Author: Cookie, Rhythm

KOLs who have achieved “big results” in the cryptocurrency circle and thus have many fans, and whose tweets and on-chain transactions can have a strong copycat effect on a certain token, have always been accompanied by many controversies.

This time, the two KOLs who were pushed to the forefront, one of whom is probably only familiar to meme players in the Chinese circle, and the other is a veteran KOL familiar to all cryptocurrency players. What happened that pushed these two KOLs to the forefront?

Lexapro: "Talks broke down" between members of the "Shisha Gang" and Moonshot

The English name of "LA Vape Cabal" is "LA Vape Cabal". It originated from a Texas Hold'em live broadcast organized by the English-speaking KOL @notthreadguy. Its members include FaZe Banks, co-founder of the e-sports organization FaZe Clan, Frank, founder of the NFT project DeGods, Malcolm, a member of deLabs (DeGods' parent company), as well as crypto KOLs including threadguy, rasmr, and OGshoots.

There has always been a lot of controversy surrounding the "Hookah Gang". They have been accused of using their fans to exit liquidity and manipulate the meme coin market. Especially when it came to the "Argentine currency" $LIBRA, they were questioned by players about their involvement in insider trading and became the target of public criticism.

Lexapro is considered a member of the "Hookah Gang", and this is the view of the Chinese and English gamer communities. Some people say that he chats in the "Hookah Gang" group:

 The "He" here refers to Lexapro

In early June, @tier1haterr accused Lexapro and the “Hookah Gang” of bundling sales on the $DEAL token launched by the Believe ecosystem:

He showed the chain of evidence he collected through a picture:

First, the early contact between RYDER RIPPS and Lexapro was due to the failure of Twitter's private message function at the time, which caused Lexapro to reply on Twitter. After the blending was completed, Frank, the founder of the NFT project DeGods, purchased $780.5 when the token's market value was only $24,600. Threadguy purchased $3,000 when the market value was $300,000 (the address finally made a profit of about $13,000). Lexapro purchased $4,720 when the market value was $700,000 (and then increased its position at $1.5 million and $1.26 million, respectively, for a total of about $16,700), and published a long tweet to promote the token when the token's market value reached $1 million.

The on-chain data shows that this part of Lexapro's holdings was finally transferred to another wallet and sold out, with a loss of about 57%. @tier1haterr believes that in this "Hookah Gang" crime, Lexapro played the role of a "scapegoat" because up to 70% of the Believe ecosystem's revenue belongs to the creators (this part of the revenue may be mixed) and the fact that the "Hookah Gang" members profited exists, so he does not think Lexapro is innocent.

$DEAL's market value has been falling since it reached a peak of $2 million, and its current market value is only $97,000.

Earlier, Lexapro was accused of manipulating $HOUSE. Because he always defended himself, when the farce of $RICH and Moonshot happened, the English circle was in an uproar of "this time you are really guilty" -

 “You don’t hate these people enough.”

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

First, according to the content of the conversation, the two parties had previously communicated about the conspiracy to raise the $RICH launched by Moonshot. In the above picture, Lexapro first attacked sidewinder - I think you have not fulfilled your previous promises, and the rise and fall of $RICH depends on Moonshot, not me.

Sidewinder hit back - No, this is not Moonshot's coin, this is your coin. You bundled this coin and controlled the supply, and you brought people in.

Lexapro is on fire - I feel like you are being very disrespectful to me, watch your emotions, your next words will determine the fate of Moonshot Launchpad.

Sidewinder's last paragraph probably reiterates that Moonshot will not pull the market for you, so you have to do it yourself.

