Binance Hack Has Logan Paul Calling Crypto ‘a Scam’ Despite Cryptozoo Past

“I Don’t Trust Crypto”

Youtuber and boxer Logan Paul has a new take on digital assets because, in a recent podcast appearance, when his longtime collaborator Mike Majlak told him, “Binance got hacked. $6,000,000,000 stolen.” Paul replied:

I mean bro, super intelligence, AI, I don’t trust crypto. It’s a scam.

Majlak’s figure tracked the official tally, with Binance itself estimating the total impact of the breach at around $6.3 billion, making it the largest crypto theft on record.

As expected, the reaction drew instant pushback, with popular digital asset commentator Mario Nawfal noting:

Paul is the same guy who launched Cryptozoo, an NFT project that never delivered and faced heavy accusations of being a rug pull. The irony is hard to miss.

The Lingering Cryptozoo Shadow That Won’t Leave

Cryptozoo was a non-fungible token (NFT) game Paul promoted that buyers say never launched as promised. The dispute has dragged on in court, and in February of this year, Paul sought once again to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of using the project to conduct a so-called rug pull, arguing the latest version of the Texas federal suit does not show he can be held liable for the entity’s conduct.

Paul has argued in court that he cannot be held liable, and his calling the wider industry a scam while that case continues is what set off critics on social media.

What Actually Happened at Binance

Paul’s comment arrived as investors tried to make sense of a chaotic night where onchain trackers as well as prominent media outlets such as CNN have attributed the attack to North Korea with high confidence. Binance said the total amount of stolen assets frozen has reached approximately $3 billion, and its co-CEO Yi He said the exchange will cover all the hacking losses.

Markets took a hit as expected, with bitcoin falling 4.5% to $76,664 early on Oct. 30, while more than $1.5 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in 24 hours. However, over the past couple of hours, BTC has forged a comeback and is currently hovering near $78,500.

Paul Is Spooked by AI but So Are Many Others

Alongside his offhand comment about crypto, Paul also posited that he was afraid of artificial intelligence (AI), a sentiment echoed by a whole host of crypto personalities in the wake of the Binance hack. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, for instance, reacted to the breach with a terse “everyday is zeroday,” a nod to zero-day exploits, which are flaws attackers use before defenders know they exist.

Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards went further and wrote:

Over the last six months, the AI threat has also become large, perhaps a greater threat to the ecosystem generally than quantum computing. If the king can’t protect itself, how can any other exchange be trusted?

Others took the opposite lesson, with investor Anthony Pompliano saying the hack was a good reminder of the saying ‘not your keys, not your coins.’ Another prominent online trader summed up the mood by listing Ledger, Binance, Polymarket, Metamask and Phantom and asking, “Where do I store my money?”

His comments came in the wake of Polymarket halting trading over a seperate exploit the same day. Lastly, Sean Foley of Macquarie University told Al Jazeera that “any assets held at a centralized exchange are only as safe as the exchange itself.”

Several blockchain investigators say North Korea’s Tradertraitor (a sub-unit of the larger Lazarus/DPRK ecosystem) likely carried out the roughly $6.3…