2021 Retrospective: The Top 10 Crypto Villains of the Year
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2021 Retrospective: The Top 10 Crypto Villains of the Year
Insider trading, rampant rug pulls, and misleading information in the media—crypto industry revealed its dark side during the bull market.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Chris Williams, Crypto Briefing
Translated by: Alex, TechFlow
As cryptocurrencies experienced parabolic growth in 2021, several villains also emerged within the industry.
Key Takeaways
1) The recent crypto bull run brought greed and unethical practices.
2) The industry saw multiple major rug pulls and insider trading incidents throughout the year.
3) NFT technology entering the mainstream also triggered misleading criticism from many skeptics.
Insider trading, rampant rug pulls, and misinformation in media—crypto's dark side emerged during the bull market. In this article, Crypto Briefing lists the top ten most controversial figures of the year.
Top 10 Crypto Villains of 2021
Where there is money, there is greed—and shady practices follow closely behind. Clearly, with assets like BTC, ETH, and Solana rising, the global crypto market cap surpassed $3 trillion for the first time.
Yet as the market enriched countless investors and traders, many abandoned ethics to boost their profits. This year’s roundup of crypto villains includes some leading figures—but also many supporting roles. One surprise this year has been seeing people we once respected appear on the list, confirming the idea that money truly changes everything.
Cryptocurrency also has its fair share of enemies outside the space—perhaps most notably the baby boomer generation responsible for overseeing U.S. financial regulation. Of course, crypto isn't just dealing with Gensler and his agency. This was also a particularly significant year for NFTs, which brought forth the phenomenon of "right-click savers"—a group of angry keyboard warriors who define themselves through radical politics and inexplicable hatred toward emerging technologies. We can't possibly list all the skeptics who doubted this year's NFT movement, nor do we believe they’ll maintain these views years later when it suits them.
Instead, Crypto Briefing has identified individuals who have antagonized nearly everyone across the crypto space this year, along with some of the most shocking events witnessed since January. Below is our full list of the top 10 worst characters in crypto for 2021.
Su Zhu
When Crypto Briefing began compiling candidates for this year’s villain list, Su Zhu wasn’t the first person who came to mind. Zhu is an influential figure in the space, and his podcast Uncommon Core is frequently listed as “essential listening” in the Crypto Briefing Slack channel. Known for his Yoda-like wisdom, following every one of his directives could be risky, given he trades like an assassin. In May, he announced that Three Arrows Capital—the hedge fund he co-runs with Kyle Davies—had accumulated enough Bankless assets to become one of the largest holders globally, then called for a $25,000 ETH investment into Bankless. By late summer, however, he and Davies announced leadership in Avalanche’s $230 million fundraising round, shifting focus to promoting AVAX tokens of the Layer 1 chain to their combined 400,000 Twitter followers. After getting into an Ethereum vs. Avalanche spat on Twitter with Synthetix’s Kain Warwick, AVAX surged over the weekend in late November. Zhu then declared that high Ethereum gas fees had driven him to switch allegiance, stating he had “abandoned Ethereum” because Ethereum had “abandoned its users.” This immediately angered core developers of the project, teams working on infrastructure and Layer 2 solutions, and community members who had followed his ultra-bullish ETH predictions just six months prior. However, while Zhu seemed ready to abandon Ethereum for more centralized alternatives, his stance appears to have shifted: Three Arrows Capital purchased over 100,000 ETH in recent days. This serves as a stark reminder that Zhu tends to rotate holdings quickly before finalizing trades, making it reasonable to assume that once he starts heavily promoting any token on Twitter, he may already be considering support for another project.
Nate Chastain
There’s always drama in crypto, but one week in September provided enough material for a six-episode Netflix series. One day, Walmart appeared to announce a partnership with Litecoin, confusing nearly everyone closely following the space. Reuters and CNBC fueled the fire and LTC rally by reporting updates before discovering the press release was fake. LTC soared then crashed. The next day, Solana went down due to bots spamming Raydium IDO, blocking block processing. Anatoly Yakovenko, founder of the high-speed chain, dismissed the outage, comparing it to Ethereum’s high gas fees excluding users based on price—the network remained offline for 18 hours. Yet the most shocking story that week involved Nate Chastain, then-product lead at OpenSea. A popular figure in the NFT community, Chastain was well-known on Crypto Twitter through his CryptoPunk NFT profile picture and ENS domain. But it was precisely his online identity—combined with a string of poor decisions—that led to his downfall. When he linked his Ethereum address to his real name and digital identity, a group of on-chain detectives were able to identify a series of transactions showing he had bought NFTs from artists minutes before they were promoted on OpenSea. Once listings spiked in value, Chastain would sell the assets for quick profits, then transfer the earned ETH back to his designated address. Public ledgers meant anyone interested could see—it made his resignation inevitable. OpenSea was valued at $10 billion this year, so as an early team member, Chastain could easily have received eight-figure equity. Instead, he walked away with about $65,000 worth of 19 ETH and vanished from the NFT community without a trace.
