A video shared by crypto influencer and alleged rug-puller Matt Wallace, which he claimed depicted the start of World War 3, has been debunked and confirmed as a three-year-old CGI depiction of an earlier conflict.
Wallace shared the video on April 13 and it has since garnered 22.5 million views, 161,000 likes, and 32,000 retweets. However, despite his rather pessimistic ‘WW3 HAS STARTED’ caption, as pointed out by Reuters, the clip is nothing more than a mock-up of a World War 2 air raid.
The video was previously debunked when it was claimed that it showed real-life footage from the Russia/Ukraine conflict and later, fighting in Gaza.
Wallace used to call himself a ‘DogeTuber’ while basing his brand around Dogecoin. Despite this, Doge’s founder Billy Markus accused Wallace of using the Doge name to rug-pull his followers with a shitcoin called Accept Doge.
Markus called Wallace a scammer in 2022 and said in a tweet, “If community members didn’t take action, this disaster would have been named ‘accept doge.’” Wallace’s token reportedly pumped by 12,000% before crashing to zero. Crypto sleuth Coffeezilla described it as a rug pull, an accusation that Wallace denies.
The crypto influencer has since rebranded his online persona with a focus on breaking news with a sensationalist spin. Indeed, Wallace shared the debunked WW3 video amid reports of Iran launching an attack against Israel.
He has previously shared misleading images depicting a Hawaii wildfire being started by a laser beam and theorized that Friends star Matthew Perry may have died as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine.