Author: Cookie, Rhythm
All along, KOLs in the crypto space 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 meme players in the Chinese community may only be somewhat familiar with, and another who is a well-known veteran KOL among crypto players. What event led to these two KOLs being thrust into the spotlight?
Lexapro: 'The peripheral members of the Water Pipe Gang have had a 'falling out' with Moonshot.'
The English name of the 'Water Pipe Gang' is 'LA Vape Cabal,' which originated from a live-streamed Texas Hold'em poker game organized by the prominent English KOL @notthreadguy. Members include FaZe Clan co-founder FaZe Banks, Frank, the founder of the NFT project DeGods, Malcolm from deLabs (the parent company of DeGods), and crypto KOLs including threadguy, rasmr, and OGshoots.
There has always been much controversy surrounding the 'Water Pipe Gang.' They have been accused of using their fans for exit liquidity, manipulating the meme coin market, especially during the 'Argentinian coin' $LIBRA, where they faced criticism from players for alleged insider involvement.
Lexapro is regarded as a member of the 'Water Pipe Gang,' both in Chinese and English player communities. Some say he chats in a small group within the 'Water Pipe Gang':
Here, 'He' refers to Lexapro.
In early June, @tier1haterr accused Lexapro and the 'Water Pipe Gang' of engaging in bundled sales on the token $DEAL launched in the Believe ecosystem:
He demonstrated the evidence chain he collected through an image:
First, the initial contact between RYDER RIPPS and Lexapro for private mixing was disrupted by a malfunction in Twitter's direct messaging feature, leading to a response from Lexapro on Twitter. After the mixing was completed, Frank, the founder of the NFT project DeGods, bought in at $780.5 when the token's market cap was only $24,600. Threadguy purchased $3,000 when the market cap was $300,000 (this address ultimately made a profit of about $13,000). Lexapro then bought $4,720 when the market cap reached $700,000 (subsequently increasing holdings at market caps of $1.5 million and $1.26 million, totaling about $16,700), and published a lengthy tweet to promote the token when its market cap hit $1 million.
On-chain data shows that this portion of Lexapro's holdings was eventually transferred to another wallet and sold off, with a loss of about 57%. @tier1haterr believes that in this instance of 'Water Pipe Gang' wrongdoing, Lexapro played the role of a 'scapegoat' because 70% of the profits in the Believe ecosystem belong to the creators (this portion of profits may have been mixed), and since 'Water Pipe Gang' members did profit, he does not consider Lexapro innocent.
$DEAL's market cap reached a maximum of $2 million before plummeting; its current market cap is only $97,000.
Earlier, Lexapro was also accused of manipulating $HOUSE because he always defended himself, so when the $RICH and Moonshot drama occurred, there was a sense of 'this time we have solid evidence against you' in the English community.
'You don't hate these people enough.'
In the leaked chat logs below, Lexapro and Moonshot employee sidewinder performed a 'blame-shifting' farce.
First, according to the conversation content, both parties had communicated earlier regarding the conspiracy to pump $RICH launched by Moonshot. In the image above, Lexapro initially took issue with sidewinder—'I think you guys did not fulfill your prior commitments; the rise and fall of $RICH depend on Moonshot, not me.'
Sidewinder retorted—'No, this is not Moonshot's coin; it's your coin. You controlled the supply through bundling and brought people in.'
Lexapro got famous—'I feel you disrespect me, watch your emotions; your next sentence will determine the fate of Moonshot Launchpad.'
Sidewinder's last statement roughly emphasizes that Moonshot will not pump for you; you need to handle it yourself.
Lexapro heavily promoted $RICH during a brief rebound period after its market cap dropped to $11 million from its peak.
'Many big players/institutions are involved; it's like a critical moment for Moonshot Launchpad. If you think Moonshot can succeed, then buy $RICH, targeting a $100 million market cap. The project team is working, and a lot of marketing activities will soon roll out; this should be the bottom.' (Image source: @tier1haterr)
Lexapro's response is long, and a single screenshot can't capture it all, but the gist is, I'm losing money too; Moonshot didn't deliver on their promise to pump, they did nothing, so it's not my fault, Lexapro; Moonshot messed everything up.
