase and sell eggs, which would hatch into different animal-based NFTs. Those, in turn, were supposed to be able to breed new NFTs.

Logan Paul claims to have invested over a million dollars into the game, but the project hit several obstacles. Developer Zach Kelling apparently lied about the number of people actively working on production and about not receiving pay. He then fled to Switzerland, taking with him CryptoZoo’s code. Another part of the founding team, known as ‘The Crypto King’, admits to having sold cryptocoins worth several million dollars before being removed from the project.

Logan Paul in his wrestling-costume.
Logan Paul is under fire due to allegations about his crypto game / WWE

YouTuber Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ Findeisen, who specializes in investigating cases of scam, accuses Paul himself of shady practices. He criticizes the influencer for not seeing the project through, since according to him the game never actually came together completely and many purchased eggs could not hatch. What’s more, Paul marketed the cryptocurrency game to children several times.

Crucially, Findeisen accuses Paul and his team of stealthily launching the game without knowledge of the public, enabling them to gobble up as much of the  currency as they wanted to inflate its value. They also coordinated among each other when buying and selling the coins to keep their value high.

Paul refutes the claim of CryptoZoo not working, showing footage of users successfully playing the game. He called Findeisen’s work “not anchored in truth” and “often speculative”, but didn’t comment further on the game itself.

However, he implies wanting to take legal action against Findeisen, if the latter won't stop looking into the case.

Jeffery Levin, Paul’s manager, stated that the project is currently dealing with legal issues preventing the team from speaking about the game. Paul backed up this claim saying that he was “not cleared from legal” to speak about the legal process currently being undertaken.

Paul promises that the development process is still ongoing, and while he is no longer publicly promoting CryptoZoo, he still intends to deliver the game as it was envisioned.

He says he discourages children from personally investing, despite promoting the idea of playing it to that audience. Paul does not deny the fact that his team purchased coins before publicly announcing the launch, but says that he and his manager never sold them.

Add it to the pile of crypto game projects unsurprisingly ending in scandal.


Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg