Crypto Influencer Cooper Turley Removed from Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Friends With Benefits (FWB) over 2013 Bigoted Tweets

Cooper Turley, an investor and influencer at the heart of crypto’s burgeoning DAO scene, has been kicked out of Friends With Benefits (FWB), the exclusive online social club he helped build over the past year.

“The Code of Conduct committee has made the formal recommendation of removal from the FWB DAO leadership, to which the member has accepted,” reads a tweet from the group’s official account, uploaded Friday night.

FWB added: “Regarding the member’s status as a community member, they will be temporarily suspended from the community for a minimum of 2 Seasons, after which, following our restorative approach, they will be granted the opportunity to reapply for DAO membership.”

The post doesn’t refer to Turley by name, but an FWB staffer confirmed that it was indeed about him. The ban is a rare example of real-world consequences in a space that puts a high premium on “censorship-resistance” and “immutability.”

Turley, now 25 years old, has worked with some of the biggest projects in the Web 3 ecosystem. He’s currently listed as a “venture partner” at the venture capital firm Variant Fund, helmed by Jesse Walden and Li Jin, and has worked as an advisor for the blockchain streaming service Audius and the DAO incubator Seed Club.

Last year, Turley was included in Fortune Magazine’s “NFTy 50” – a list of the “most influential builders, creatives, and influencers” in the NFT space. He’s also a prolific author of “thought leadership” on the topic of crypto trading, both on Twitter and in publications like Business Insider.

Turley’s path out of FWB began last Tuesday, when the influencer posted a controversial tweet endorsing a kind of 24/7 hustle culture. Another influencer, Jackson Dame, expressed frustration with the sentiment, accusing Turley of pushing “harmful narratives” for engagement on social media.

Dame then posted some of Turley’s old tweets, containing the n-word and f-slur, to the thread. The tweets ranged from 2011 to late 2014.

Turley, who is white, apologized for the old tweets on Tuesday afternoon. “I was young, stupid, and careless,” he wrote, adding that “back then, [he] developed a terrible habit of using racial and homophobic slurs to fit in.”

A caveat is that he still holds 243.6 FWB tokens in his primary Ethereum wallet. (FWB is the homespun cryptocurrency that offers access to the group; new members are invited to purchase 75 tokens after their initial application is accepted.) Turley’s stash is worth about $13,000 at today’s prices.

FWB hit a high of nearly $200 last year, just ahead of a hefty investment from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, but has since fallen to around $55 per token.

In a follow-up to his first apology, Turley wrote on Friday afternoon that he plans to “[take] a step back from all leadership roles in the DAOs and projects [he’s] affiliated with.”

“I need to repair the loss of trust caused by my past,” he added. Turley did not reply to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

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(Article Courtesy of CoinDesk)