I just wrote my first story for Foreign Policy. [Foreign Policy]
After the highs of 2021, cryptocurrency crashed to the ground in 2022. One by one, multiple large crypto firms toppled, dragging many minor firms down along with them in a small-scale replay of the 2008 financial crisis.
Now, another large domino, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, may be about to topple. The crypto conglomerate had managed to survive a remarkably long time with a relatively clean legal record. But on January 19, Genesis, a major part of DCG, filed for bankruptcy.
The fall of the once-acclaimed DCG could be the final nail in the coffin of crypto’s credibility. It could also lead to a systemic collapse in crypto, as DCG is one of the biggest investors in the space.
Sometimes months happen in weeks, and it’s been six months of that sort of week. So please contribute to our Patreons — here’s Amy’s, and here’s David’s.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
— Sir Walter Scott, 1808
DCG: Congratulations, you played yourself
The Department of Justice’s Eastern District of New York and the SEC are looking into money flows between Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and its lending subsidiary Genesis, and what investors were told about the transfers. [Bloomberg]
DCG has been playing all the same games as the rest of crypto — trying to create the illusion of money where there is no money, to keep the party going a little bit longer.
Genesis should have declared insolvency in June when Three Arrows Capital (3AC) blew a $2.4 billion hole in its accounts — but DCG purchased 3AC’s defaulted loan from Genesis and financed the purchase with a promissory note of $1.1 billion, to be paid back over 10 years.
That is: DCG and Genesis counted an internal IOU as money, to claim Genesis was still solvent.
The catch with the promissory note is that if the 10-year loan is “callable” — meaning DCG would have to pay Genesis the full amount immediately in the event of a liquidation or bankruptcy — then it could give Genesis creditors a claim on DCG itself, and take all of DCG down with it.
“The Promissory Note is like a noose wrapped tight around the neck of DCG. If Genesis goes over the cliff, it drags DCG with it,” said Ram Ahluwalia, the co-founder of Lumida, an investment advisory firm that focuses on crypto. [Twitter]
In a letter to shareholders in November, Silbert disclosed that DCG borrowed another $575 million from Genesis — due in May 2023. The funds were used for “investment opportunities” and buying back shares of DCG stock from outside investors. [Twitter]
A creditor committee that includes crypto exchange Gemini presented Genesis and DCG with a plan to recover the assets. Silbert had until January 8 to respond. Cameron Winklevoss threatened that “time is running out.” [Twitter; Twitter]
We think Gemini will try to force Genesis into involuntary chapter 11 — they just need three creditors to file a petition with the bankruptcy court. The judge then holds a hearing and decides if the matter will go through. [11 U.S. Code, section 303]
Gemini Earn, Genesis, GBTC, and 3AC
As is usual in crypto, DCG screwed itself by greed. DCG also owns Grayscale, which operates the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) — DCG’s cash cow. Grayscale collects a whopping 2% annual fee on its assets under management — currently, 633,000 BTC.
Genesis took the crypto it got from Gemini Earn customers and lent those funds out to institutional investors and crypto hedge funds — such as Three Arrows Capital.
3AC was one of the biggest investors in GBTC, taking advantage of a lucrative arbitrage opportunity. They would borrow bitcoins from Genesis and swap those for GBTC shares at NAV from Grayscale. After a six-month lockup, 3AC could dump the shares on retail for a handsome profit. Rinse and repeat, and when GBTC was trading at 20% above NAV, they could make a 40% profit a year that way
At the end of 2020, 3AC was the largest holder of GBTC with a position worth $1 billion at the time. After February 2021, the GBTC premium dried up, and GBTC began trading on secondary markets at a steep discount to NAV.
3AC had hoped the discount would be reversed when the SEC approved Grayscale converting its bitcoin trust to an ETF. But the SEC rejected the application, and the GBTC discount continued to widen. [Bloomberg]
When 3AC defaulted on its $2.4 billion loan to Genesis, Genesis seized the collateral backing the loan, including 17.4 million shares of GBTC, and filed a $1.1 billion claim against 3AC — a claim that is now on DCG’s books. [Coindesk; Affidavit Russell Crumpler, PDF]
Class action against Gemini Earn
Gemini partnered with Genesis for their Earn program. After Genesis lost $175 million in FTX in November, it froze withdrawals. Gemini Earn froze withdrawals in turn. Now Gemini Earn customers are out $900 million.
In an effort to get those funds back, three Gemini Earn customers are seeking class arbitration against Genesis and DCG.
Gemini and Genesis had a “master digital asset loan agreement,” which Gemini Earn customers entered into — when you became an Earn customer, you agreed you were lending money to Genesis.
The complaint alleges that Genesis breached this agreement by hiding its insolvency through a “sham transaction,” whereby DCG “bought” the right to collect a $2.3 billion debt owed to Genesis by 3AC with the aforementioned $1.1 billion promissory note. The plaintiffs also claim that the Genesis loan agreement created an unregistered sale of securities. [Press release; Complaint, PDF; Master Digital Asset Loan Agreement]
The master loan agreement states that: “Each Party represents and warrants that it is not insolvent and is not subject to any bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings under any applicable laws.”
This is why Silbert keeps insisting that Genesis has a liquidity issue and not a solvency issue — even as those are functionally identical in crypto. If Genesis was found to be insolvent and took customer funds in, it would be in violation of that contract. (As well as promptly calling that promissory note from DCG.)
Amidst all of this, Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary and World Bank Chief Economist, has quietly left DCG — going so far as to remove all mention of DCG from his own website. Summers joined DCG as a senior advisor in 2016, a year after the company’s founding. [Protos]
Silvergate Bank
Moody’s has downgraded Silvergate Bank’s long-term deposit rating to Ba1 from Baa2 after the crypto bank announced that its customers — who are almost entirely crypto firms now — withdrew $8 billion in deposits in Q4 2022: [Moody’s]
The negative outlook reflects Moody’s view that the bank’s profitability over the near term will be weak along with the risk of further declines in deposits from crypto currency centric firms further pressuring profitability. In addition, the negative outlook reflects the increasing regulatory and legal risks that the firm is currently facing.
Silvergate’s other customers are worried about the bank’s solvency and about the regulatory heat coming its way. Silvergate was key to FTX/Alameda having access to actual money — they helped funnel money to FTX from accounts in the name of Alameda and of Alameda’s dubious subsidiary, North Dimensions.
If Silvergate are found to be complicit in FTX’s fraud, they will be fined. But if there was money laundering and sanctions busting, they could be shut down. They will at the very least be fined. We would guess some individuals will also get a bar from being bankers. Here’s a list of enforcement actions on Federal Reserve member banks. [Federal Reserve]
Silvergate’s 8-K SEC filings this year are full of bad news. We noted Silvergate’s layoffs and writing off its Diem investment last time. [SEC 8-K; SEC 8-K; SEC 10-Q]
FTX
After a series of knock-down-drag-out filings — and the hilarious revelations of how FTX Digital Markets (FTX DM) was functionally Sam Bankman-Fried’s Bahamas partying fund — the US and Bahamas bankruptcies are working together now. John Jay Ray III and his team met in Miami with the joint provisional liquidators (JPLs) handling the FTX DM liquidation, and they’ve reached an agreement. [press release; agreement, PDF]
The Bahamas JPLs will handle everything to do with FTX DM, and the US administrators will handle everything to do with all the other FTX companies. The JPLs will handle the Bahamas real estate and the cryptos being held by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas. (This doesn’t mean that the Bahamas will handle the disbursement of the crypto they have under their control — only that FTX is fine with them holding the funds for now.) The parties will share information. FTX DM’s chapter 15 foreign entity bankruptcy in the SDNY will continue.
We suspect it was clear the US side would win in court, and the Bahamas liquidators realized they weren’t being paid enough to damage their reputations this way. The agreement is subject to approval by the courts in the US and the Bahamas, but it would be surprising for them not to allow it.
