- Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, has made crypto research a full-time job.
- He played a role in the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried and says he got the CEO of FTX to admit to the fraud.
- Recently, Coffeezilla got into a fight with Logan Paul over a cryptocurrency game that he said was a scam.
Stephen Findeisen, better known by his YouTube alias, with coffeefound himself in the spotlight when he interviewed Sam Bankman-Fried in late 2022, just weeks before the cryptocurrency mogul was arrested and charged with fraud following the FTX collapse.
Not many outside the industry knew who Findeisen was, but he has been watched for years by crypto sleuths, an online community of amateur sleuths who investigate scams and fraud in the scandal-plagued marketplace and try to hold the bad guys accountable.
in a video titled, "I Accidentally Interviewed SBF and He Hated It," the self-proclaimed "internet detectiveposted a series of conversations with Bankman-Fried via Twitter Spaces, recordings that apparently hastened the former FTX boss's demise.
In the first interview, Findeisen disputed Bankman-Fried's claim that he had no idea that FTX client funds were being transferred to Alameda Research, its cryptocurrency trading arm.
"I had a lot to do," Bankman-Fried said, before leaving the space.
In the second interview, Findeisen questioned Bankman-Fried's image as an incompetent leader of FTX.
"Whenever it comes to a difficult point, the answer always seems to be: 'I made an embarrassing mistake,'" Findeisen said. "It's hard to believe that you made so many embarrassing mistakes."
in a third interviewFindeisen claims it got the "smoking gun" when Bankman-Fried admitted that FTX customer deposits received different treatment than described in the Terms of Service. That's an admission of fraud, Findeisen said, and it spread like wildfire online in the days before Bankman-Fried's arrest.
Before I was a crypto detective
Bankman-Fried is now awaiting trial on various charges of fraud, money laundering and misuse of client funds. Meanwhile, Findeisen has been lauded as a citizen journalist in an industry that has been overrun by scammers and scammers.
Before he became known as Coffeezilla, Findeisen says he saw people in his own life fall victim to scammers. That includes his mother, who was sold a fraudulent treatment after she was diagnosed with cancer, Findeisen said in a 2022 interview with the New Yorker.
Later, when he was attending college at Texas A&M University, a friend asked Findeisen if he wanted to participate in a mysterious business opportunity, which Findeisen later realized was a multi-level marketing scheme. Findeisen was left out, but his roommates stepped in and got a subscription to Success magazine to go with it.
"I distinctly remember thinking, we have four copies of Success magazine and no one succeeds. Something is wrong here,โ she said.
After graduating with a degree in chemical engineering, Findeisen worked as a salesperson for a local homebuilder while beginning to dabble in creating YouTube content. He discovered a niche when he began criticizing financial influencers. Today, he makes videos full-time, with 2.5 million subscribers following his investigative work.
In an interview with CNN Last year, Findeisen said he began investigating dubious cryptocurrency and NFT projects because the industry was rife with bad actors. Illicit crypto transactions hit an all-time high in 2022, the same year that Findeisen won more than one million new subscribers in Youtube.
"I've always hated the fact that people in my life get scammed by different get-rich-quick schemes, things like this," he said. "Eventually I found crypto, which is like, there's some good stuff going on, but holy mother of scams, there's a lot of bad stuff going on too."
It is also generally opposed to the cultural zeitgeist at one point.
"I always want to go where people don't go," he told the New Yorker. "I think if I was only seeing negative crypto stuff I would start a pro-crypto channel. But I'm seeing the opposite."
Reaction
Findeisen's videos have also sparked anger among the set of influencers.
Findeisen became embroiled in controversy with YouTuber Logan Paul after he did a three-part YouTube series exposing Paul's NFT project, CryptoZoo, which Findeisen described as the "biggest scam".
The project, which Paul promoted as a "very fun game that makes you earn moneyit allowed players to buy eggs using an in-game currency called Zoo Coins. The eggs were said to hatch into animal NFTs and, after hatching, produce Zoo Coins daily that users could redeem for fiat money. But Findeisen said there was no way for users to hatch the eggs or collect their holdings.
Paul suggested he would take legal action against Findeisen's claims, warning of "very real repercussions" in a now-deleted YouTube video.
A spokesperson for Paul declined Insider's request for comment, though the YouTuber has since apologized and backed off those threats, according to a recent tweet from Findeisen. A screenshot shared with Findeisen from CryptoZoo Discord shows Paul making amends for the public fight:
"The war is not with Coffee. In fact, I'm grateful that he brought this to light. I'm going to take responsibility," Paul wrote.
Findeisen declined Insider's request for further comment on his work, saying he was exhausted from speaking to the media.
