Despite a rather gloomy 2022 that was extremely harsh on crypto investors, the new year seems to have rekindled their spirits with explosive price action being witnessed in tokens such as the CryptoZoo (CRYPTO: ZOO).

Since the last week of December 2022, prices for the ZOO token have sky-rocketed as the platform’s founder YouTuber Logan Paul took to his channel to assuage investor fears.

In fact, $1,000 invested in the ZOO token on Christmas Eve would be valued at more than $10,000 today, fuelling investor expectations of a return to glory for the ZOO token.

On the other hand, critics of the CryptoZoo project would be looking for an opportunity to short the beleaguered token that has been steeped in controversies since its inception.

Launched in July 2021 amidst a lot of hype, the Logan Paul-promoted CryptoZoo NFT project has largely failed to live up to its promises.

While the project was envisioned as a fun game involving "egg" NFTs that would later "hatch" into animal characters, investors who purchased them have been left with hideous photoshopped images of animals instead.

Furthermore, Logan used his YouTube channel to reach out to his 28 million subscriber base to market the ZOO token as a yield-generating cryptocurrency that would revolutionize the Web3 gaming world with its unique tokenomics.

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Instead, those who invested in the ZOO token during its launch saw their investment plummet by more than 90% in a span of a few weeks.

Adding to the downward pricing pressure was the project’s own development team going public with allegations that they were not paid by Logan or any of the other founding members for their work.

Needless to say, the project seemed to be in limbo for nearly fifteen months after initially exploding onto the crypto space.

As a result, the native ZOO token plummeted by more than 99.99% from its issue price by the end of 2021, settling at slightly higher levels over the next eleven months.

Chart: coinmarketcap

The CryptoZoo project has once again come into the limelight with Logan refuting allegations of fraud and business malpractice leveled against him by CoffeeZilla, a YouTube channel that has been known to bust claims made by dubious blockchain projects.

While he hasn’t responded to all of CoffeeZilla’s questions about what has transpired at CryptoZoo, investors seemed to have taken this as a sign that the project will finally be on the path to achieving what it initially intended.

Hosted on the Binance Smart Chain, CryptoZoo utilizes the OpenSea NFT platform for its egg NFTs and has leveraged Logan’s massive online following to gain traction on more than one occasion in the past, too.

While the current euphoria has provided a boost to the ZOO token, Logan will need to follow it up with concrete action.

Resuming development operations will be the number one priority, followed up by introducing new features that would enrich the gaming experience.

While the jury is still out on whether the famous YouTuber will deliver this time, investors would do well to tread with caution rather than jumping onto the CryptoZoo bandwagon.

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