I want to tell you a story, just a life snippet that may or may not help you by showing you what it means to DYOR. We say it a million times in the space, but it is still so rarely practiced, sadly. With that said, let’s get into it.
It all started with a simple message from a friend, if you must know, on the 25th of January 2024. He’s quite a well-known and trusted investor and an OG part of the community.
So, at 7:25 in the morning (my time), he asked if I was still planning on using Ape Terminal as a launchpad for one of the projects I was advising. They did reach out to us earlier but wanted exclusivity, so I was hesitant and more inclined to go with more respected and trusted partners since they didn’t mind working together, but that’s not the point. My friend suggested I pay some attention to this FUD about them recently.
We also discuss FUD a lot in the space: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It was the famous number 4 of the founder of Binance, CZ, before he had to plead guilty to a list of legal issues and stepped down. Oftentimes, people spread rumors about projects, and sometimes, they turn out to be true. FUD is not always warranted, not always false.
So, my friend sent over two things:
This link to an article from Telegra.ph by “Unknown”:
He also sent a tweet by MacnBTC:
FUD from an unknown source and a tweet from MacnBTC
What do I do with FUD from an unknown source and a tweet from MacnBTC, the supposed founder of $SAVM, saying that Ape Terminal took all the winnings meant for his investors? Well, first, I think this could be legit, like it may not be, but no matter what, it deserves to be looked into. So, I contacted Philip Cripe, a crazy Franco-American I met at Edcon while in Montenegro for Zuzalu.
Philip occasionally enjoys checking the explorer to verify point by point that people are telling the truth. He ran for office in France and received death threats from almost all political parties there because he was against corruption. He also left Ukraine because he saw the invasion coming in November, 4 months before it happened. Pretty good analysis, integrity, and a tech background. I sent Philip the links and asked him if he could quickly investigate this. He said, “Yeah,” and jumped into Etherscan to verify what was said in the article.
An important point about doing your research: DYOR doesn’t mean you shouldn’t involve people you trust to get the answers you need to be certain about. In this space, you must know for certain if a service provider you may use is a fraud.
Philip pointed out that the distribution mechanism does have one transaction coming in and then distributing to ten wallets, not 100, just like the TeleGra.ph article said. He also dived deeper and saw that those wallets did not disperse the SAVM any further, just in case the FUD was not legitimate. As none of the methods used to send the winnings are public, he thought maybe they had sent them down to ten wallets each. They had not. The official narrative from SAVM and Ape Terminal about 100 winning wallets was untrue.
Philip also pointed out that he found no explanation in the Telegra.ph article about how they saw funds from the winning wallets here get to wallets tied to the team at Ape Terminal even though they adamantly claimed they could prove it.
Then, Cryptopolitan came out with this article by Jai Hamid:
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/ape-terminals-insider-trading-saga/
Here is the TL;DR, also known as Too Long, Didn’t Read version:
“The crux of the controversy lies in allegations made by MacnBTC, claiming that Ape Terminal orchestrated a deceptive maneuver by awarding all winning positions in several Initial Dex Offerings (IDOs) to its team members, coupled with an accusation of misappropriating a 25% fee from these transactions. In a swift rebuttal, Ape Terminal countered these allegations, shifting the blame onto MacnBTC, accusing him of exploiting the community for personal gain and manipulating the SAVM token sales to his advantage.”
So, they sent funds to ten wallets instead of 100. What’s the big deal?
At the minimum – the proven fact of a lie. Which in itself never leads to any good. So, I felt that I was onto something and continued with ever-growing excitement.
If they will lie about something publicly available, what else have they lied about?
Philip and I were not ready to leave this alone.
So, we decided to look into who was behind that suddenly hyped Ape Terminal that came out of nowhere. The first Twitter post by the Ape Terminal was on 30th November 2023, to be exact, which is very recent. But the biggest surprise lay ahead:
Is it my “dear old friend” Hatu? Yes, himself. Good as new. Kicked out of DAO Maker, he made his own “with blackjack and girls with low social responsibility” (с) Bender B. Rodriguez.
DAO Maker’s Response to the Controversy
This led us to see what DAO Maker had to say:
Sure, it’s a very corporate way to show no ties. They do not explain whether they had a bad experience with Hatu Sheikh that led to severing ties. This would look poorly on them if they didn’t kick him out and publicly say why if he was doing something nefarious, all of their previous clients would start suspicions about them. But we will never know the full story here, so I decided to move on until someone else speaks out (please reach out to Cryptopolitan if you have anything to add; we respect anonymity).
