Author: Crypto KOL Splin Teron; Translator: BlockingNews
The creator of meme coins PSYOP and BEN tokens, Ben.eth, has recently attracted widespread attention in the crypto community. Mike Kanovitz, a partner at Loevy & Loevy law firm, believes that the PSYOP project is suspected of wire fraud, while Ben.eth has problems with misleading token buyers, backtracking, and setting up an incorrect structure for the liquidity pool. Currently, 90% of the PSYOP tokens allocated to investors have not been released, and this series of operations may eventually lead to Ben.eth having to pay up to $21 million in compensation. If Ben.eth does not return the funds to investors, it is likely to face a brutal class action lawsuit.
Against this background, this article will conduct an in-depth study of the personality of Ben.eth and the related token projects. However, it should be noted that this article will not give any value judgments, but only share the information currently collected.
Ben.eth is a typical NFT “internet celebrity”. When he first entered the crypto industry, he had about 13,000 subscribers, but everything changed when he launched the iconic meme token “BEN”.
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Initially, the BEN token was not popular, but how to make it popular? The answer is: a more influential and larger audience “internet celebrity” is needed. Soon, another “internet celebrity” Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) emerged, and he told Ben.eth that he was willing to help and began to promote the “BEN” token in his tweets.
In fact, the reason why Ben Armstrong was willing to help is also largely due to “selfishness”, because his name also contains a “Ben”, and he was undoubtedly ecstatic when he saw a token engraved with his name on the market – of course, it seems reasonable to participate and gain some personal benefits. Ben Armstrong began to actively promote the BEN token to other “internet celebrities” in the crypto community.
At the same time, as the exposure of the BEN token in the crypto community increased, discussions about the token also began to increase. Ben.eth’s Twitter account @eth_ben also saw a surge in subscribers, and it has been continuously growing until now (from 13,000 to nearly 100,000).
Meanwhile, Ben Armstrong continues to actively promote the BEN token on social media, during which some questioned him for promoting a Rug Pull project but was strongly refuted by Ben Armstrong. He claimed to have been working in the crypto industry for a long time, and also claimed that he did not care about the token price. He promised not to sell the BEN token for six months and even disclosed his Ethereum wallet address.
About two weeks ago, Ben.eth launched a new token called “PSYOP”. In the crypto industry, new tokens are often presold before listing, so Ben.eth shared presale addresses on social media and instructed participants to send ETH to the address. However, soon after, a developer named “vydamo” suddenly appeared on social media and claimed that Ben.eth did not intend to launch the “PSYOP” token project fairly.
Meanwhile, another crypto influencer, Andrew Tate, posted a video on social media claiming that he had nothing to do with the PSYOP token. However, this operation backfired, and the interest in the PSYOP token among the crypto community continued to increase. But then the development of the situation was confusing. Ben.eth suddenly stopped the presale of the PSYOP token project and announced that he would refund the funds to the previous investors in the future, claiming that he would compensate those who sent money to his wallet after the presale ended. Unfortunately, this promise was not fulfilled at all.
People who lost their funds began to stir and had to hire lawyers to initiate a class action lawsuit to try to recover their money. Unexpectedly, despite the negative news, Ben.eth successfully raised about 4,000 ETH through the presale of the PSYOP token project.
Ben.eth made a lot of money, but for those who participated in the PSYOP token project, they had to face the embarrassment of huge losses. Looksonchain, a chain analysis analyst, listed three investor cases:
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The investor with the address starting with “0xac34” sent 29 ETH to Ben.eth and received 5,095,139 PSYOP. However, if he sells all the PSYOP tokens now, he can only get 3 ETH;
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veg.eth sent 21 ETH to Ben.eth and received 3,724,258 PSYOP tokens (can only get 2.15 ETH if sold now);
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hot.izebel.eth sent 20 ETH to Ben.eth and received 3,546,912 PSYOP tokens (can only get 2.05 ETH if sold now).
In addition, the reason why the PSYOP token has attracted a lot of investor attention is actually closely related to another whale cryptopolitan.eth. Chain data shows that cryptopolitan.eth spent 233 ETH (equivalent to 428,616 US dollars) to purchase 251.8 million PSYOP tokens, with an average purchase price of 0.001702 US dollars. This whale also ranks seventh among the largest holders of PSYOP with this transaction.
Turning back to Ben.eth, he is actually a very low-key person, which can be seen from his published tweets.
However, just when the PSYOP token incident was in full swing, Uniswap suddenly stopped trading services for the BEN token without any announcement (perhaps due to concerns about potential risks). However, Ben Armstrong claimed that it was because the BEN token project logo needed to be replaced that it was temporarily taken down.
However, what happened next is really hard to evaluate. Usually, if your token project is considered fraudulent, the issuer will often be more cautious. Unexpectedly, Ben.eth did the opposite and announced the launch of another new token called “LOYAL”. At the time of writing, this project has attracted more than 11,000 ETH, and funds are still pouring in.
According to “Chain Detective” @zachxbt, as of now, 112 people have sent funds directly from the exchange to the LOYAL token wallet address. It can be imagined that these funds are likely to eventually fall into Ben.eth’s own pocket.
Not only that, from the screenshot of Ben.eth’s tweet below, it can be seen that he has no intention of stopping.
The above is the information collected so far about the Ben.eth token project. Sometimes it is necessary to doubt whether users in the crypto community are really “foolish and rich”. In any case, before you see such crypto activities and try to send funds to participate, please consider carefully.
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