After keeping his mouth shut for about two weeks, Logan Paul finally opened up about his blockchain NFT “game,” CryptoZoo, in a video response to investigative YouTuber Steven “Coffeezilla” Findeisen. However, if you were hoping for some explanation of what went wrong with the project, you will be sorely disappointed. Instead, Paul spends his time trying to discredit Coffeezilla’s sources and reports, while admitting that yes, many people on the project were “bad actors” and saying that his only mistake was trusting them. I take it back: he is not on his redemption arch.
Let me catch you up real quick. Coffeezilla, a YouTuber known for investigating fraudsters and scammers in the crypto space, spent a year researching Logan Paul and his “really fun game that makes you money,” CryptoZoo. This “game” is designed to generate passive income for players. You buy the game’s currency, Zoo Coins, to spend on NFT eggs that hatch into animals. You can breed these animals to make hybrids, with the rarer ones yielding more Zoo Coins, which can then be redeemed for cash in IRL. It sounded enticing in theory, but in practice it was clearly a rug-pulling, as members of Paul’s team (though not Paul himself) sold their coins early to make millions, while Paul’s ardent fans and early investors lost hundreds of thousands of dollars , according to Coffeezilla’s report. Based on his three-part series, CryptoZoo appeared to be a scam.
Read More: YouTuber: Logan Paul’s NFT ‘Game’ Is A Big Crypto Scam
Logan Paul chose to remain silent during much of Coffeezilla’s reporting and posting, but not anymore! On Jan. 3, Paul uploaded his response to the Coffeezilla investigation on YouTube, saying he would “defend himself with facts” while hurling sharp insults, saying Coffeezilla continues to “turn from an investigator into a gossip channel” and calling it ” Keemstar of crypto in finance.” Ouch, that stung.
Anyway, in the response video, Paul focuses on what he calls three “inconsistencies” in Coffeezilla’s reports. The first point was about the developer of CryptoZoo, who fled to Switzerland with the game’s source code and held it hostage for $1 million dollars. Paul drags Coffeezilla for keeping the person anonymous and calling him “Z” in his reports. That developer’s name turns out to be Zach Kelling, and according to Paul, he has “multiple felony counts” of armed robbery and obstruction of justice.
In his video, Paul shows documents purporting to be official documents from the Johnson County Courthouse in Kansas that list Kelling’s alleged criminal charges. (Kotaku could not independently confirm these facts, and a representative for the Johnson County Circuit Court Office of Records said there are “no public records” for Zach Kelling.) Paul brings this up to cast aspersions on Kelling’s character and to imply, that the things Kelling said in the Coffeezilla videos — that he has 30 engineers working under him and is burning $50,000 a week on the CryptoZoo project — are completely false. According to Paul, he only had three engineers, not 30.
Paul then admits that yes, he certainly worked with this “unpleasant individual,” but frames the error as being too trusting, saying “I guess that’s what I get for trusting the team that I relied on to check and manage’ the hiring process. He described former CryptoZoo lead developer Eddie Ibanez as “a con man who fooled billionaires, the Mormon church, the owner of the New York Yankees, and now me.”
He then slanders yet another of Coffeezilla’s sources, a man named Emilio whom Coffeezilla interviews for his reports. Paul suggests that Coffeezilla must have been aware that Emilio was an unreliable person who had previously been involved in two carpet-pullings, and was therefore a poor source for his reporting. Paul also takes a moment to dispute Coffeezilla’s claim that eggs in CryptoZoo cannot be hatched, saying that “one second of research” would prove otherwise, and shows footage of the game’s eggs “hatching” to reveal pictures of elephants, ducks and other animals.
Finally, Paul advanced a taped phone conversation Coffeezilla had with Paul’s manager, Jeffrey Levin, portions of which were then used in Coffeezilla’s reports, allegedly without Levin’s permission. Under California privacy law, it is illegal to record a conversation without the consent of all parties, as it is a condition of two-party consent. This is the nastiest point in Paul’s legal threat if they end up in court.
Logan Paul
“Even though you did no background checks, backed up no evidence, took the word of multiple criminals as truth and broke the law, you still published the defamation,” says Paul, before claiming that multiple “bad actors” have been removed from the project. and that he and his manager Jeff “have not made any money and will never make any money from CryptoZoo. We actually just lost money trying to pick up the pieces.
Logan Paul ends his video by assuring viewers that CryptoZoo is still coming, contrary to Coffeezilla’s claims that it isn’t actually being made. He’s also threatening Coffeezilla with a “defamation” lawsuit, saying he’ll need a good lawyer. However, Paul is still willing to include Coffeezilla on his podcast, Impaulsive.
Kotaku has reached out to Paul for comment.
In a brief email exchange with Kotaku, Coffeezilla echoed what he said on Twitter about Paul’s response. He said he’d have a full answer “when I get my thoughts in order” as I traded blows with Paul online about the details of the year-long investigation.
“The fact that Logan is suing me instead of the criminals and crooks he hired says it all,” Coffeezilla said. “He didn’t take responsibility. Zero apologies. He just wants to save his own reputation.
As for Zach Kelling, Coffeezilla said it just learned about Kelling’s alleged past legal battles.
“These ‘court battles’ were from the early 2000s (I think 2001?),” he said. “If Logan’s standard of character is to dig back years to judge people by their worst moment, I don’t think that’s a fight he’s going to win.” Regardless, I have no interest in whether Zach Kelling is good or bad. I didn’t hire him. My job as a journalist is to reach all countries. Logan had accused Zack of stealing his code. I reached out to Zach and got his story and then again reached out to Logan and his manager in response. Logan and his manager chose not to comment and then got upset when I quoted the person they hired.
As for how Paul’s response was received, some online scoffed at his tactic of pointing out that, intentionally or not, he hired scammers and scammers to work on CryptoZoo. In a reaction video, Twitch streamer Hassan Paiker paused amid Paul’s claims to say, “Not one person thinks that any of the people involved in this situation are good people. You hired them, you fucking idiot!” Pyker goes on to call Paul’s claims in the video “complicating Ls.” Yeah, that’s definitely one way to look at it.
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