KOLs in the crypto world are becoming behind-the-scenes promoters, and the retail investors' dream of getting rich is shattering?

Author: Cookie, Rhythm

Original Title: When KOLs Become Manipulators, Are the Stories of Getting Rich in the Crypto World Just Illusions?

For a long time, KOLs in the crypto circle who achieve "big results" and gain numerous followers, whose tweets and on-chain transactions can have a strong following effect on a certain token, are always accompanied by much controversy.

This time, the two KOLs pushed to the forefront are one that might only be familiar to meme players in the Chinese community, and the other is a well-known veteran KOL familiar to cryptocurrency players. What happened that pushed these two KOLs to the forefront?

Lexapro: "The members of the "Water Pipe Gang" have "fallen through" with Moonshot.

The English name of "水烟帮" is "LA Vape Cabal," which originally originated from a Texas Hold'em live stream organized by the English KOL @notthreadguy. Members include FaZe Clan co-founder FaZe Banks, DeGods project founder Frank, deLabs (the parent company of DeGods) member Malcolm, and crypto KOLs including threadguy, rasmr, and OGshoots.

There has been much controversy surrounding the "Water Pipe Gang". They have been accused of using their fans to withdraw liquidity and manipulating the meme coin market, especially during the time of the "Argentinian Coin" $LIBRA, when they were criticized by players for allegedly being involved in insider trading.

Lexapro is regarded as a member of the "Water Pipe Gang," and this is the consensus among players in both the Chinese and English circles. Some say he chats in a small group within the "Water Pipe Gang:"

The "He" here refers to Lexapro.

In early June, @tier1haterr accused Lexapro and the "Waterpipe Gang" of bundling sales on the token $DEAL launched in the Believe ecosystem:

He showcased the evidence chain he collected through a picture:

First, the initial contact between RYDER RIPPS and Lexapro for the private deal was facilitated by the malfunction of Twitter's direct messaging feature at that time, which allowed Lexapro to respond on Twitter. After the deal was completed, Frank, the founder of the NFT project DeGods, purchased $780.5 when the token's market value was only $24,600. Meanwhile, threadguy bought in for $3,000 when the market value was $300,000 (this address ultimately made a profit of about $13,000). Lexapro then purchased $4,720 when the market value was $700,000 (subsequently increasing holdings at market values of $1.5 million and $1.26 million, totaling about $16,700), and published a lengthy tweet promoting the token when its market value reached $1 million.

On-chain data shows that the portion of Lexapro's holdings was finally transferred to another wallet and sold off completely, resulting in a loss of about 57%. @tier1haterr believes that in this incident involving the "water pipe gang," Lexapro played the role of a "scapegoat," as 70% of the profits in the Believe ecosystem belong to the creators (these profits may be manipulated), and since there is evidence that members of the "water pipe gang" profited, he does not believe Lexapro is innocent.

The market value of $DEAL peaked at 2 million dollars and has since fallen, with the current market value being only 97,000 dollars.

Earlier, Lexapro was also accused of manipulating $HOUSE because he always defended himself, which is why there was an uproar in the English-speaking community during the incident with $RICH and Moonshot, as if to say "this time we have solid evidence against you."

"You don't hate these people enough"

In the leaked chat records below, Lexapro and Moonshot employee sidewinder staged a "blame-shifting" farce.

First of all, based on the content of the conversation, both parties had previously communicated about the conspiracy to pump the $RICH launched on Moonshot. In the image above, Lexapro first attacks sidewinder – I believe you have not fulfilled your prior commitments, and the rise and fall of $RICH depends on Moonshot, not me.

sidewinder counterattack - no, this is not the coin of Moonshot, this is your coin. You have controlled the supply of this coin through bundling, and it is you who brought people into CX.

Lexapro is on fire - I feel you are very disrespectful to me, pay attention to your emotions, your next sentence will determine the fate of Moonshot Launchpad.

The last part of sidewinder is basically reiterating that Moonshot will not pump for you, you have to do it yourself.

