I just finished reading the entire story of ZachXBT, and honestly it’s pretty surreal. The guy who built a career exposing scammers—whose research was cited by the UN Security Council—ends up tangled in his own memecoin controversy. The irony is just too much.

This is how it happened: not long ago, some anonymous creators launched a memecoin with his name, apparently as a “reward” for his work. ZachXBT withdrew liquidity on January 21, and the community exploded, accusing him of orchestrating a scam. But here’s the important detail—the token was an unsolicited gift from the start, not something he promoted.

Technically, what he did was add single-sided liquidity to a Solana pool, accumulated commissions in SOL, and then withdrew approximately 16,348 SOL (valuado en unos 4.3 millones). He redeposited 96 million tokens into the pool. It’s not exactly a classic scam where devs disappear with everything.

What caught my attention was his response when someone commented on the Trump token skyrocketing. ZachXBT replied with clear frustration, saying that one of his biggest disappointments was not having prioritized making money. That explains a lot of the context here.

Other researchers like SomaXBT came out in his defense, arguing that ZachXBT simply took profits from tokens they gifted him using his name without his consent. It’s a valid point. But some still speculate that he created the token himself, which ZachXBT clearly denies.

What’s interesting is that this isn’t the first time crypto figures receive these “token gifts.” Vitalik Buterin constantly receives token donations to his public wallet, and he’s said he redirects them to charity. But in ZachXBT’s case, the situation was more complicated because his reputation is directly tied to investigating fraud.

Some people wonder if this could be the start of his retirement. But ZachXBT is still active—on January 23 he shared videos exposing scammers, and on the 24th he was on Telegram warning new users about hackers attacking X accounts to promote fraudulent tokens. It seems he’s continuing his work.

What became clear is that ZachXBT, despite years spent exposing fraud, finally decided to monetize something. Maybe it was accumulated frustration, maybe it was a bad decision. But in a space where reputations can collapse in minutes—especially when you’re under constant scrutiny from the industry—it’s understandable that someone might eventually make a misstep. Scammers will always try to tarnish your reputation as revenge, as Mikko Ohtamaa said. The question is whether this situation truly defines ZachXBT, or if it was just a moment of weakness in a career dedicated to crypto security.