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

 "Many big names/institutions are involved. This is like a critical moment for Moonshot Launchpad. If you think Moonshot can succeed, buy $RICH and aim for a market cap of $100 million. The project is working, and a lot of marketing activities will be launched soon. This should be the bottom." (Image source: @tier1haterr)

Lexapro's response is too long to fit in one screenshot, but the general meaning is that I also lost money, Moonshot did not deliver on their promise to pump the market, they did nothing, so it's not Lexapro's fault, it's Moonshot who messed it all up:

His response was not well received. A tweet by @tstar_frr1 even involved another foreigner, Chetou Pow:

 “They will bundle $RICH to a $1 million market cap and then start hyping it up to their fans. According to this screenshot, pow retweeted Lexapro’s $RICH promotion tweet in his Telegram channel and said “get rich quick”. I asked a wallet analyst and he said these people made more than $683,000 in profits from $RICH. If you continue to buy their scam tokens, I can only wish you good luck” (Image credit: @tstar_frr1)

Although the disclosed information cannot help us piece together the complete picture of the incident, it is certain that $RICH was once a "conspiracy" that Moonshot and English KOLs including at least Lexapro wanted to make. In the end, their talks fell through, and the unlucky ones were the retail investors who invested.

The $RICH community, and even the entire Crypto community, was hurt the most by this incident. In a situation where the liquidity of the meme coin market is already very poor and the narrative is almost ignored, the confirmation of this incident is almost another huge blow to the confidence of meme coin players - they always tell us to work hard to build, they always tell us to believe in something, but can the trust and hard work really lead to the other side?

Why are players so angry? Because everyone has their favorite meme coins and their own stories, and many people believe or hope to achieve their own results through their own beliefs. Regardless of who is right or wrong, retail investors are always the ones who get hurt, and the reason for the hurt is the ridiculous unequal distribution of spoils between KOLs and project owners, even though they are already "cutting corners".

Let’s end the Lexapro collapse incident with a small episode - he was kicked out of the $HOUSE big investor group. In his tweet reply, he said that he had no idea about it. I have helped you so much, and I am very sad.

GCR: Accused of buying off Binance's coin listing team and hacking into Palm Beach Research's server to get the report content in advance

The Lexapro incident has not yet been resolved, and the Crypto circle is in turmoil. On the evening of July 6, @beniduboss tweeted an accusation against GCR:

 “I can’t stand it anymore. There is a KOL (GCR) who is worshipped like a god, but more than 90% of the money is earned illegally. He bought off the Binance coin listing team to get inside information, hacked into Palm Beach Research’s AWS server to know in advance which coins they will mention in their next report, set up a private Discord channel and steal other people’s ideas in it to fulfill his own "prophecy", disappeared, and then came back from time to time to make price predictions, just because they have a 9-digit long position.”

There is currently no evidence for this accusation, only some chat records suspected to be GCR in Discord published by @beniduboss:

 The user suspected to be GCR said that he hacked into the AWS server of Palm Beach Research to obtain the report content 12 hours in advance and bought it, and then sold it to the robot. Palm Beach Research is a crypto research group led by Teeka Tiwari, which sells its research reports to crypto users and was influential many years ago. Currently, the official website of Palm Beach Research is inaccessible, and its official Twitter account has stopped updating since April last year. 

 The user suspected to be GCR said that he was able to obtain every Binance coin listing news in the first half of 2021

Subsequently, a tweet appeared to help GCR fight back against the accusation:

 @IamNomad said that the above Discord screenshot was taken by a user in 2022 who attempted to file a fraud/insider trading charge against the exchange after suffering a large loss, and that user deleted his Twitter account about 6 months later. This tweet has now been deleted by @IamNomad, who said he did not want to cause any more disputes.

In summary, there is currently a lack of strong evidence for the accusation against GCR. However, yesterday, the whistleblower @beniduboss tweeted that he had been subjected to human flesh searches and death threats in a private message on Twitter. He said that this had nothing to do with GCR, but that it might have been done by a GCR fanatic. Previously, his tweets related to the whistleblower's revelations were also attacked by a large number of robot comments.

Conclusion

The KOL group always reminds me of my favorite drink "Monstera" - you can drink a bottle of refreshing drink when you are tired, but if you are really sleepy, you still have to go to bed. Who would really rely on functional drinks to say goodbye to sleep?

When investing, you can read the comments of KOLs to find the psychological comfort you need when you are confused. You can read their interesting remarks to have a good laugh, but if you really want to make money, you still have to rely on yourself, and only yourself can be relied on.

Any KOL may have their reputation ruined, but I hope that doesn’t mean a ruin for you, because in your heart KOLs have never had a reputation ruined.