Spunky’s Causes and Effects

Last week, a well known Youtuber from South Korea who goes by ‘Spunky’ was attacked in his condo complex elevator by two individuals with hammers. Spunky appears to be stable, but remained at the hospital over the weekend to help mend his wounds. For the sake of himself and his family, hopefully he makes a speedy recovery.

Spunky’s public niche is as an enthusiastic self-proclaimed influencer for the cryptocurrency trading community in Korea. He introduces crypto projects and the coins or tokens from foreign companies to the Korean market which serves to his strengths since he is bilingual in Korean and English, giving him a distinct advantage over most.

Likely unbeknown to foreign projects until last week is that despite his high subscription rate, he has a fervent following of haters. Most of his haters are people who have taken his advice and lost. Spunky’s is a story that all Internet shills should be paying close attention to as it lays out fairly plainly what happens when someone offers investment opportunities that only benefit themselves. With that, it should be noted that the attack on Spunky, who also goes by Bitgosu, and the circumstances leading to it are all the unfortunate result of many factors finally coming to a head last Thursday.

Spunky boasts the highest number of Youtube subscribers among Korean crypto-related Youtubers, nearly 59 thousand, and maintains a strong presence across other social media platforms. Those high numbers have allowed him to expand his marketing and consultation firm; but without going much further into, it isn’t hard to buy clicks.

His apparent zeal comes across clearly in his broadcasts and at meetups where he advises Korean traders and investors to take up positions on various projects. That advice, however, is where he has routinely run into trouble.

In the second quarter of 2019, Orbs (ORBS) was listed on Upbit crypto exchange. That listing came with the fanfare typical for a listing, but was underscored by the fact that they had landed a major sponsorship from Kakao’s GroundX project. It was further underscored by Spunky, who seemed particularly interested in promoting Orbs. As it turned out, he was being paid to shill the token and to urge viewers to take larger and larger positions in it despite the fact that its value never saw a significant upswing.

He hosted meetups, did interviews, and repeatedly promoted the project on his Youtube channel in March and April. Coinpan (코인판) is Korea’s largest online forum for crypto conversations. There a post from April 3rd, the day after ORBS was listed, reveals a trader who already distrusted Spunky by saying, “[Spunky’s ants funding Upbit’s wash trading on Orbs]”.

Meanwhile, there were other investors who still trusted Spunky on April 9th after ORBS had fallen to its floor at the time.

On the 19th of April, Bitgosu’s Youtube channel uploaded a video proclaiming that ‘Orbs is in the process of improving their price’. The price per coin on the 19th reached 930sats on the top wick, and was the highest price per coin that it has been to date, excluding the day it was listed. ORBS now hovers around 70sats. This means that everyone who bought Orbs on Spunky’s advice were down from that day on.

While ORBS has not been the only coin he has promoted that dumped, it is the most recent. In early 2018, he was fielding grievances from his audience about pushing ADA which had become one of the biggest and most sudden losers after the 2017 bull market.

It may be fair to say that much of what Spunky promotes on his channel is based on his own analysis. Any Internet crypto shill has a right to share flawed analysis if it is flawed, and to benefit from an upswing in popularity when they make good picks. This includes Spunky.

Furthermore, anyone who takes investment tips from strangers on the Internet is in no position to be complaining about negative results. The phrase ‘DYOR’ or Do Your Own Research resounds widely across social media from responsible original posters who want to share their ideas but don’t want to take the credit for an individual’s choices whether they bear positive or negative fruits; they just want to share their ideas and hope individuals can find some value in them.

The distinction between ‘Internet stranger’ and ‘trusted source’ becomes quite blurry, however, when one touts him or herself as a dependable voice for years in a market with myriad fraudsters, but takes kickbacks from the companies they promote. For example, when it became public that John McAfee was accepting exorbitant amounts for his tweets, his credibility evaporated.

The situation that Spunky (스펑키), whose other moniker is Scamky (스캠키), is facing now stems from his intentional blurring of lines within the Korean crypto community. Many feel that he exploited the community by masquerading as an ant himself whose portfolio was down very badly through the bear market, when in reality he was living rather comfortably.

The acid comments on Coinpan are evidence enough of the disappointment Spunky has raked up for his work. Some samples include “[reap what you sow]”, “[The more wicked thing is that they cleverly pretend to think of subscribers and encourage them to buy and bite them, and they are comforted]”, and “[this is the best news of the new year]“. Assuredly the comments go on in such a fashion and range much more violently.

It should be revisited that what happened to Spunky is unfortunate, and hopefully he makes a speedy recovery. The assailants should be brought to justice if they can be, although there is word that one suspect may already have fled to Australia.

The sentiment is echoed from Kevin Hyunsoo Kim, an active member in TheNews.Asia community who commented, “(It’s) definitely wrong to hurt the guy and I would never do something like that myself. However, I have little to no pity.”

One can draw a cause-effect relationship between Bitgosu’s Youtube channel and the events from last week. People feel defrauded by someone they felt they could/should trust. As a sidenote, the choice of word between should and could is quite hard to make due to cultural mores regarding social hierachies in South Korea and a number of other factors, so you may make your own decision about how that last sentence is read.

Moving forward, all of the people considering themselves influencers in the crypto space should take note of the potentially serious harm they may be inflicting on others with their advice. The sense of responsibility some people take lacks common sense and in some ways begs the audience to retaliate.

Another commenter on Coinpan wraps it up best when they say, “[I want to say that it’s a pity what happened. Some people say that investors are idiots, but shouldn’t scams be stopped anyway?]”

“[With this incident, I don’t know how anyone can hide in the blindspot of the law and continue to buy scam coins. Additionally, it’s not intelligent to incite viewers to buy a coin, dump on them, and then pretend to worry about them in the end.]”

“[I want there to be a police investigation about (Spunky’s) attack and to awaken other Youtubers who are attempting to dump their bad scam coins on other ants.]”