The Department of Justice has put out a call for victims of “Samuel Bankman-Fried, a/k/a ‘SBF.’” That’s his rapper name now. [Justice]
Huobi’s real-time meltdown
Huobi has always been a dodgy crypto exchange — even before it was run by Justin Sun from Tron. Huobi has $2.6 billion in reserves, and 40% of that is its own HT token. If you don’t count its own internal supermarket loyalty card points, Huobi is insolvent. [Twitter]
Huobi is desperately searching its pockets for spare change. On December 30, Wu Blockchain reported that Huobi was canceling year-end bonuses and planning to slash half its staff of 1,200 people and cut the salaries of senior employees. Sun denied the rumors. [Twitter; South China Morning Post; Twitter]
Other unofficial reports from small accounts on Twitter said that Huobi was offering to pay its employees in stablecoins — USDC and tethers — instead of actual-money yuan. If they objected, they would lose their jobs. [Twitter]
Employees revolted at being paid in magic beans — so Sun cut off internal communications. On January 4, Bitrun said that “all communication and feedback channels with employees” had been blocked. [Twitter]
Here’s the unofficial details on how Huobi is treating its employees. Those who quit because they’re getting paid in tethers get no severance pay either. This is what a doomed company does. [Twitter]
After initially denying Huobi was cutting staff, Sun finally admitted that Huobi was indeed laying off 20% of its employees in the first quarter of 2023 — after rumors swirled that half of all employees would be let go. [FT]
Huobi users rushed to get their funds off of the exchange. Blockchain analytics platform Nansen noted a wave of withdrawals on January 5 and 6. Following the withdrawals, Peckshield reported a wallet associated with Tron moved $100 million in stablecoins — USDC and tethers — into Huobi. [Twitter, Twitter]
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Sun assures you that your funds are totally safe. We fully expect the exchange to blow up at any moment. [Twitter]
Binance
US prosecutors for the Western District of Washington in Seattle are sending subpoenas to hedge funds for records of their dealings with Binance. John Ghose, formerly a Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in crypto and now a lawyer at compliance vendor VeraSafe, thinks this is about money laundering. [Washington Post]
We noted previously that “BUSD” on Binance is not the BUSD issued by Paxos, which claims to be backed by actual dollars in Silvergate Bank. Binance “BUSD” is a stablecoin-of-a stablecoin, maintained internally. This is the sort of arrangement that’s fine until it isn’t.
It turns out that Binance has been issuing uncollateralised “BUSD” on its own BNB blockchain. Data Finnovation looked at the Ethereum and BNB blockchains and saw that Binance has a history of minting fake “BUSD” internally on BNB. At some points in 2021, there were $500 million to $1 billion of fake dollars circulating on BNB. They’re caught up now, though — so that’s all fine, right? [Medium]
Dirty Bubble thinks Binance US isn’t meaningfully separate from Binance.com, if you look at how the cryptos flow. But that shouldn’t be news to anyone here. [Dirty Bubble]
Reuters is still on the Binance beat. Here’s a special report on Binance’s accounts, as far as can be told. Reuters calls Binance’s books a “black box.” Private companies don’t have to disclose their financials, especially if they’re operating outside all effective regulation — but even Binance’s former CFO, Wei Zhou, didn’t have full access to the company’s accounting records in the three years he was there. We’ve noted previously how regulators have a heck of a time getting the most basic information out of Binance. [Reuters]
John Hyatt from Forbes notes how Binance is spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars sponsoring Politico’s Playbook newsletter to reach politicians and bureaucrats. Worked great for FTX! [Twitter thread]
DeFi: Go directly to jail
Discussions of crime on the blockchain hardly ever point out that almost all of what goes on in DeFi was always just straight-up illegal under US law.
Pretty much every token was always an unregistered security. The sort of market manipulations that are standard practice in the DeFi trash fire have been illegal under Dodd-Frank since 2010. And that’s before we get to the rugpulls, hacks, and “hacks.”
The authorities are finally moving in. Every DeFi trader should consider themselves on notice.
Hotshot DeFi trader Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg was arrested in Puerto Rico on December 27 on a Department of Justice (Southern District of New York) indictment for commodities fraud and commodities manipulation in the $110 million trade that took out Mango Markets. [indictment, PDF; case docket]
Mango Markets is a decentralized exchange that runs on Solana. Users can lend, borrow, swap, and trade on margin. The exchange is overseen by a DAO, made up of people who hold MNGO — the native token of the exchange.
On October 11, someone drained the project of $110 million by manipulating the platform’s price oracle. After others had traced it to him, Avi Eisenberg came forward and explained the trade.
Eisenberg sold MNGO perpetual futures from one account he controlled to another account also under his control. He then bought large amounts of MNGO, which had the effect of increasing the value of his large holding of MNGO perpetuals. He then borrowed against these holdings and withdrew $110 million in assorted cryptocurrencies.
This also rendered the Mango platform insolvent. Eisenberg himself explained that the insurance fund in place was “insufficient to cover all liquidations.” He gave back some of his trading profits. [Twitter; Bloomberg]
I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are.
