Were influencers paid in Bitcoin to promote Chainlink?

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According to several well-known Twitterers, they were contacted in the past few days to post messages about and analyse Chainlink. As payment, they would each receive 5 Bitcoin (!). Mind you, they were asked to be especially negative about Chainlink, a small altcoin that went up like a rocket in the last few months. It seems like a somewhat strange story to us, but since it all happened in the last 24 hours, we’ll tell it anyway.

Scott Melker

DJ and musician Scott Melker, who tweets under the nickname The Wolf of All Streets brought the news a few hours ago, and it has been spreading like wildfire ever since.

Scott, who does guest appearances at Coindesk and Anthony Pompliano, claimed that a firm called Zeus Capital had approached him to post an analysis of Chainlink. As evidence, he posted a screenshot of his conversation with the so-called firm and said he never wanted to make an analysis of a coin in return for payment.

Let me be clear. I would never take money to post something negative. Ever.

Zeus Capital did DM me this morning, but I replied politely (as I do to all DMs) that I had already posted a LINK chart yesterday. The screenshot is below for reference.

Choose facts, not rumors. pic.twitter.com/rMqz5YKMYh

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) July 29, 2020

According to Melker, who has about 110,000 followers on Twitter, he was offered 5 Bitcoin (or $55,000) for the Chainlink analysis.

Since then, other well-known crypto Twitterers are tweeting about a same sort story.

Zeus Capital recently had some attention after publishing a report claiming that LINK was a scam and then promoted strong negative news about Chainlink using Twitter ads. The company claims that users of 4chan (the infamous online forum promoting violence and illegality) had set up a pump and dump scam to raise Chainlink’s price.

It has since called on users to participate in a class action lawsuit against CEO Sergey Nazarov.

Chainlink a scam?

All the posts are about the fact that they think Chainlink is a pure scam.

How to become a $LINK Marine & get free tokens:

1. Make a screenshot of the report https://t.co/pQiTGEIsNb
2. Post “didn’t read never selling”
3. Tag everyone at @chainlink
4. Buy more $LINK with your last savings
5. Hope Sergey’s money to prop the price doesn’t run out
   Oh, wait

— Zeus Capital (@ZeusCapitalLLP) July 30, 2020

Josh Rager, another known crypto influencer, claimed he just ignored the company’s messages. Crypto Twitterer Smokey, who did technical analysis of charts, posted a screenshot of an identical message to his 17,500 followers.

Wtf is going on pic.twitter.com/DSu1i1wvvl

— Smokey (@TraderSmokey) July 29, 2020

The “compensation” to which Zeus refers was posted by another twitterer, called icebergy. It turns out to be 5 Bitcoin (BTC) – about $55,000 at the time of writing. That’s a big sum of money.

According to a response to a screenshot, allegedly from Zeus Capital, the company inquired whether the offer was still valid.

Of course, it is currently unknown how many influencers have accepted Zeus Capital’s offer. Chainlink has not yet responded to the news.