Lexapro heavily promoted $RICH during a brief rebound after its market value dropped to $11 million from its peak:

"Many big names / institutions are getting involved, it's like the critical moment of the Moonshot Launchpad. If you believe that Moonshot can succeed, then buy $RICH, with a target market cap of 100 million dollars. The project team is working hard, and a large number of marketing promotion activities will soon be launched, this should be the bottom" (Image source: @tier1haterr)

The response from Lexapro is lengthy and can't fit in one screenshot, but the gist is that I'm losing money too; Moonshot did not fulfill their promise to pump the price, they did nothing, so it's not my fault, it's Moonshot that messed everything up:

His response was not well received by everyone. A tweet from @tstar_frr1 even dragged in another foreigner with a car front pow:

"They will bundle $RICH to achieve a market cap of 1 million dollars and then start promoting it heavily to their fans. According to this screenshot, pow forwarded a tweet promoting $RICH from Lexapro on his Telegram channel and stated 'get rich quick.' I asked a wallet analyst, and he said these people have profited over $683,000 from $RICH. If you continue to buy their scam tokens, I can only wish you good luck" (Image source: @tstar_frr1)

Although the disclosed information cannot help us piece together the complete picture of the event, it can be confirmed that $RICH was once a "conspiracy scheme" that Moonshot and English KOLs, including at least Lexapro, wanted to engage in. In the end, they fell through, and unfortunately, it was the retail investors who got hurt.

The ones most deeply hurt by this incident are the $RICH community, and even more so the entire Crypto community. In a situation where liquidity in the meme coin market is already poor and narratives are hardly paid attention to, this kind of incident being confirmed is almost another huge blow to the confidence of meme coin players—they always tell us to work hard on building, they always tell us to believe in certain things, but can the trust and effort put in really lead to the other side?

Why are players so angry? Because everyone has their favorite meme coin and their own stories they believe in, and many people think or hope to achieve their own results through their beliefs. Regardless of who is right or wrong, the ones who get hurt are always the retail investors, and the reason they get hurt is the absurd unequal distribution of profits between KOLs and project parties, even though they have already taken the 'shortcut'.

To conclude the Lexapro collapse incident with a small interlude - he was kicked out of the big $HOUSE group. He expressed in a tweet reply that he had no idea, saying, "I helped you guys so much, I am very sad."

GCR: Accused of bribing the Binance listing team and hacking the Palm Beach Research server to obtain report content in advance.

The incident with Lexapro is not yet over, and another wave is rising in the Crypto circle. On the evening of July 6, @beniduboss tweeted accusations against GCR:

"I can no longer endure it, a KOL (GCR) is worshipped like a god, but over 90% of the money is earned illegally. They bribed the Binance listing team to gain insider information, hacked into the Palm Beach Research AWS servers to know in advance which coins their next report would mention, created a private Discord channel and stole others' ideas to fulfill their own 'prophecy', disappeared, and then occasionally returned to make price predictions just because they have a nine-digit long position."

This accusation currently lacks evidence, only some suspected GCR chat records posted by @beniduboss on Discord:

Users suspected to be from GCR reported that they accessed the AWS server of Palm Beach Research by hacking it, allowing them to obtain the report content 12 hours in advance for purchases, which they later dumped to the bot. Palm Beach Research is a crypto research group led by Teeka Tiwari, which sold its research reports to crypto users and was influential years ago. Currently, the official website of Palm Beach Research is inaccessible, and their official Twitter has also stopped updating since April last year.

A user suspected to be GCR stated that he was able to obtain every Binance listing news in the first half of 2021.

Subsequently, a tweet appeared that helped GCR counter the allegations:

@IamNomad stated that the Discord screenshot above was made by a user around 2022 after suffering significant losses, attempting to make fraud / insider trading accusations against the exchange, and that user deleted his Twitter account approximately 6 months later. This tweet has currently been deleted by @IamNomad, who expressed that he does not want to stir up more controversy.

Overall, the current accusations against GCR lack strong evidence. However, yesterday, the whistleblower @beniduboss tweeted that he received doxxing and death threats in Twitter DMs, stating that this is unrelated to GCR but could be the work of a certain GCR fanatic. Previously, his tweets related to the revelations were also attacked by a large number of bot comments.

Conclusion

The KOL group always makes me think of my favorite drink "Monster" - I can drink a bottle to refresh myself when I'm tired, but when I'm really sleepy, I still need to go to bed. Who would really rely on energy drinks to say goodbye to sleep?

When investing, you can look at the opinions of KOLs for some psychological comfort during confusing times, and enjoy their interesting remarks to lighten your mood. However, to really make money, you still have to rely on yourself, as only you can be depended upon.

Any KOL could "collapse their house", but I hope that does not mean "collapse their house" for you, because in your heart, the KOL has never had a "house".