In summary
- The Smoking Chicken Fish (SCF) memecoin has ousted its leader, Pastor Kelby, following allegations of fraud and mismanagement of funds.
- The remaining SCF team has taken control of the project’s website and Telegram channel, and is fighting to access the Twitter account.
- Kelby was accused of receiving payments from spin-off projects without notifying the team, receiving donations directly into his personal wallet, and conducting several “rug pulls.”
The absurd memecoin Smoking Chicken Fish (SCF), which evolved from a Solana token into a religion with plans to build a physical church, has ousted its de facto leader amid a flood of “scam artist” accusations. With this, the remaining team has taken back control of the project’s website and Telegram channel, and is currently struggling to access the Twitter account.
Members of the SCF token community and core team claim that Pastor Kelby has received payments from spin-off projects without notifying the rest of the team, received “church donations” directly into his personal wallet, and has performed several “rug pulls.”
Pastor Kelby did not respond to Decrypt’s repeated requests for comment via Telegram or LinkedIn.
Smoking Chicken Fish is a meme Cryptocurrency that started with a strange photo. But things took an unexpected turn when contributors developed their own moral and philosophical laws, becoming a “church” that worshipped “Lord Fishnu” and registered as a non-profit organization. Pastor Kelby preached daily and read passages from his favorite self-help books.
Although there were rumors of not trusting Kelby from the beginning, everything came to a head when he promoted a project during one of the church’s daily sermons.
An hour before the daily sermon, the project’s official Twitter account posted that a meme cryptocurrency called BigTittyChicken (BTC) with a then-$2 million market cap was the project’s “little sister.”
According to a core team member, Kelby apparently stated on the now-deleted Twitter Spaces that he was going to host this project all week, but then didn’t come back. Meraki Crypto, a member of the BigTittyChicken team, also said that this was going to be a “long-term partnership,” but that Kelby didn’t keep his word.
The SCF team claims Kelby used his Twitter account access and association with the church to get paid for this promotion, without consulting anyone else on the project. Meraki said that after being “scammed” by Kelby, they were contacted by “many other” projects that had the same experience.
Pastor Kelby said he did not create the original Pump.fun token behind the meme religion, but was in contact with the creator from the beginning. The original creator held tokens that Kelby would receive as payment for his work on the project.
Unfortunately, SCF’s founder allegedly “went renegade,” Kelby said, selling all the tokens and disappearing from view. Despite having no tokens in his wallet, Kelby continued to promote the project, leading daily Twitter feeds where he spread the gospel of the newly formed religion.
“I thought something would work out in the end and I would end up making money as well,” Pastor Kelby said in August during an episode of Decrypt’s podcast, “What is Meta?”
A wallet address provided by a core team member, who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from Kelby, as well as the BigTittyChicken team received 10 million BTC meme tokens prior to the announcement, and sold everything in three transactions over the next four hours.
“For BigTittyChicken, this was a disaster,” a BigTittyChicken Telegram admin told Decrypt. “Our price plummeted, trust was broken, and we had to scramble to fix our reputation to keep the project alive.”
Community team leader Benji.wif claims to have sent Kelby $9,200 in SCF tokens as payment for his work on the project. According to Blockchain data, the wallet instantly sent these tokens to another wallet, then later resent a larger amount to a third wallet—the same wallet that BigTittyChicken paid.
“He used the main account to ask for donations for the church which were simply sent to his wallet,” Max Newton, co-founder of WallStreetBets and member of the SCF community, told Decrypt.
This is why some followers fear that Kelby, who claimed to have raised $130,000 to build a physical church, has been siphoning off funds from his community while claiming it was for the church. Some believe Kelby was also targeting large holders after sending out a Google Form to investors with a series of questions, including how many tokens they own.
As these events unfolded, a group of community members formed a Discord server to investigate Kelby. It was then that the team found evidence that Kelby may have been involved in a number of other alleged “scams” and “rug pulls” before. After he promoted BigTittyChicken on Twitter Spaces, the group confronted him about his actions.
“You are arrogant and so out of touch with reality to think that a religion THAT I INVENTED AND WROTE THE COMMANDMENTS FOR, over a real life church THAT IS IN MY NAME AND ACTUALLY EXISTS, can be run or built without me there,” Kelby ranted on Twitter.
Kelby then held the official Twitter account for a $100,000 ransom, according to Twitter DMs seen by Decrypt.
The team refused to pay this fee and is currently working with Twitter to regain access. In these screenshots, Kelby also claims to own the trademark for the Smoking Chicken Fish Church, suggesting that any community takeover would have to deviate from that trademark.
Fearing that the religion he had helped form would turn its back on him, Kelby created a new token, referring to it as “the new testament,” and claimed he would hand out tokens to all former SCF holders, before deciding against it just 30 minutes later and burning the tokens instead.
“It’s like my son was taken away from me or something and it’s maddening,” Kelby said in the same lengthy Twitter post. “You know what, I don’t give a fuck, I’ll just re-release shit without YOU!”
His new coin rose to a market cap of $2.6 million within an hour, before falling 97% shortly after. Someone then claimed to have reported Kelby to the SEC following this incident.
And then Kelby’s Twitter account disappeared. It’s unclear if he was banned or if he deleted his account, but the account reappeared two days later with a revised bio stating that he was “once the Pastor of Smoking Chicken Fish Church.” He immediately began promoting new low-market-cap tokens, most notably Leaned Out Chilly Willy.
“He is not a representation of the church, and the community and message is much bigger than any one person,” Benji.wif told Decrypt, adding that he and team member Max Newton will oversee the church from now on.
While Pastor Kelby was the face of the church to many people, Benji claims he was ultimately the one running things behind the scenes, handling token listings and marketing needs. He said he has been “basically elected” as the leader of the community takeover.
“But the focus is more on decentralization going forward,” Benji.wif explained, “although we still need a voice and someone to represent us.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward and Stacy Elliott.
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