Like him or hate him, Logan Paul is one of the most influential YouTubers of the past decade. The Ohio man has amassed nearly 25 million subscribers on YouTube, is currently signed to the WWE, has boxed Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a professional boxing match, and has nearly 4 million subscribers for his ImPaulsive podcast.
In many projects Paul has worked on, he has made multiple roads into cryptocurrency with an NFT project and a play to earn the game. Sadly, Paul’s ventures into cryptocurrency have not turned out as well as those into boxing or podcasting. With that in mind, this article will cover everything you need to know about Logan Paul and why his cryptocurrency ventures have landed him in hot water.
Who is Logan Paul?
As mentioned, Logan Paul is a YouTuber with many subscribers and a far reach. Forbes even ranked him the highest-earning YouTuber in 2021. His net worth is estimated at $30 million, but no one knows his exact net worth.
Anyway, the YouTuber tends to go all in on any of his endeavors. This includes becoming a professional boxer to lose via decision to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Logan Paul has a history of fairly bad decision making. He even made a video where he visited a brain doctor for a brain scan. The doctor mentioned a loss of brain matter in Paul’s brain that could impair decision making. This likely resulted from playing American football in high school and the training required to become a professional boxer.
All this information might sound irrelevant, but it will become apparent how relevant this background information on Logan Paul is in the next section.
Why is Logan Paul’s crypto project trending on Twitter?
Logan Paul announced the launch of a cryptocurrency project called CryptoZoo in 2020 on his Impaulsive podcast. It was supposed to be an NFT game that allowed users to breed and trade NFT animals to earn extra passive income.
You can think of CryptoZoo as a version of Axie Infinity. Users could buy NFT eggs before the launch that would hatch into eggs. The NFT animals that these eggs would hatch into would be “handmade art”, according to Logan Paul.
That’s a very big promise, as the NFT space is rife with NFT projects that use auto-generated art that looks fairly poor.
Now, things took a turn for the worse when the NFTs launched in September 2021 – users could not hatch their eggs (receive the actual NFT), and the images that were shown of the NFTs were just basic stock images of animals that were by no means handmade artwork.
As expected, investors in the project were not happy about the shoddy release. Logan Paul was very silent throughout the situation, further irking investors.
The value of CryptoZoo’s token, Zoo (ZOO), went to zero as it lost 99.9% of its value within a few weeks (Source: World Coin Stats)
Coffeezilla makes a video series
Things went from bad to worse for Logan Paul when the self-described “internet detective” Coffeezilla released a three part video series outlining the entire CryptoZoo fiasco. Coffeezilla uncovered what happened to the project, interviewed investors, and interviewed the team Paul hired to launch CryptoZoo. The video was published in December 2022 – over a year after the CryptoZoo NFTs were unveiled.
Everything that Coffeezilla uncovered made Logan Paul look horrible. Logan Paul hired a convicted fraudster for one aspect of the project. The fraudster unsurprisingly stole millions of dollars from the project. Paul then decided not to pay the software development firm developing the project about a million dollars.
It was also implied, though never explicitly stated, that Logan Paul launched the CryptoZoo project to cash out from the cryptocurrency. Coffeezilla releasing the video caused Logan Paul and CryptoZoo to begin trending on Twitter, and it may have even attracted the interest of law enforcement and regulators.
As of the writing, Logan Paul has finally broken his silence, issued a formal apology, and promised to make investors whole. However, his initial response to the Coffeezilla video was to criticize Coffeezilla and threaten a lawsuit against the internet detective.
Logan Paul threatening to sue Coffeezilla did not go over well with his community, so he quickly changed his tune and now claims he will make investors whole.
What to do if you invested in CryptoZoo?
First of all, never invest in any of these celebrity NFT projects. They almost always turn out to be a bad investment. If you did invest in Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo, then you cannot do much. The best route is to continue holding the worthless egg and hoping that Logan Paul makes investors whole.
There is the potential for a class action lawsuit. But the payout from a class action lawsuit is likely low. However, it’s worth considering all options, and whether or not you wish to join the class in the class action lawsuit is a very personal decision.
Will Logan Paul go to jail for CryptoZoo?
There has been no indictment or announcement of an investigation by the Justice Department at the time of writing. It appears unlikely that any indictment will come down on Logan Paul for CryptoZoo simply because there’s no way to prove intent. More importantly, Logan Paul has stated that he plans to complete the project or refund investors, which would make an indictment far less likely.
Basically, it’s not illegal to release a poor-quality product. You will likely face investor lawsuits but honor the contract by releasing a product. To summarize this point, Logan Paul will probably not go to jail for CryptoZoo because no crime has been committed. He will likely face civil lawsuits, though.
