Siqi's Zero Coin Reimbursement

Siqi Chen shares a story about how he made amends after a cryptocurrency controversy.

"After the Zero coin incident, I realized within a minute that I had made a mistake. I immediately bought back into the coin and burned it all, so I was neutral. But because of the anonymity of crypto, people thought I had a hundred other wallets where I had pumped and dumped for profit, and I couldn't prove otherwise.

I decided this was really shitty and I didn't want any part of it. So I got help from a friend who used to work for Coinbase and some other people who didn't want to be named to do on-chain analysis.

I set up a plan to pay everyone back who lost money, out of my own pocket, without touching the charity wallet. We identified everyone who held coins in the first two hundred seconds and then sold at a loss before the market cap fully recovered 43 minutes later. I airdropped them compensation, which ended up being about $140-150,000 out of my own pocket.

This has never happened on any pump and dump coin before, but maybe only 10% of people heard about it. I tweeted about it and had to keep responding because for the next month, someone would say, 'Oh you're a scammer, what are you still doing here?' and I had to say, 'No, I paid everyone back.' They would just not say anything after that."