By now, Erik “Gronkh” Range is among the top streamers on Twitch in the German sector. However, the beginnings were quite something. Especially one of the first Twitch streams where money laundering was suspected.
Before streaming so much on Twitch, Gronkh was mainly a YouTuber and uploaded his Let’s Plays only there. In 2014, he began streaming regularly on Fridays starting at 6 PM. In his early streams, the content creator experimented a lot and hadn’t set everything up yet.
He also hadn’t set up the settings around viewer donations. Besides subscriptions that cost money, viewers can also simply donate money to their chosen Twitch streamer. Gronkh was visibly confused by his first donation:
“You just crashed my PayPal account”
Why was the PayPal account shut down? In the same stream where Gronkh wonders about his Twitch donation, his viewers suddenly overwhelm him with donations as they notice that it works. A small amount comes in after another, usually between 1 and 10 euros.
Gronkh’s PayPal account was linked to his Twitch account. Thus, the donation amounts went directly to his PayPal account, and PayPal suspected money laundering behind it. They immediately suspended his account, which Gronkh commented on in the stream with “You just crashed my PayPal account” (Source: YouTube).
Gronkh then logged into his account and was informed by PayPal that he could temporarily not make any payments. Donations would likely continue to arrive; Gronkh just couldn’t do anything with them for now.
Amused, the Twitch streamer remarked: “I hope my drug dealings don’t get exposed now.” (Source: YouTube). Gronkh further stated that he had had the account for 10 years and would do a lot with it, but something like this had never happened to him before.
By now, Gronkh is no longer suspected of money laundering by PayPal. Gronkh significantly influenced the game Minecraft. In the video game adaptation, Gronkh was supposed to appear as the narrator in the German version. However, fans did not like the voice of the Twitch streamer: Gronkh was supposed to have a major role in the Minecraft movie – Now fans ask: Is he even in it?