Divergence Ventures
If you hear about a potential airdrop from a project, you might gain big by interacting with the protocol across multiple addresses. This also means there's always a risk insiders could game the airdrop to walk away with a substantial amount—as the legendary tale of Ribbon Finance and Divergence Ventures proved in October. Shortly after the DeFi project distributed tokens to early supporters, on-chain analyst gabagool.eth raised suspicions upon noticing one address receiving funds from multiple wallets that had dumped RBN for 2.5 million USD worth of ETH. Thanks to ENS, he realized the wallets belonged to Bridget Harris, an employee at Divergence Ventures—a VC firm that backed Ribbon with a $25,000 seed investment. Ribbon admitted it had notified the fund about the token drop but said no specific criteria were outlined. Further analysis showed the firm had been farming airdrops across every project it invested in, likely leveraging its insider position to claim tokens that could have gone to other community members. The two founders of Divergence, Calvin Liu and George Lambeth, issued a series of weak apologies defending their actions, claiming their goal was simply to “make money” and that they weren’t the only team using such strategies—before finally returning the RBN tokens. But that wasn’t all they lost due to gabagool’s detective work: their reputations were permanently tarnished.
Elon Musk
Where does one even begin with Elon Musk? First came the Dogecoin meme, sparking a wave of animal coin mania. Then came false claims that Bitcoin and Ethereum couldn’t scale like Dogecoin. Worst of all, Tesla announced it would stop accepting BTC payments due to environmental concerns—a statement that preceded the biggest market crash since Black Thursday (though Tesla did continue holding BTC on its balance sheet after announcing a $1.5 billion investment earlier in February). Musk also told the world on Saturday Night Live that Dogecoin was too crowded, triggering a crash—and realizing his words alone could move markets. Since then, Musk has cooled off, but this year made it clear to the crypto community that the market can swing 10% in either direction based on a single tweet—often with no rationale beyond a bored billionaire seeking attention.
Moon guurl
Self-proclaimed crypto enthusiast Moon guurl, also known as Rea, entered the space in mid-2020 with no secret desire to become a crypto influencer. Building her brand by sharing beach photos and questionable market commentary, her follower count quickly reached a size where aspiring crypto projects could benefit from her reach. In her case, she received an offer from the meme project Isla Inu in exchange for 1% of the token supply. As popular Twitter user zachxbt pointed out, her true colors were revealed when she decided to post a tweet about the project without disclosing her personal gain, then sold her tokens for 22.8 ETH—worth around $100,000 at the time. The token had such low liquidity that it crashed nearly to zero, meaning she effectively pulled the rug from anyone who bought into the project based on her undisclosed promotion. She feigned innocence, claiming she didn’t understand liquidity issues—plausible given her relatively basic content. Worse still, her unrepentant reflection worsened things, suggesting Crypto Twitter bullied her and caused anxiety. Among all her misjudgments, it's hard to say which was worse: the undisclosed sponsorship, the rug pull itself, or downplaying mental health struggles to futilely justify her actions. Either way, Moon guurl is no longer relevant to anyone who’s heard of this incident—the community is better off without her.
