Kai Cenat Exposed?
By Ruben Oesterling
Kai Cenat is finally the most subscribed English-speaking steamer on Twitch. Earning over 100,000 subscribers within a year, Kai Cenat achieved one of the greatest accomplishments for a streamer. But everything comes at a price.
Drama Always Finds the Spotlight
According to the LivestreamFail subreddit, the online community accused the streamer of a criminal activity. Using Twitch Tracker, a tool used to monitor and analyze streams, the community discovered something: almost half of Cenat’s subscriptions were gifted, not paid subscriptions. They theorize that this is part of a money laundering scheme.
They speculated that possible criminals are sending him money so he can ‘clean’ their illegal proceeds. A criminal can collect profits from illegal activities like drug trading. These profits are known as ‘dirty’ money. If they want to spend these profits, they need them to come from a legitimate source. So, they send their ‘dirty’ money to someone else and they return it back to the criminals. Now, the government can check their profits and see they came from somewhere legal. Like from a Twitch streamer.
Regional pricing of Twitch subscriptions further supported the community’s theory. It is cheaper to give subscriptions in certain countries. For example, in Turkey, it costs $5. While in the US, it is $1. The same money laundering scheme was done this past May by Twitch streamers in Turkey. Because of how cheap it is to gift a streamer, they laundered millions without raising suspicion for a while.
Kai Responds
Kai Cenat responded to the accusation during a heated live on Twitch.
One of the things he said was, “Hey, LSF, big fan. But first of all, I don’t even know what laundering means. No I’m not sending him back the money, to do… some sh*t. Y’all are too deep in. He’s just a friend who’s gifting. I literally tell him to stop and he remains going. Would you like to see our DMs?”
So far, nothing concrete has proven the accusation and the streamer’s channel continues to grow. He can be seen at twitch.tv/imkaicenat.