ZachXBT Accuses Influencer of Pumping Meme Tokens

Renowned on-chain researcher Zachary Walk, known as ZachXBT, has criticized crypto influencer Sion Thomas (Ansem) for orchestrating a Pump & Dump scheme involving numerous meme coins.

It’s definitely the guy who blew up his fund in March 2020 with his own token down 80% in past year and pivoted to promoting pump and dumps.

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 5, 2024

According to the expert, Thomas played a significant role in promoting low-capitalization coins on Solana. 

ZachXBT first mentioned the influencer in a comment regarding Murad Mahmudov’s presentation titled “Meme Coin Supercycle” at the Token 2049 conference in September.  

Mahmudov previously served as IT director at Adaptive Capital. The cryptocurrency hedge fund collapsed amid the market crash in 2020. Since then, the entrepreneur has been posting a ranking of what he considers the most promising coins in the segment on his X account.

ZachXBT expressed his concerns about Thomas’s behavior.

“If you are promoting new low-capitalization meme coins to your followers every few days as a major account, it’s because you have no accomplishments and instead have to use your followers,” Walk stated.

Ansem argued that his recommendations performed better than utility tokens like Chainlink (LINK), which has fallen 90% against Bitcoin since the beginning of the year.

The expert sharply countered, mentioning celebrity tokens promoted by the influencer such as BODEN, HOBBES, ZEUS, and WYNN. According to CoinGecko, these assets have lost 98-99% from their peaks.

“The ‘low-capitalization junk’ you refer to has dominated 90% of retail narratives in crypto over the past year. Pump Fun is the number one revenue-generating app. Whether you like it or not, this is what people want to trade,” Thomas responded.   

In response to criticism that he undermines users’ long-term commitment to digital assets by “leading them to the slaughter daily,” the influencer wrote:

“People now call me the meme coin guy. At the beginning of 2022, I was the Cosmos guy, at the end of 2021, I was associated with DFK, and before that — with Solana.”

Ultimately, Thomas suggested Walk share what information of his has helped users profit in the crypto market.

Most commentators did not support the influencer.

“It’s really amusing how you promote micro-cap shitcoins and use us as exit liquidity,” one of them stated.

Earlier, billionaire and crypto investor Mark Cuban labeled all meme coins as potential scams.