NBA basketball superstar “The Beast” Dwight Howard, who is highly popular among Taiwanese people, has been accused by online detective ZachXBT of being involved in a RugPull event related to his Ballers NFT project token “$BALL,” resulting in losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars for investors.
Table of Contents:
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The $BALL Token Rug Pull
What Went Wrong with $BALL?
AVA Labs Distances Itself
Poor Sales for Ballers NFT
AVA Labs’ Successful Prediction
Dwight Howard, also known as “The Beast,” has been a fan favorite in Taiwan since joining the T1 League’s Taoyuan Yongfeng Clouded Leopards at the end of 2022, and he continues to be loved by Taiwanese people.
However, according to ZachXBT’s tweet, it appears that “The Beast” was involved in planning a Rug Pull in the cryptocurrency field, causing a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity.
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Data shows that the official NFT project of “The Beast,” called “Ballers,” saw its ecosystem token $BALL plummet 99% within 6 hours on the 29th, leading to strong community condemnation.
Meanwhile, the Ballers NFT Twitter account @BallersAVAX was immediately deleted.
Some users suggested that “The Beast’s” Twitter account might have been hacked and used to spread information about fraudulent tokens. However, “The Beast” has continued to post tweets since the launch of Ballers NFT and the release of the $BALL token contract, indicating that he still owns the account.
User Bravenoob21 tweeted pointing out various issues and risks with the sale of $BALL tokens, which are listed below.
– The contract is too simple and lacks fair purchasing measures, such as anti-sniper and maximum purchase limits.
– Snipers conducted sniper attacks during the token sale and sold in batches within the following hours, including the team selling and making a profit of about $40,000.
– The address with the highest profit and the 4th-ranked address are the same entity, and the 2nd and 5th-ranked addresses are also the same entity, pointing to deleted accounts.
– @shawnzyxrp has over 500 addresses and sent funds to the final 1 to 3 entities.
Jake Cvengro, the Business Development Lead at Avalanche’s development team AVA Labs, emphasized that they have no connection to the project.
As Zach mentioned, he tagged our name to make it more credible. I reached out via Telegram to someone who appeared to be part of the team to confirm if this was a legitimate project or a scam. However, before we could have a conversation, he tweeted claiming that the project had AVAX’s support.
However, this statement has been questioned as an attempt to shift blame. It is believed that Avalanche’s founder publicly welcomed “The Beast” to the Avax ecosystem and never reviewed “The Beast” or his project, expressed condemnation for the Rug Pull event, or contacted law enforcement to investigate the incident.
A few weeks ago, “The Beast” revealed news about launching a total of 3,000 “Ballers” series NFTs on the Avalanche network, sparking community discussions.
Reportedly, due to skepticism about the potential collectible value of the NFT, despite each NFT being minted for 2 AVAX (approximately $60 at the time), less than 10% of the series was sold on that day.
To attract buyers, “The Beast” also promised to send 10 AVAX (approximately $300 at the time) to 10 holders for every 100 NFTs minted. Furthermore, it was revealed that “The Beast” would airdrop the ecosystem token “$BALL” to all Baller NFT holders.
However, as of today, only 490 Baller NFTs have been minted, which is approximately 16.3% of the supply. In addition, the floor price of the NFT has dropped to 0.5 AVAX, significantly lower than its initial minting price, indicating that the sales strategy did not succeed.
As community discussions grew, Jake Cvengro publicly stated at the time that AVA Labs had no affiliation with “The Beast’s” Ballers NFT issuance plan and kept a distance from it.
He speculated that the NFT project was proposed by a member of “The Beast’s” team:
We at Ava Labs were not involved in this project, and we only found out about it when his first tweet came out.
He reminded the community that the days when individuals or brands with a large fan base could easily launch official brand NFTs are gone, and expecting it to be successful is unrealistic.
Ava Labs
AVAX
Dwight Howard
Jake Cvengro
“The Beast”
Further Reading
Avalanche Partners with AWS, AVAX Rises 30%! CEO: It’s a Real Collaboration, No Money Involved
Avalanche Mainnet Activates Banff Upgrade, Supports Avalanche Subnet Validators to Stake Subnet Tokens