Gary Gensler
What happens when you appoint a former TradFi hotshot believed to be worth up to $119 million to head the SEC’s financial division? So far, the results for crypto have been as bad as imagined. Yet when the crypto community first learned last year that Gensler would chair the SEC, many were excited given his knowledge of the space (Gensler previously taught blockchain, smart contracts, and DeFi at MIT). Sadly, Gensler has consistently shown problems with digital assets. While the SEC continues blocking spot BTC ETFs, it allowed futures-based funds—but Gensler hasn’t challenged Bitcoin or Ethereum directly. His greater concern lies with technologies running on Ethereum—especially DeFi and stablecoins. Beyond warning that DeFi tokens might be securities, Gensler has failed to provide any regulatory clarity for the sector and shares concerns about stablecoins with other officials like Jerome Powell. Meanwhile, he oversaw the SEC issuing subpoenas to Terra’s Do Kwon in September, and due to the agency’s strict regulations, countless U.S.-based DeFi traders missed out on lucrative airdrops from projects like dYdX. Gensler and his ilk claim the SEC exists to protect investors, often warning of crypto investment risks. But in a year where all major crypto assets surged to new highs, the biggest risk was taking anything Gensler says seriously.
Elizabeth Warren
Who is Elizabeth Warren? If you ask most people outside the U.S., they might struggle to recognize her. While the Massachusetts senator is better known domestically, she has proven herself disconnected from sound government policy and economic thinking. One of her biggest grievances is cryptocurrency. All year long, Warren used her platform to warn of crypto’s supposed risks, reciting a familiar list of clichés: vague environmental claims, hypothetical threats to the dollar, and now the legendary “shadowy super coders” line—which became a meme mocking her disconnection. So back to the question: Who is Elizabeth Warren? She’s the type of career politician who enjoys power positions to uphold authority but proves unfit for the job by failing to understand where the world is headed. The sooner she disappears, the better off everyone will be—especially the crypto industry.
Scott Melker
Scott Melker calls himself the “Wolf of All Streets,” which should raise red flags immediately. A former EDM DJ turned crypto trader, Melker made a fortune trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other assets. Over the years, he has actively shared knowledge gained through social channels and podcast series—perhaps explaining why he remains one of the most-followed figures in the space. Despite his success, Melker exemplifies how money is never enough for some. On multiple occasions, he was found alerting followers to low-liquidity assets, causing prices to spike before dumping almost as quickly as they rose. He then deleted tweets promoting these assets, likely to cover his tracks. In May, when many community members rallied against him, Melker tearfully denied wrongdoing during a Twitter Spaces call and has remained relatively quiet since. Given the poor long-term performance of some low-market-cap stocks he promoted, this silence is probably for the best.
Ric Burton
It wasn’t Ric Burton’s obsession with the idea that Silicon Valley is the center of the Earth, nor his Twitter quest for attention over confrontations with thieves, nor even Fei—the algorithmic stablecoin project that turned into a disaster under his leadership. No, it was his arrogant tone frequently appearing in a series of repugnant racist Twitter posts. Over the years, Burton targeted people from Greece, Ukraine, and even his own homeland (the UK, not the U.S.), but the most shocking moment came earlier this month when he said he couldn’t wait for “Arab culture to die.” Burton then insulted Islamic cultural practices of women wearing hijabs, niqabs, and burqas, calling them “bags.” His ignorant remarks sparked fierce backlash, yet he doubled down—losing respect from many in the industry. Burton argued he was referring to injustices and oppression faced by women in many Middle Eastern regions, but his failure to acknowledge nuance led to offensive racial slurs. Burton is another difficult addition to this list because he has done much good for the space—advancing Ethereum through wallet development and funding young participants at Ethereum conferences and ENS domains this month. Nevertheless, racism must be called out to educate offenders on why such views are unacceptable. Hopefully, he can learn and change over time.
Art Chick
Several new types of crypto personalities emerged this year, including the first wave of NFT influencers. Few would argue that some of the most popular NFT thought leaders aren’t as mature as their DeFi peers, and it’s easy to see many entered crypto this year hoping to profit from the boom. Perhaps the most insufferable among them is Art Chick—a pseudonymous collector who claims native status in crypto and grew wealthy through correct picks of a few JPEGs. Art Chick enjoys using anonymity to their advantage. In the past, they’ve allegedly blackmailed projects for handouts, and some suspect they may actually be an obnoxious male boomer rather than the young, trendy female art lover they portray. Aside from Dogecoin, perhaps no market attracted more newcomers to crypto this year than NFTs, allowing influencers like Art Chick to exploit vulnerable investors. They’ve been accused of delaying projects, though rapid NFT shifts often mean impressions don’t last. Hopefully, we’ll hear less about Art Chick in 2022—though that may require the NFT space to cool down first.
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