Logan Paul battled through personal demons once his mental health took a nose dive amid a controversial crypto-based game he launched that eventually led to lawsuits and accusations that he defrauded users out of millions of dollars.
CryptoZoo, a game the social influencer turned WWE superstar infamously backed and advertised which allowed users to buy “egg NFTs” that Paul claimed would hatch and “earn you money,” ended up as one of the worst mistakes of Paul’s career. A deep dive investigation by popular YouTuber Coffeezilla revealed numerous problems with the game and a class-action lawsuit was subsequently filed by users against Paul and his partners.
That put Paul in a difficult spot as he tried to explain what went wrong, but that didn’t pay back fans who invested in the game. Paul ended up in a dangerous headspace as a result.
“It was the scam allegations,” Paul told Graham Bensinger on his YouTube channel. “The pit of despair I was in over Christmas time was caused by a YouTuber accusing me of scamming.”
Paul told a story about how he flew to Denmark to meet then girlfriend Nina Agdal’s family in December 2022, but the trip ended abruptly due to struggles with his mental health.
“I had a bit of a mental breakdown one night and I was in a pretty dark spot,” Paul said. “For the first time in my life, I was having suicidal thoughts.
“I’ll never kill myself, ever, but the fact that my brain got to that spot and I’m imaginative and I can see things pretty vividly in my head — ut’s why I like creating videos, I can see the final product before I put it on the screen. I was seeing some dark f****** s****. Some dark s***. I was spiraling. I’m just crying, sobbing.”
Agdal, who is now engaged to be married to Paul, did her best to pull him back from the edge. Paul said what ultimately helped him come out of his downward spiral was taking some of the anti-anxiety medication she was previously prescribed.
Paul admits it was an incredibly difficult situation, especially given the public persona he’s cultivated after becoming famous by making comedic videos on Vine and then YouTube.
“I felt weak, which is uncommon for me,” Paul said. “I’m supposed to be the leader. [I know I’m human] but I feel like I have a responsibility to be tough.”
When the investigation into his crypto game was first released, Paul lashed out at the creator behind the video, but he eventually figured out that he was the person in the wrong.
It left him in a vulnerable position, because Paul claims he trusted his longtime manager to help hire the right people to create the crypto game that ended up nearly destroying his reputation.
“I’m seeing this, I know me, I’m not a scammer,” Paul said. “I would never scam anyone. A, I don’t have to, and also, B, I’m hyper-cognizant that I’m only in the position that I’m in because of my fans.
“I made this game with the purest of intentions, but the people that we put in place to create it — this guy named Eddie [Ibanez] and an advisor we had named Jake [Greenbaum] — both turned out to be lying scumbags.”
Back in January, Paul announced a buyback program that he funded to help return money to those people who invested in the failed CryptoZoo game. At the same time, Paul filed a lawsuit against those former business partners he accused of “fraud and deceit.”
Following all of Paul’s revelations in Bensinger’s recent interview, Paul actually blasted Bensinger, claiming that Bensinger’s documentary was pitched to him as a project that was going to land on Apple TV, but the whole thing ended up on YouTube instead.
“I gave you everything I have,” Paul said when speaking to Bensinger on TMZ. “I opened up to you, I was vulnerable. I let you into my house on Christmas because I thought the show would go to Apple, but instead you plastered it on your personal YouTube channel after five months of filming.”
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