Crypto‘s ’pay-to-play problem resurfaces in Wolf of All Streets podcast accusations

Synonym CEO John Carvalho has shared a screenshot of an alleged email conversation that he says shows a representative of Wolf of All Streets host Scott Melker offering him an appearance on the podcast in return for $20,000.

“They asked me to be on their retarded show, and then to pay $20k for it,” he said.

Melker, who is also co-host of the Crypto Town Hall on X, and a listed crypto expert for TheStreet Roundtable, has more than 1 million followers on X and has previously been named the 2020 Binance Influencer of the Year and included in the Cointelegraph Top 100 Notable People in Blockchain in 2021 list.

Carvalho, who is perhaps best known for his interview of Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver during Bitcoins block size war, shared more screenshots of the alleged email conversation with Protos. In these screenshots, the representative asked if Carvalho was “in the market for major influencer coverage.”

In his alleged response, Carvalho said he would be open to an interview with Melker.

The representative then responded with a paid influencer marketing pitch deck. A pitch deck shared with Protos[a] indicated “interviews” and “organic mentions” were part of the “product offerings”from The Wolf of All Streets.

An alleged page from The Wolf of All Streets pitch deck.

When asked about Carvalhos original X post directly, Melker told Protos:

The claims in John‘s post aren’t accurate. Our team did reach out to John as part of a new initiative exploring sponsored content — this was one of their first outreach efforts.

“The intent was not to charge him to appear on the show, but rather to offer a clearly labeled sponsorship opportunity, which is standard practice across media. We dont charge guests to join editorial segments.”

He continued, If John had accepted, the sponsorship would have been transparently disclosed to our audience.

“We maintain a clear separation between sponsored and editorial content, especially in formats like Crypto Town Hall, where any sponsor participation is set apart from the main conversation.”

The pitch deck shared with Protos also indicates Melkers YouTube channel has 159,000 subscribers, which was the subscriber count as of the beginning of May, according to Social Blade.

“They can equivocate all they like, but within [the deck] are prices for paid interviews, spaces, and ‘organic mentions,’” Carvalho told Protos when asked to respond to Melkers statement.

The Synonym CEO also said hed be willing to match a donation to the Bitcoin Smiles initiative, which claims to raise funds to provide free dental care to impoverished people in El Salvador, from The Wolf of All Streets if they had him on their show.

Carvalho had originally indicated he would come on the show if it made a $2,000 donationto BitcoinSmiles after the influencer marketing pitch deck was sent to him in the alleged email conversation.

He rhetorically asked Protos, “If his stance is true, he should just invite me on the show and donate to Bitcoin Smiles, no？”

Notably, this is not the first public controversy for The Wolf of All Streets. Blockchain analyzer and Paradigm Advisor ZachXBT and crypto trader Cobie have both previously called out Melker for selling various crypto tokens while simultaneously promoting them via his platform (or at least insinuated in the case of Cobie).

Melker disputed these allegations in an X thread at the time.

Read more: Ben Armstrong arrested a second time after emailing defamation judge

‘Pay to play’ in crypto media

A 2018 investigation by Corin Faife for BREAKER found more than half of the crypto media outlets in the industry were willing to take money in exchange for coverage of projects and tokens.

Unchained‘s Laura Shin also discussed crypto’s “pay to play” problem in an interview with Fortune the next year. Protos also previously covered the rise and fall of infamous crypto influencer Ben “Bitboy” Armstrong and his associated crypto tokens rather extensively.

While the crypto industry is often touted as a more transparent financial system where the corruption and “pay to play” models of traditional finance no longer apply, thats clearly not the case.

Whether its a media outlet asking for payments for promotion or an exchange taking payment for listing a particular crypto token, the old ways of things are still alive and well in an industry that is supposed to be all about leveling the playing field for everyone and getting rid of rent seekers.

Influencer marketing has also operated in a grey area for some time on social media more generally and is definitely not limited to the crypto industry, as ads are often not explicitly labeled as such.

“The research tells us that all of us can find it hard to identify when an influencer is advertising, so its crucial that ads are labelled clearly,” said Advertising Standards Authority Chief Executive Guy Parker following a 2019 report from the independent media regulator in the United Kingdom.

“Our message to influencers and brands couldnt be clearer: be upfront with followers, for example by using #ad.”