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A group of crypto sleuths have released a map of Mr Beast’s alleged crypto wallets. The investigators claim that the YouTuber is connected to 50 cryptocurrency wallets and has made around $23 million from them using a series of shady techniques including pump-and-dump schemes.
It’s been a bad few weeks for Mr Beast, real name Jimmy Donaldson. The YouTube star is battling a series of scandals, including accusations of selling moldy cheese to children, company group chats allegedly sent to the FBI, and an ongoing lawsuit filed by contestants of his upcoming Amazon show. There’s a distinct anti-Mr Beast mood in the air in some circles of the internet and the investigation into his crypto wallets is just the latest salvo.
The team that mapped Mr Beast’s crypto wallets is Kasper Vandeloock, SomaXBT, hxnterson, angelfacepeanut, and rfparson. They published the investigation on a new website that describes itself as a “work in progress” that “prioritized pushing out the Mr Beast article.”
Vandeloock and the others are known quantities in the crypto world and the investigation appears to be a thorough deep-dive into Donaldson’s crypto finances. “Their findings suggest a long history of insider trading, misleading investors, and using his influence to promote tokens, only to later dump them on the markets,” the investigation said. “This document delves into the various tokens associated with these allegations and the insider trading claims, starting with identifying the wallets tied to MrBeast.”
The investigation is both compelling and impenetrable. For readers who aren’t already well-versed in the ins and outs of crypto, it will be hard to parse. At first blush, it appears that Vandeloock and the others have the goods here. They’ve mapped out a complex web of connections between known Mr Beast wallets and other crypto assets on the blockchain.
There are pictures of Donaldson partying with crypto entrepreneurs, big splashy public advertisements of him announcing his association with various crypto schemes, and screenshots of tweets, text messages, and DMs that show Donaldson interacting with crypto folks. The investigation is a mess of charts, graphs, and long strings of numbers. It requires a working knowledge of cryptocurrency to decipher.
According to the investigation, Mr Beast repeatedly invested large amounts of cash into cryptocurrency projects during their pre-sale period and got massive returns. Crypto is a hard business to make money in and the investigation pointed out that Donaldson wins more than he loses, especially for someone who isn’t doing it full time.
The claim is that Donaldson had relationships with the founders of various up-and-coming crypto projects. The investigation tracks those connections and shows how Donaldson-connected wallets invested big in various crypto schemes he backed.
“With Mr Beast’s track record of consistently hitting large returns whilst being a full-time content creator and owning various businesses, there is an extremely high likelihood that his success in cryptocurrency investing is not the result of sharp trading intuition but just knowing insider information, particularly related to upcoming brand deals and partnerships within his network, including figures like KSI, GaryVee, and LazarBeam,” it said.
It’s possible that this complicated nest of crypto wallets and transactions is, in fact, masking some kind of fraud. Donaldson is a man who told TIME that he doesn’t consider himself rich and that his mother handles all the money. “I don’t have access to any of my bank accounts,” he told the magazine in February. “I have a CFO and everything, but [Parisher’s] the one who has access to the master bank account.”
But if there’s a smoking gun in this crypto investigation, it’s only being seen by people with eyes for crypto. It may be that Donaldson’s “aw-shucks” attitude and presentation as a North Carolina boy done good is masking a sinister crypto empire. But it’ll require someone more skilled in crypto scam forensics (like the SEC) to decipher it.
Donaldson has other problems to contend with. In September, five contestants on his forthcoming Amazon show sued him. Beast Games, as the show is called, is a riff on Squid Games and puts contestants through a variety of grueling challenges with the promise of winning $5 million. The lawsuit alleged that Donaldson’s team subjected the contestants to chronic mistreatment and sexual harassment.
Earlier this year Donaldson teamed with Logan Paul and KSI to launch Lunchly, a Lunchable-style snack. As the food hit store shelves, people online began to post videos of them finding moldy cheese inside. YouTube baking star Rosanna Pansino, who has a long-running beef with Mr Beast, published a video earlier this month of her opening up a moldy Lunchly and it supercharged the allegations. The FDA told TMZ that it had received 10 complaints about mold in Lunchlies.
On October 27, Pansino also claimed she’d contacted the FBI regarding Mr Beast. Center to Pansino’s new claim is a Telegram channel she alleges is a Mr Beast company workchat. Pansino published a seven-minute video on X that scrolls through the chat, highlighting the off-color memes and jokes shared between the participants.
I have reported what I found and my concerns to the authorities @FBI. Hopefully they will look into these MrBeast Telegram Company Chats Logs and other concerns. @Youtube @TeamYouTube #mrbeast
— Rosanna Pansino (@RosannaPansino) October 27, 2024
Mr Beast did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for a comment.
