Lark Davis Dismisses ‘Ridiculous’ Pump and Dump Allegations

On-chain sleuth ZachXBT strikes again. This time, he has leveled some serious allegations against popular crypto influencer Lark Davis. The latter, on the other hand, claims that he didn’t do anything wrong.

The pseudonymous detective previously pointed the finger at American YouTuber Logan Paul for promoting several pumps and dump schemes earlier this year. The influencer was accused of milking his followers with NFT projects.

Allegations

Citing eight instances, ZachXBT alleged that Davis promoted low-cap projects before dumping them on unsuspecticommunity membersity. In doing so, he reportedly amassed $1 million.

The first instance dates back to February 2021, when an address linked to Davis received 62,500 UMB tokens right after its promotion. The wallet dumped them almost immediately after the promotion, churning a profit of $136,000. ZachXBT found a similar pattern for DOWS tokens as well, wherein Davis is said to have earned $56,000 after dumping the assets he endorsed just hours earlier.

Since then, Davis has allegedly shilled SHOPX, BMI, PMON, XED, and APY after their launch and offloaded a chunk of the tokens he received for the promotion.

According to ZachXBT, all the crypto projects promoted by Davis had “awful” tokenomics, which is why many of them “went to zero” even before the onslaught of the bear market. He further said it is quite normal for crypto influencers to participate in seed rounds and share projects they genuinely like as long as it is done transparently. However, he blamed Davis for dumping his “discounted launchpad bags right after shills across YT, Twitter, and newsletter.”

“Lark claims he doesn’t get paid but ask yourself what value might he possibly add to these launchpad projects besides shilling it to his followers? His compensation is being able to get large allocations for projects with awful tokenomics that he can dump in a shady manner.”

Lark Davis’ Response

Davis addressed the allegations and said he sold the tokens when they launched, adding that it is a common “investing practice for token sales.” While calling them “ridiculous” allegations that make “zero sense,” the crypto influencer offered explanations for each example ZachXBT had alleged he profited from and said he simply follows the same investment strategy that he teaches.

“I get it, it’s a bear market. Everyone is down. It is easy to attack. But I have done nothing wrong here. I followed my investing strategy which I teach all of you.”

Pump-and-dump schemes have long plagued the space, and celebrities such as Mayweather and Kim Kardashian have found themselves embroiled in lawsuits as a result.

Last month, the dispute between prominent YouTube content creators – Erling Mengshoel (aka Atozy) and Ben Armstrong (aka BitBoy Crypto) took a legal turn after the latter sued Atozy over a video he had created a year ago, accusing him of a pump-and-dump scheme by endorsing a shady project called Pamp network token.

The defamation suit was eventually dropped by BitBoy Crypto after intense backlash.