After releasing his own cryptocurrency called ‘Smash,’ Russian professional mixed martial artist (MMA) and freestyle wrestler Khamzat Chimaev became the target of the UFC and crypto communities’ ridicule, and one online security researcher has found evidence that points to a possible scam.
Indeed, the UFC fighter has recently asked his followers what they thought was the best crypto asset to invest in, shortly after which he announced the release of his own crypto named ‘Smash,’ and pseudonymous scam investigator ZachXBT has revealed insider trading, detailing it in an X post on July 4.
As it happens, the researcher accused Chimaev and his team of incompetence in a comment to the wrestler’s X post that includes the token’s address, telling them they “directly linked the team wallets with the insider wallets buying up 78% of the supply” and asking why “all of you instantly nuke your reputation with meme coin scams?”
How the crypto scam unfolded
Then, ZachXBT proceeded to lay out the summary of the alleged scam, stating that the timing analysis confirmed that “71% insider and dev team wallets is directly linked” as the same address on Ethereum (ETH) was funding them, posting the address ‘0x8ae40d1e89cd7333efe42a35969f0b8548fe54a8’ on Solana (SOL) as an example.
As he further revealed, the scam went like this:
Furthermore, the investigator listed the 24 addresses that bought up 712 million SMASH “or 71.2% of entire supply,” after which they each dispersed this amount to more addresses, at which point he stopped tracking the said supply and he also posted the visual representation of the scheme.
At the same time, ZachXBT posted a screenshot of SMASH/SOL price chart in a different comment to the same post on the social media platform, demonstrating a decline of 18.81% in a single hour, from close to 0.02 SOL to 0.0003513. The token is currently trading at the price of 0.00048 SOL.
Celebrity-backed crypto scams
Unfortunately, scams are not uncommon in the crypto sphere, and celebrities like Chimaev are not immune to them, whether knowingly or unknowingly participating, as American podcast host Joe Rogan and popular scam investigator Stephen Findeisen, a.k.a. Coffeezilla noted back in March 2023.
As a reminder, they observed that a number of famous individuals supported the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX, as well as discussed the allegations of the American media personality and Chimaev’s industry peer, wrestler Logan Paul, scamming investors in his crypto project Cryptozoo, as Finbold reported at the time.
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