His response was not well received. A tweet from @tstar_frr1 even dragged another foreigner into the mix:
'They will bundle to drive $RICH to a $1 million market cap and then start promoting it heavily to their fans. From this screenshot, you can see that pow forwarded Lexapro's tweet promoting $RICH in his Telegram channel and stated 'Fast Wealth.' I asked a wallet analyst, and he said these people profited over $683,000 through $RICH. If you continue to purchase 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 clear that $RICH was once a 'conspiracy' that Moonshot and at least English KOLs including Lexapro wanted to execute. Ultimately, they fell through negotiations, and the unfortunate ones were the retail investors who invested.
The ones most hurt by this incident are the $RICH community and the entire crypto community. In the meme coin market, where liquidity is already poor and narratives are virtually ignored, this situation being confirmed is yet another significant blow to the confidence of meme coin players—they always tell us to build diligently, always tell us to believe in certain things, but can the trust and effort we put in really get us to the other side?
Why are players so angry? Because everyone has their favorite meme coins, and they all have their own stories they believe in or hope to achieve results through their faith. Regardless of who is right or wrong, the ones hurt are always the retail investors, and the reason for the injury is the absurd inequity in the spoils between KOLs and project parties, even though they have already taken 'shortcuts.'
Ending with a small episode about Lexapro's collapse—he was kicked out of the large wallet group of $HOUSE. In a tweet reply, he stated that he was unaware and expressed sadness, saying, 'I helped you all so much.'
GCR: Accused of bribing the Binance listing team and invading Palm Beach Research's server to obtain report content in advance.
The situation with Lexapro is not yet settled, and the crypto circle is stirring again. On the evening of July 6, @beniduboss tweeted accusations against GCR:
'I can't stand it anymore; a KOL (GCR) is worshipped like a god, but over 90% of the money is earned illegally. They bribed the Binance listing team to obtain insider information, hacked into Palm Beach Research's AWS server to know in advance which coins their next report would mention, created a private Discord channel, and stole others' ideas to fulfill their 'prophecy,' disappearing, then occasionally coming back to make price predictions just because they have nine-figure long positions.'
This accusation currently lacks evidence, with only some suspected GCR chat logs from Discord shared by @beniduboss:
A user suspected to be GCR stated that he gained access to report content 12 hours in advance by hacking into Palm Beach Research's AWS server and then dumped it to bots. Palm Beach Research, run by Teeka Tiwari's crypto research group, sold its research reports to crypto users and was influential several years ago. Currently, the Palm Beach Research website is inaccessible, and their official Twitter has not been updated since April of last year.
A user suspected to be GCR stated that he was able to obtain every token listing news from Binance in the first half of 2021.
Subsequently, tweets emerged that helped GCR counter the accusations:
@IamNomad stated that the above Discord screenshots were made around 2022 when a user attempted to file fraud/insider trading accusations against an exchange after suffering significant losses, and that user deleted his Twitter account roughly six months later. This tweet has now been deleted by @IamNomad, as he stated he did not want to provoke further disputes.
Overall, the current accusations against GCR lack solid evidence. However, yesterday, whistleblower @beniduboss tweeted that he received doxxing and death threats in Twitter DMs, stating that this had nothing to do with GCR but might have been carried out by some GCR fanatic. Previously, his related tweets had also been attacked by a large number of bot comments.
Conclusion
The KOL group always reminds me of my favorite drink 'Monster'—you can drink a can to refresh yourself when tired, but when truly exhausted, you still need to sleep; who would really rely on energy drinks to say goodbye to sleep?
When investing, you can look at KOL's statements for psychological comfort during confusion, enjoy their interesting remarks to relieve stress and laugh a bit, but to truly make money, you still need to rely on yourself, as only you can be trusted.
Any KOL could 'collapse,' but I hope that doesn't mean 'collapse' for you because, in your heart, KOL never had a 'house.'