Cryptopolitan interviews William Banks, the man who rug pulled $50k for Palestine. He hates crypto

Cryptopolitan had the chance to sit down for a virtual chat with 27-year-old William Banks, the performance artist/comedian, who rug pulled $50,000 from a meme coin he created and donated everything to Palestine, right after breaking out of prison, which he was in because he pulled out a couple of pro-Israel signs off some folks’ yards in Westport, Connecticut.

What we first learned from William was that he actually hates crypto, though he admitted that he orchestrated the rug pull intentionally, but it was mostly out of spite.

Why William hates crypto

According to William, after he went viral for posting a video of himself and his “fugitive” buddies breaking out of prison on February 20 with over 20 million views, many crypto influencers reached out to ask him to launch a meme coin, and some even created tokens inspired by him and kept sending him huge parts of the supply.

But, “I don’t like those guys,” William told me during our chat. “They were using me, so I decided to use them back.”

One of the influencers William spoke about is Jester, a pseudonymous self-proclaimed “meme coin advertiser,” who William said was absolutely horrible to him.

“I am never doing anything in crypto again,” William said. He explained that he believes crypto and the people in it are actually “a danger” to the world. “Crypto is negative. It’s just bad.”

“Can it really be all that negative when it easily helped you donate a healthy sum to such a great cause?” I asked him.

“Well it’s not all bad of course,” William replied. “Some people in it are good, but most of them are just Elon Musk wannabes, they’re just incels who could care less about the state of the world. I just wanted to be Robin Hood.”

William Banks’ jailbreak isn’t actually real

It’s hard to argue with that, so we decided to pivot by asking him: “So the big question; Is all of it real? Did you really go to prison and break out of it?”

“It’s real,” he said, straightforwardly. “I recreated it of course, but it’s real. It happened.”

I brought up the fact that Westport Administrative Lieutenant Eric Woods has already debunked the jailbreak story, and William vaguely explained that there is something bigger at play here, though Cryptopolitan is quite convinced he’s just having a bit of fun, pulling off a prank.

William has a “friend” named Ant who he apparently was in prison with. They were cellmates and they broke out of the prison together. Ant has been featured in many of William’s documented videos on X and Instagram, and was calling William “White Moses” during the stunt escape.

That’s where the inspiration for William’s meme coin came from. He called it White Moses (MOSES). But after their stunt, William told us that he and Ant had a fallout after he took credit for planning the escape. Apparently, Ant was the mastermind, so that led to the former being kidnapped and supposedly even extorted.

“But I still wanna be his friend,” said William.

William also has a girlfriend, Maddie, who he hangs out with while “on the run,” chilling in motels, dancing, smoking, eating, and singing together.

Before our interview, Maddie’s posts on X had hinted at a potential breakup, but when we asked William about it, he said, “No, we’re still together. We’re together right now.”

“I cannot really say much about the whole situation, there are people with me who are protecting me who wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Something big is behind me,” he told us.

Towards the end of our chat, William shared that he dreams of being a well-versed traveler one day. He wants to go to Africa and even Asia. And he is strictly anti-Zionism and anti-Israel.

“But no, I’m never doing crypto again,” he concluded.

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