From $60M failure to crypto ‘scam cop’: The reinvention of 0xSisyphus

In any other industry, the leader of a $60 million fraud would likely not be given a platform from which to lecture the public on dishonesty. In crypto, however, that type of experience commonly qualifies candidates for jobs as scam cops.

Pseudonymous trader 0xSisyphus, whose AnubisDAO ended in catastrophic failure, losing roughly 13,556 ETH, then worth about $60 million, has rebuilt a 153,000-follower platform on X as a blockchain cop.

Fortunately — for 0xSisyphus, at least — younger members of Crypto Twitter (CT) have never heard about Anubis.

Read more: The rise of the crypto influencer and the fall of truth

In October 2023, anonymous investigator NFT Ethics claimed that OpenSea’s ex-Head of Ventures, Kevin Pawlak, was behind the account.

In a thread on X, NFT Ethics alleged that Pawlak ran “various very dubious business dealings” including “pump & dump schemes” through that pseudonym, including trying to unload a stake in his failing AnubisDAO onto Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research.

At the time, the immensely popular NFT marketplace OpenSea said it was unaware of any such activities involving Pawlak and, anyway, described his role as non-managerial. 

Maybe not theft, but negligence and lying

ZachXBT, the most prominent on-chain investigator in crypto, disagreed with parts of the NFT Ethics thread.

Although he blamed 0xSisyphus for “gross negligence” and “lying,” he stopped short of naming him as Pawlak, or claiming that he actually stole money from AnubisDAO.

Whether or not 0xSisyphus stole money, his reputation of mismanaging a deca-million dollar, dog-themed crypto failure precedes him.

Unfortunately, after almost five years, memories of that episode have faded from CT. Victims were never able to recover their funds from AnubisDAO, yet no one went to prison for theft.

Instead, 0xSisyphus has spent those years reinventing himself as a self-appointed referee of other people’s behavior. Benefiting from the engagement, he’s used his following to promote a variety of other digital assets.

The arc is the genre, not the exception

Sadly, the character arc of the unpunished rugger-turned-social media cop isn’t unique to 0xSisyphus. Many of the key opinion leaders on CT have dusted their prior grifts under the rug while continuing to earn engagement for calling out others’ misbehavior.

Worse, the scam-cop posture is itself the rehabilitation tool. A few days ago, 0xSisyphus was calling out a $19,000 rug-pull while victims of his Anubis project deal with permanent losses worth millions.

On CT, a market commentator who mismanaged a $60 million failure becomes the only person left to call out $19,000 rug-pulls.

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