Just a day after reporting the death of Zerebro founder Jeffy Yu, he was found alive in his parents’ home. The investigation kicked off after wallets known to belong to Yi continued selling tokens despite the published obituary.
The founder of Zerebro and meme token creator Jeffy Yu is alive and well. He was doxed and discovered in his parents’ home, following an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle. Search for Yu commenced after doubts were raised about his death, and his wallets kept swapping tokens in the past day.
‘I’ve been doxxed. I’ve been harassed. If you can find me, other people can find me,” Yu said to The Chronicle. ‘Now I have to move my parents out of here this week.’
Yu confused meme token degens, after seemingly taking his own life on a Pump.fun livestream, another shock-value attempt at fame and pumpkin a token. Yu had just launched a new token, LLJEFFY, which then entered a period of volatility. After the livestream, on-chain investigators connected the current LLJEFFY creator wallets to previously owned addresses, that used the confusion to dump ZEREBRO.
The gruesome stunt repeats a previous incident where a trader really died during livestream, prompting Pump.fun to remove the feature for months. This time, Yu’s stunt and token selling angered the meme community even more, while actively dumping on the market. Estimates see Yu liquidating up to $1.4M of his assets.
On May 6, LLJEFFY started out at $0.001, rising as high as $0.31 before crashing. Following the scandal and the doxing, LLJEFFY fell back to $0.01.
ZEREBRO traded at $0.04, close to its lower range. Following the faked death scandal, the @zerebro0x account was suspended. ZEREBRO was a former star among AI tokens, inviting inflows at the end of 2024 and in early 2025.
Jeffy Yu crosses the boundary of crypto influencing
While volatile, the projects of Jeffy Yu fit into the overall ethos of hot meme and AI agent markets. The crypto community considered Yu one of the top influencers and content producers.
https://x.com/moneypolyx/status/1920794345931719150
AI agent and meme token stunts are not unknown in crypto space, ranging from harmless fun to fake charity or outright rug pulls.
By industry standards, Yu’s rug pull is relatively small, though it happened at a time where meme tokens lost some of their irrational hype. LLJEFFY rallied up to a valuation of $30M at its peak, relatively low compared to the first wave of the meme market.
As a paradox, LLJEFFY did not go to zero, but turned into a community token. Unlike rug pulls, the online fame of Yu means the community may not forget the rug pull attempt and the lies so quickly. The new community sent out a message the asset would continue, as a legacy to Yu’s fake story.
https://x.com/JeffyYuOG/status/1920864564423655897
Despite the market cap losses, Yu mostly earned from ZEREBRO sales, and posted losses on LLJEFFY. On-chain data showed Yu actually bought some of the token’s supply and sent it to a burn address.
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