Stephen Findeisen, known online as Coffeezilla, gained popularity in 2022 as a YouTuber who exposes crypto scams. Given that there are no shortage of scams, his channel quickly found an audience, with 4.4 million subscribers as of 2026. The combination of his suspenders and no-nonsense demeanor lends him the credibility of a reformed Gordon Gekko–an insider turned whistleblower who has flipped the script by exposing the industry’s darkest secrets from the inside.
In 2022, he was profiled by The New Yorker as “The YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams.” But that was then. In recent years, especially around 2024, he has pivoted to something of a ‘grievance peddler’, whose angle is to rant and rave about whatever problems he sees with society for his aggrieved and conspiratorial-leaning audience, whether it’s about the gambling industry, consumer debt, and even the Epstein Files. He hardly even investigates crypto scams anymore. In fact, to milk this new formula to the fullest extent, he created a second channel, Voidzilla, which contains shorter and more frequent videos of the same theme.
For 2025, Coffeezilla posted a grand total of eight videos, only two which have anything to do with crypto scams, titled “Stealing $21,000,000 From Melania Trump and MAGA” and “Argentina’s Memecoin Disaster Is Worse Than You Think”. Yet somehow we’re led to believe that he’s a prolific scam investigator, but two videos, in all honesty, is pretty underwhelming and undeserving of this reputation.
As a fraud investigator, even during his 2022-2023 heyday, he was always sorta overrated. As I am fond of saying, he’s always “a day late and a dollar short” by ‘exposing’ scams after they have already run their course or ‘rug pulled’, and the proceeds laundered. Or he overlooks much more pervasive and insidious scams, only focusing on the scams that are obvious, after they have already run their course. In the latter, these are schemes that only gullible or greedy people knowingly invest in, like ‘memecoins’ or dubious celebrity crypto projects.
Coffeezilla gained further fame in 2022 by getting the disgraced (and now incarcerated) former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) to ‘incriminate‘ himself on Findeisen’s livestream. This was chalked up as a huge win for Coffeezilla, except what was overlooked was that he hadn’t actually protected anyone from losing money or done any investigating; FTX had already collapsed by that point. It helped Coffeezilla’s brand, but a lot of good that does when everyone’s money is already gone.
Pre-bankruptcy, he never made any videos warning about FTX, or establishing the link between Binance, SBF, Alameda, and the FTX’s native token, FTT. It was the CEO of Binance selling his large stake in FTT, which in early November 2022 rapidly brought down the exchange. Where was Coffeezilla when we actually needed him most? Or anyone else for that matter? In hindsight, it’s easy to say “we knew it all along,” but no one comes forward.
On December 6th, 2024, his video “exposing the hawk tuah scam” (posted to voidzilla) garnered 6.4 million views. The video gained additional coverage by the broader media, such as BCC, further perpetuating the notion of Coffeezilla being a prolific or intrepid scam investigator. Except the “Hawk Tuah” token had already collapsed by then. It was over in a blink:
For all practical purposes, reporting on a scam is pointless when it’s already over. It’s like the fire department coming after the home has burned down to identify the bodies. Or a surgeon who transplants organs on a dead patient.
An effective whistleblower gathers the pertinent evidence and presents his case to the public or regulators, before it all comes crashing down. This would require a lot of investigative work and time, but given how much money he makes from his channels, he can probably hire people to do this. Yes, it would also open him up to legal risk, but again, this is largely protected under the First Amendment if the evidence is presented without malice. This is the difference between investigating and only reporting.
However, another problem is any warning is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Had Coffeezilla warned about FTX, or some other exchange was fraudulent, his huge popularity would lead to a run on said exchange, precipitating its insolvency. Or if he warned about a certain token being fraudulent before the fact and not after the inevitable ‘rug pull’, the price would still collapse on this information, so investors are no better off; they lose all their money now than later.
So what should Coffeezilla do instead? For one, he should warn users of less obvious scams, such as impersonation scams of Coinbase customer support. These affect savvier investors, who already know to avoid shady celebrity endorsements, but still get fooled by fake/spoofed emails purporting to be from legitimate exchanges. These scams are very common, with users losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. One report showed $400 million losses from a single breach, and $2.2 billion across all exchanges. A single Brooklyn man stole $15 million from Coinbase users.
Other scams involve messages purporting to come from Ledger support, often exploiting past data breaches to appear legitimate. The goal is to trick Ledger users into revealing their cryptographic “seed”–a unique list of 24 words that functions as a sort of ‘master key’ to their funds. Once disclosed, scammers gain full control of the victim’s assets, a risk security researchers and Ledger itself have repeatedly warned about. Bitcoin ATM fraud cost $333 million.
Another common and subtle scam are YouTube giveaway videos purporting to be from a CEO, using sophisticated AI voice dubbing to add to the legitimacy. A particularly common one targets Ripple/XRP users. Other videos include giveaways impersonating Elon Musk or Space-X, which are commonly promoted via YouTube’s recommendations. This scam nets millions of dollars a year too. And yet no videos by Coffeezilla warning of any of the above scams.
He should be calling out YouTube for allowing fraudulent ads and giveaway livestreams, and calling out Coinbase for their shoddy account security, or failure to adequately vet support representatives. But nothing. People don’t need another rant about ‘the gambling industry’ or warned about an overtly-scammy celebrity coin launch (and after the price has crashed to zero, no less). One can argue that online gambling is highly predatory, but there is an element of choice here in terms of people under their own volition choosing to gamble, versus being coerced into sharing one’s credentials under the pretext of security.
People knowingly invest in these celebrity ‘projects’ despite the risks, lured by the expectation of high returns and hoping to sell before it all comes crashing down. Someone who invests in one of Trump’s numerous ‘shitcoins’ doesn’t need to be warned of the risks, as analogous to trading penny stocks, such risk is already assumed.
In conclusion, Mr. Zilla has been much more effective at building his brand or cultivating media coverage as a scam investigator, than actually stopping or preventing crypto fraud. He ignores subtle and or more pervasive fraud. A proactive approach would be more effective than just acting as cleanup crew to a scam that has already run its course.