Defamation and Coordination: Substratums Ugly Secret
Most projects have a team of developers with their heads down working, little to no marketing, constantly checking code and fixing bugs. They are exploring the possibilities of one of the greatest gifts ever anonymously bestowed upon the world, the blockchain. With some coins however, if you look close enough…you can start to see the frayed edges of an underlying problem and a coordinated effort to defame other projects. Substratum produces nothing. No development, only opportunism, right up until the point that it gets delisted from the world’s largest exchange. Only to then throw your armchair CEO hands up and claim ignorance of the issue, shirking all accountability. Substratum has imploded in recent weeks, some in their community have been forthcoming with identifying a few of the primary individuals responsible in not only tarnishing competing projects names, but destabilizing and blurring the image of crypto in general.
Admins of Substratums telegram room @JustinTabb and @bwolf707 (aka “Jared Dunn”, aka 707bwolf707) have been shown to be involved in gleefully attacking similar projects as well as price predictions in closed rooms. Before it was delisted from Binance, this vaporware ponzi slowly siphoned off any percentage of the market share they could in a brazen attempt to pump their undeveloped project, then dump their shares on unsuspecting investors. Many have lost thousands on Substratum and it seems clear that this kind of behavior has run rampant as of late.
Evidence of this can be followed through the links below:
https://imgur.com/a/LTrZjDs
https://www.reddit.com/user/707bwolf707
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ot8hQtFwW7MJ
https://reactcrypto.net/justin-tabb-clears-up-substratum-shortcomings/
TL;DR,
Jared Dunn was the handle of a competing cryptocurrencies Telegram admin (upon closer inspection, he appears to have only briefly changed it in a tongue and cheek reference to the show “Silicon Valley”). BWolf707 took it upon himself to mimic the account and create several coordinated FUD threads containing misinformation such as insider trading rooms, pump and dump schemes, selectively edited audio clips and outright lies. Taking a criminal situation that a competitor was victim to, and using it as a springboard for their smear job.
These threads were then boosted by reddit manipulation and subsequently referenced in several other articles, which in turn was regurgitated in even more articles. This points towards a larger problem in the crypto space, our willingness to believe hastily crafted narratives with millions of dollars of market share at stake and shines a light on a few corrupt denizens of the crypto journalist community. While these campaigns can be countered by constantly asking moderators to take down slanderous accusations and facing FUD head on with honesty and transparency, an unwarranted tarnished reputation can still mean real harm and financial loss for supporters and investors. It brings aboard questions on the validity and objectivity of numerous top 100 coins. Suspicious deaths, hacks, exchanges shutting down, CSW meltdowns, forking battles, FUD campaigns, it’s tough for a new investor to take in. And that’s what the whole market needs, new investors and supporters.
As an overall crypto community, it is up to us to to police this activity and work together to create a more free and decentralized world.
