Summary
Report on blockchain investigator ZachXBT’s leak of a “price sheet” listing 200+ crypto influencers, their quoted rates per promotional post, wallet addresses, and on-chain payment transaction links — all from a single promotion campaign. Less than 5 of 160+ accounts that accepted payment disclosed the posts as paid advertisements, despite legal disclosure requirements in most jurisdictions.
Key Points
- ZachXBT published a spreadsheet of 200+ crypto “KOLs” (Key Opinion Leaders) with payment amounts, wallet addresses, and Solana block explorer links.
- Payments settled on-chain in Solana.
- Top payment: @atitty_ received $60,000 for a single post.
- Range: low three-figures to $60K; most in the thousands.
- Only <5 of 160+ accounts disclosed posts as paid promotion.
- ZachXBT: “Yes, it’s illegal in most jurisdictions but just is rarely enforced.”
- Accounts described as “most recent class of CT [Crypto Twitter] or are just botted accounts.”
- ZachXBT’s critique: non-disclosure, not paid promotion itself.
- Campaign reveals industrialized structure: tier labels, per-post price cards, bundle deals, dedicated payment addresses.
- Total crypto market cap at time of publication: $3.77 trillion.
Newsletter Angles
- The on-chain transparency of the payment sheet is a perfect irony: Solana’s public blockchain made it possible to document and expose the very practices the influencers were concealing. The ledger doesn’t lie even when the influencers do.
- The industrialization of crypto shilling: what looks like grassroots enthusiasm on Crypto Twitter is frequently a coordinated pay-for-post market with tiered pricing, bundle deals, and on-chain settlement.
- Non-disclosure as systemic risk: if retail investors make decisions based on paid promotion they believe is organic, the entire price discovery mechanism for small-cap tokens is corrupted.
Entities Mentioned
- Kian Kordestani — N/A (not mentioned in this source)
Concepts Mentioned
- Tokenomics — paid promotion as a de facto token marketing cost embedded in project economics
- Algorithmic Radicalization — parallel: platform dynamics that reward engagement over disclosure
Quotes
“From 160+ accounts who accepted the deal I only saw <5 accounts actually disclose the promotional posts as an advertisement.”
“Yes it’s illegal in most jurisdictions but just is rarely enforced.”
“60K is not a typo here’s the transaction hash to the KOLs wallet for payment.”
Notes
Source is MEXC (a crypto exchange) republishing Bitcoinist. ZachXBT is a well-regarded blockchain investigator who has exposed numerous crypto frauds; his methodology of citing on-chain evidence is generally reliable. The campaign documented appears to be for a single project; ZachXBT explicitly notes it doesn’t represent the entire industry.