It doesn’t seem like there is much of a team at Ape Terminal, more like a one-man show that brings in developers from outsourcing companies to build specific parts, so none of them could blow an alarm whistle even if something were happening.
The other interesting thing about Ape Terminal is that instead of winners being public, the wallet addresses are not published, making it easier to hide cheating, ill-gotten gains, or other dishonest practices. And this red flag is a proud selling point for the Ape Terminal! Hatu doesn’t even realize how dishonest this practice looks right away.
Then, Hatu tried to prove he had nothing to do with the winning wallets:
This response makes little sense. Wallets can exchange funds without operating on a centralized exchange, such as Binance. Hatu could easily send funds from one wallet to another on a separate decentralized exchange, a mixer, or a direct wallet-to-wallet transaction. And this conversation with support can also be faked. It is not verifiable by anyone outside of Hatu himself.
Hatu’s use of this as proof that he never received winning funds…is a joke. Or more of an insult to our intelligence. He does not know how wallets and blockchains work, or he is misleading. Either way, this is a red flag, not an explanation. This also shows that his last name is not Sheikh but S**dSh**h. So, he is not fully public about his legal identity, another potential red flag. Many people are not doxxed in crypto, so don’t share their legal names. This can mean they are scammers who are worried about legal consequences or other trouble or that they are worried that hackers and scammers may target them if they are successful in this space.
Ape Terminal also responded on X:
So Hatu Sheikh blames his client for EVERYTHING in the first Ape Terminal response.
He says MacnBTC is a KOL, a “key opinion leader” who abused his community to make millions.
He says Ape gave all the money from the fees over (without proof, but Ape will confirm this later).
Shares “proof” that Mac stole funds. Let’s check this out.
The Lookonchain and rug.ai links claim SAVM dumped tokens, show transactions on Etherscan and prove it.
What we know so far on the 26th of January
- Ape Terminal lied about the number of winners to participants.
- Ape Terminal claims they outsourced the IDO, Initial Dex Offering, and the developers exploited it. It is unlikely that the developers exploited it, but it is likely that all the work has always been outsourced at Ape Terminal.
- Ape Terminal and many others claim MacnBTC and the SAVM team immediately dumped tokens, making millions and abusing their fans.
- Ape Terminal does not publish winners, giving more options to do dishonest things.
- Ape Terminal wants to be the only launchpad for launches in which it participates. A potential fear of being caught doing something dishonest by another launchpad?
- Hassan “Hatu” Sheikh founded Ape Terminal.
Suddenly, Mac and Ape Terminal release updates in sync on the 27th:
Mac claims that Ape Terminal did not lie; the FUD was started by an Ape Terminal competitor (what Ape Terminal claimed before, without proof). The devs exploited the IDO (what Ape Terminal claimed before without proof). His emotions made him confused. He also claims the ten winners are because the ticket size was 10k instead of 1k, so 10 winners instead of 100. This all seems unlikely, but Ape Terminal released a statement around the same time with the same story:
Ape Terminal suddenly claims that Mac was not the founder of SAVM or had anything to do with sniping or rugging it. Ape Terminal takes everything back. Even though they shared such “tangible” on-chain proof. Some people said this was a lie to keep the business going. Everything up to now, included, is all about keeping business going for both of them because both parties cite proof without sharing any!
Bubblemaps got involved and summed it up well:
Then Mac blocked Sophia. As any non-scammer would do, right? Can’t have people calling you out.
In the end, the two, Mac and Hatu, who pointed out each other’s lack of moral fiber, put their differences aside to concentrate on a common foe, the “developers” who supposedly caused this all, with no proof of that ever happening and no proof that exonerates either of them from what they accused each other of just 2 days before.
This current situation they’ve created makes them either the worst scammers I have ever seen or the best scammers I have ever seen. Because they claim some unnamed unverifiable forces caused all of their problems and will fight them together. And there is no way to prove or disprove such a claim. It becomes a faith-based issue. Either you believe them, or you don’t.
In this space that needs maturity, we need everyone to do their research and to shun this kind of dishonesty. With regulations catching up, scammers like this won’t survive, so they throw last-ditch efforts to make as much money as possible. And they just do it again every time they get away with it.
