The team behind the "Uptober" memecoin accused popular crypto influencer Jaypeg of perpetrating a promotional scam after allegedly receiving tokens to promote the project, selling the tokens, and subsequently denying the funds were received.
Members of the Uptober team and Telegram group claimed they reached an agreement with Jaypeg to promote the memecoin in return for 2% of Uptober's supply, valued at approximately $2,200.
The influencer accepted the deal in a Telegram thread and received the funds but immediately deleted the receiving addresses posted to the group — claiming that the address was random and did not belong to him.
Source: Jaypeg.
The team contacted onchain sleuth ZackXBT to investigate, who provided several pieces of evidence contradicting Jaypeg's claims. The onchain detective revealed that the receiving address of the roughly $2,200 in Uptober tokens, beginning with "8jpz1p," was the same address that claimed airdrops from the Solana Saga smartphone on January 10, 2024, hours after Jaypeg posted a Solana Saga unboxing video and referenced the airdrops.
Jaypeg maintains that the wallet address posted in the Telegram group was a "random address" — which prompted the influencer to delete the messages featuring the address from the Telegram group.
The memecoin influencer also claimed that the Uptober team was attempting to blackmail him and, in a public apology, purportedly donated the money to a charity.
The wallet address strongly believed to belong to Jaypeg. Source: Solscan.
Related: ZachXBT reveals Murad Mahmudov’s alleged $24M memecoin wallets
Memecoins take the crypto markets by storm
It's no secret that memecoins have been among the best-performing digital assets during the current cycle. Analyst and influencer Murad Mahmudov believes the markets are currently at the beginning of a memecoin supercycle and predicts that the market for memecoins will peak by the end of 2025.
This memecoin speculation is thought to be responsible for the recent Solana (SOL) price rally. According to Step Finance, a staggering 633,357 new tokens have been created on the Solana network since September 19, 2024.
Google Search analytics also corroborate current investor interest in memecoins. During the week of October 12, search volume for memecoins rose to levels approaching the previous all-time high reached in 2023, while search interest in the term Bitcoin (BTC) sunk to 1-year lows.
Magazine: Memecoins: Betrayal of crypto’s ideals… or its true purpose?