Crypto influencer “Professor Crypto” is facing allegations of using bots to boost his social media presence shortly after winning the “best content creator” award at the DeGen Summit, a side event of the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore. The accusations came from the well-known crypto investigator “ZachXBT,” who took to X (formerly Twitter) to claim that Professor Crypto had manipulated his social media metrics by using “thousands of bots” to artificially inflate his follower count and influence.
ZachXBT’s accusations also pointed out that this alleged behavior could potentially violate a United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule. The FTC prohibits the selling or purchasing of fake social media metrics, including followers or views generated by bots or hijacked accounts, as this practice is seen as deceptive and manipulative.
In response to these claims, Professor Crypto has yet to issue a public statement. However, he quickly deleted several posts that had shown him celebrating his win as “best content creator.” The posts, which featured him collecting the award during the DeGen Summit on September 17, have since been removed from his X account.
Professor Crypto, who has over 1.34 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, has been creating content focused on cryptocurrency for at least six years, with his first video dating back to August 2018. His content includes reviews and opinions on crypto exchanges, wallets, trending memecoins, and non-fungible token (NFT) projects. Despite his sizable YouTube following, his X account, which was created in February 2018, has only 132,000 followers and just 102 posts, the earliest of which was made in August 2023. Web3 investigator Pix also pointed out that only two of those posts were directly authored by Professor Crypto, raising further suspicion about his account’s activity.
The controversy surrounding Professor Crypto has led to confusion and skepticism within the crypto community. Several industry commentators have expressed surprise at his award, with NFT artist Matthew Varnell questioning his prominence in the space, asking, “Who the hell is Professor Crypto?” Others, like Wildcat Labs co-founder Laurence Day, noted that they had never heard of him before he won the award.
As of now, Professor Crypto has not responded to these allegations, and Cointelegraph has not received a comment from him regarding the claims of social media manipulation. The situation continues to unfold as the crypto community awaits further developments.
