FaZe Clan's 'Save the Kids' token, with Reddit presale and mod team (2021)

'Save the Kids' ($KIDS) launched on 5 June 2021, marketed as a charity cryptocurrency that would donate a share of transaction fees to children's causes. It was heavily promoted by social-media personalities, including commentator RiceGum, model Sommer Ray, and members of the esports organization FaZe Clan — Kay (Frazier Khattri), Jarvis, Nikan, and Teeqo. Within a day the token's price collapsed by roughly 90%, and it was quickly identified as a pump-and-dump in which insiders sold into the hype generated for their followers.

Reddit was woven into the operation's organizing layer. Reporting on the scandal noted that YouTuber Sam Pepper promoted the project on Reddit and built its moderator team, and that one of those moderators said Pepper handled the presale of the coins. The community-management apparatus that helped launder the project's image to retail buyers thus ran in part through Reddit, alongside the YouTube and Twitter promotion that reached the influencers' fan bases.

The technical mechanism of the scam was later pieced together by investigators, most prominently the YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla. He documented that the token's code had been altered shortly before launch to shrink an anti-dump time limit from 24 hours to about 60 seconds, allowing large holders to sell almost immediately. Coffeezilla's investigation found that figures including Kay had dumped billions of tokens for tens of thousands of dollars in the hours after launch, while ordinary buyers were left with collapsing holdings.

FaZe Clan responded by expelling Kay and suspending three other members, saying the organization had been unaware of and did not support their actions; one suspended member who had not sold was later reinstated. The episode became one of the defining influencer crypto scandals of 2021 and a frequently cited example of how 'charity' framing was used to disarm the skepticism of young investors.

For Reddit, 'Save the Kids' is notable because the platform was not merely where the token was discussed but where part of its promotional and presale infrastructure was assembled. It underscored how a coordinated scam could span YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit simultaneously, using each platform for a different function — reach, hype, and community management — while the people running it positioned themselves to profit at their audiences' expense.