Fact Checked by 
Coffeezilla, the popular YouTuber and investigator who regularly deep dives into influencer scams, has called out the startup behind the Rabbit R1 as he says it was “built on a scam.”
Stephen Findeisen, who goes by the username Coffeezilla, has over 3.47 million subscribers, and almost 1.5 million tuned in to watch his latest YouTube drop which was published on Tuesday (May 21).
Coffeezilla claims the company behind the AI gadget Rabbit R1, called Rabbit Incorporation, was previously named Cyber Manufacturing Co and says this name change happened just two months before the launch of the handheld assistant.
He says Cyber Manufacture Co raised $6 million in November 2021 for a “Next Generation NFT Project GAMA.”
The CEO of Rabbit Incorporation Jesse Lyu described GAMA as being “a fun little project.”
Coffeezilla, however, has accused the founder and CEO of being a lot more serious about the project than he initially suggested.
Old recordings of Rabbit R1 founder Jesse Lyu surface
The YouTuber found old Clubhouse clips of Jesse Lyu talking about GAMA where he can be heard saying: “I don’t want to make GAMA, and none of us want to make GAMA as a hype and dump program. This is a legit team with millions of dollars of funding behind it. Basically, we’re dumping millions of monies into it just to make sure that it will be a next-level experience.”
The recording continues with the founder talking about the GAMA coin and how it could “become the first not only carbon neutral but actually carbon negative crypto 2.0 or Bitcoin 2.0.”
At this point, Coffeezilla asks his audience: “But where are those millions? When the company changed to Rabbit, where did it go? Did it go to develop Rabbit, a completely different project?”
He alleges that investors of the GAMA project haven’t yet been refunded and he estimates the refunds to be around $1 million.
A pop-up on the screen at the 7-minute mark states that Rabbit Inc claims the $6 million in venture funding raised for the GAMA project was used for that project only.
Rabbit’s response to Coffeezilla after R1 video
When Coffeezilla reached out after asking about the GAMA project and refund possibilities, the team from Rabbit Incorporation replied.
“There is no way to actually ‘refund’ an NFT unless the owner themselves agrees to ‘burn’ the NFTs on the blockchain. Again, we don’t agree with calling the GAMA project “abandoned” when it was open-sourced and given back to the community, in alignment with community feedback.
“This claim from Jesse you mentioned was taken out of context. The situation back then was there was a group of people trying to do malicious wash trading and reselling of their NFTs. To prevent that trend from escalating, Jesse decided to buy back the NFTs from these sellers to maintain the balance and order of the community and market.”
Featured Image: Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash
