When KOLs become operators, are the stories of getting rich in the crypto world just illusions?

Author: Cookie, Rhythm

For a long time, KOLs in the crypto space who have gained a "big result" and thus have many fans, whose tweets and on-chain transactions can produce a strong following effect on a particular token, have always been accompanied by much controversy.

This time, the two KOLs pushed to the forefront are one that may only be familiar to meme players in the Chinese community, while the other is a well-known veteran KOL familiar to players in the crypto community. What event has brought these two KOLs to the forefront?

Lexapro: "Water Pipe Gang" peripheral members have "fallen through" with Moonshot.

The English name of "水烟帮" is "LA Vape Cabal", which originated from a Texas Hold'em live stream organized by the English circle's big 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 a lot of controversy surrounding the "Water Pipe Gang". They have been accused of using their fans to exit liquidity and manipulating the meme coin market, especially with the "Argentinian Coin" $LIBRA, which has drawn criticism from players who questioned their involvement in insider trading.

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

Here "He" refers to Lexapro.

At the beginning of June, @tier1haterr accused Lexapro and the "Water Pipe Gang" of conducting bundled sales on the token $DEAL launched in the Believe ecosystem:

He presented the evidence chain he collected through a picture:

First, the early contact between RYDER RIPPS and Lexapro regarding their private dealings was interrupted by a malfunction in the Twitter direct messaging function, leading Lexapro to respond on Twitter. After the dealings were completed, Frank, the founder of the NFT project DeGods, purchased $780.5 when the token's market value was only $24,600. The threadguy bought in for $3,000 when the market cap was $300,000 (this address ultimately made a profit of about $13,000). Lexapro then bought in for $4,720 when the market cap was $700,000 (subsequently increasing their position when the market caps were $1.5 million and $1.26 million, totaling about $16,700), and published a lengthy tweet promoting the token when its market cap reached $1 million.

On-chain data shows that this portion of Lexapro's holdings was eventually transferred to another wallet and sold off entirely, 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" because up to 70% of the earnings in the Believe ecosystem belong to the creators (these earnings may have been manipulated) and it is a fact that members of the "Water Pipe Gang" made profits, so he does not consider Lexapro to be innocent.

The market cap of $DEAL peaked at 2 million dollars and has since fallen, currently sitting at only 97,000 dollars.

Earlier, Lexapro was also accused of manipulating $HOUSE, as he always defended himself. This is why, when the farce involving $RICH and Moonshot happened, there was an uproar in the English community with a sense of "this time we really have the 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 $RICH launched by Moonshot. In the image above, Lexapro first attacks sidewinder— I believe you have not fulfilled your prior commitments, and the fluctuation of $RICH depends on Moonshot, not on me.

Sidewinder counterattack - no, this is not Moonshot's coin, this is your coin. You have bundled it and controlled the supply, it was 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 word will determine the fate of the Moonshot Launchpad.

The last part of Sidewinder roughly emphasizes that Moonshot will not pump for you, so you should handle it yourself.

During the brief rebound after Lexapro dropped to a market value of $11 million from its peak, it heavily promoted $RICH:

"Many big players / institutions are getting involved, it’s like the key 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 campaigns will be launched shortly. This should be the bottom." (Image source: @tier1haterr)

The response from Lexapro is long, and a screenshot can't fit it all, 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 Lexapro's fault; it's Moonshot that messed everything up.

His response is not well received by everyone. A tweet posted by @tstar_frr1 even dragged in another foreigner's car head pow:

"They will bundle $RICH to reach 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, stating 'Get rich quick.' I asked a wallet analyst, and he said these people have made 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 is certain that $RICH used to be a "conspiracy project" that Moonshot and at least one English KOL, including Lexapro, wanted to get involved in. In the end, their talks fell through, leaving the unfortunate retail investors who had invested.

The ones most hurt by this incident are the $RICH community and the entire Crypto community. In a market where liquidity for meme coins is already poor and narratives are almost ignored, this incident being confirmed is yet another huge blow to the confidence of meme coin players—they always tell us to work hard and build, they always tell us to believe in certain things, but can the trust and effort we put in really lead us to the other side?

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

To wrap up the Lexapro collapse incident with a small anecdote - he was kicked out of the big group of $HOUSE. He stated in a tweet reply that he was completely unaware and said, "I have helped you all so much, I am very sad."

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

The matter of Lexapro has not yet settled, and another wave has risen in the Crypto circle. On the evening of July 6, @beniduboss tweeted accusations against GCR:

"I can no longer bear 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 AWS servers of Palm Beach Research to know in advance which coins their next report would mention, established a private Discord channel and stole others' ideas to realize their own 'prophecies', disappeared, and then occasionally returned to make price predictions just because they have a nine-figure long position."

This accusation currently lacks evidence, with only some suspected GCR chat logs posted by @beniduboss in Discord:

Users suspected to be from GCR claimed that they gained access to the report content 12 hours in advance by hacking into Palm Beach Research's AWS server, allowing them to buy in and subsequently dumped it to the bot. Palm Beach Research is a crypto research group led by Teeka Tiwari that sells its research reports to crypto users and was influential several years ago. Currently, the official website of Palm Beach Research is inaccessible, and their official Twitter account has not been updated since April last year.

A user suspected of being GCR stated that he was able to obtain every coin listing announcement from Binance in the first half of 2021.

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

@IamNomad stated that the Discord screenshot above was taken around 2022 when a user attempted to make fraud/insider trading accusations against the exchange after suffering significant losses, and that user deleted his Twitter account approximately 6 months later. This tweet has now been deleted by @IamNomad, who indicated that he does not want to provoke further disputes.

Taken together, the current allegations against GCR lack strong evidence. However, yesterday, whistleblower @beniduboss tweeted yesterday that he had received doxing and death threats in a Twitter direct message, which he said had nothing to do with GCR, but could have been the work of an avid GCR fan. Previously, his revelation-related tweets were also attacked by a large number of bot comments.

Conclusion

The KOL community always reminds me of my favorite drink "Monster" — you can have a can to refresh and perk up when you're tired, but if you're really sleepy, you still have to go to sleep. Who would really rely on functional drinks to say goodbye to sleep?

When investing, you can look at the comments of KOLs for some psychological comfort when feeling confused. You can enjoy their interesting remarks and have a good laugh, but if you really want to make money, you still have to rely on yourself; only you can be trusted.

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