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The Blue Kirby Twitter account, a briefly popular member of the Ethereum community, has vanished after pulling in $1 million from the YFI token and other decentralized finance (DeFi) enterprises.
As documented by Anthony Sassano, co-founder of EthHub, in his newsletter, Blue Kirby went from zero to hero in just a few months—building up a substantial Twitter following. His rise to prominence came on the back of a DeFi token that skyrocketed in value. And yet, after a mishap that lost a bunch of people millions of dollars in tokens, the tide of popularity turned against him, and he promptly disappeared.
Here’s how it all began.
He used memes and a perpetually bullish attitude to promote a rising DeFi token called YFI. The token was one of the first to popularize a concept known as yield farming—where token holders are rewarded for providing liquidity. As the token’s price went from being worthless (which it was always designed to be), to becoming worth tens of thousands of dollars, it made many DeFi pundits rich.
As YFI’s price rose, Blue Kirby became somewhat influential. The founder of yEarn—YFI’s native platform—Andre Cronje spotted their efforts and donated $400,000 of YFI to the pseudonymous figure. But then it all went wrong.
Blue Kirby’s downfall
On September 28, Cronje started testing a project called Eminence on the blockchain, rather than doing it on a testnet. The project was designed to provide an economy for the gaming industry. But Blue Kirby reportedly promoted it while it was being tested, encouraging others to invest. The project was then hacked a day later, with the hacker taking $15 million in the attack (before returning half). This turn of events caused Blue Kirby to suffer a major blow to his reputation in the Ethereum community.
Yet, the Eminence saga was not the only fall from grace for Blue Kirby, who was also selling NFTs. Off Blue, an NFT launched by Blue Kirby, fell victim to rumours the proceeds were going to Blue Kirby himself. Eventually, Rarible, an NFT marketplace, suspended Off Blue from its platform, adding fuel to the fire.
Eventually, Blue Kirby’s pseudonymous identity was discovered by an aggrieved party. With the backlash in full swing, Blue Kirby now had to worry about his own personal reputation.
Soon enough, on October 4, Blue Kirby left the Ethereum community entirely. After deleting his Twitter account, he left with approximately $1 million, which Sassano estimates came from selling YFI tokens, and keeping Ethereum proceeds from NFT sales and Off-Blue sales.
At the time of writing, there is no knowing whether Blue Kirby will return to the community. For some, too much damage has been done for that to be a real possibility.
“I highly doubt it. There are some things you can come back from but it doesn’t seem like this will be one of them,” said Sassano, adding that “even if what Blue Kirby did was an honest mistake and even if they originally had good intentions, they have probably hurt too many people and broken too much trust to be welcomed back with open arms.”
It turns out the crypto community is an unforgiving one.