Eisenberg’s lawyer will likely explain his client’s erroneous legal reasoning to him.
Eisenberg wasn’t just arrested, he was denied bail as a flight risk — he has significant ties outside the US, he already left the US for two months just after the alleged offense, he likely has crypto stashed away somewhere, the charge carries a heavy penalty, and his background could not be checked. (Compare Sam Bankman-Fried’s release on bail.) [Order of detention pending trial, PDF]
It’s not clear why prosecutors went after Eisenberg in particular. We’d guess the CFTC and DoJ were looking for someone to make an example of. The bit where Eisenberg tweeted a complete confession probably helped, much as SBF’s confession tour of the press helped get him indicted.
What Eisenberg did to Mango was not remarkable at all. DeFi traders pull this nonsense all the time. Perhaps you don’t think DeFi trading shenanigans should be crimes, and that’s nice for you that you think that.
As Avi tweeted on October 19: “What are you gonna do, arrest me?” [Twitter, archive]
If you happen to be taking Amtrak and pass through Penn Station or Union Station, you will notice something unusual: every available ad space has been taken up by Grayscale.
“We care about crypto investors,” the crypto asset manager says in its ads. Grayscale is urging the public to write to the Securities and Exchange Commission and convince them to approve the first spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S.
Grayscale wants to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a bitcoin ETF after flooding the market with shares. GBTC is trading 25% below its net asset value, and investors are rightfully pissed off. Grayscale wants them to be upset with the SEC, but the regulator isn’t really to blame. If anything, the SEC should have warned the public about GBTC years ago.
Over the last eight years, Grayscale has been telling investors to buy shares of GBTC, advertising the fund as a way to get exposure to bitcoin without having to buy bitcoin.
Accredited investors plowed dollars (or maybe bitcoins) into the fund all through 2020, looking to take advantage of an arbitrage opportunity. They could buy in at NAV, and after a 6 to 12-month lockup, sell on the open market for a premium. All through 2020, that premium was around 18%, on average.
Everybody was happy until February 2021, when the Purpose bitcoin ETF launched in Canada. Unlike GBTC, which trades over-the-counter, Purpose trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, close to NAV. At 1%, its management fees are half that of GBTC. Within a month of trading, Purpose quickly absorbed more than $1 billion worth of assets.
Demand for GBTC dropped off and its premium evaporated. Currently, 653,919 bitcoins (worth a face value of $26 billion) are stuck in an illiquid vehicle. Welcome to Grayscale’s Hotel California.
The plan all along, Grayscale claims, has been to convert GBTC into a bitcoin ETF. On October 19, 2021, NYSE Arca filed Form 19b-4 with the SEC. The regulator has until early July to respond.
In all probability, the SEC will reject the application, just as it has every single spot bitcoin ETF application put before it to date.
Bitcoin’s price is largely determined by wash-trades, whales controlling the market, and manipulation with tethers. SEC Chair Gary Gensler knows this. He taught a course in blockchain and money at MIT Sloan before his appointment by the Biden administration.
This is Grayscale’s second time around. It applied for a bitcoin ETF in 2016, but withdrew the application during the 2017 bitcoin bubble because “the regulatory environment for digital assets had not advanced to the point where such a product could successfully be brought to market.” Meanwhile, the trust’s assets under management grew as did Grayscale’s profits.
Closed-end fund
“Inflation is rising, we need to diversify!” a panicked woman tells her son over the phone in the middle of the night. “I’m buying crypto!” She hangs up. Her son rolls over in bed. The scene is from a series of TV commercials Grayscale ran in 2020 to convince the public that GBTC was a sound investment.
Digital Currency Group is the parent company of Grayscale. Both firms were founded by Barry Silbert. DCG is invested in hundreds of crypto firms. It owns crypto outlet CoinDesk, which essentially functions as a PR machine for the entire crypto industry.
Initially called the “Bitcoin Investment Trust,” GBTC launched in September 2013. It was promoted as an investment vehicle that would allow hedge funds and institutional investors to gain exposure to bitcoin, without having to deal with custody. Coinbase has been the custodian of the fund since 2019 when it bought Xapo, the previous custodian.
Legally, GBTC is a grantor trust, meaning it functions like a closed-end fund. Unlike a typical ETF, there is no mechanism to redeem the underlying asset. The SEC specifically stopped Grayscale from doing this in 2016. Grayscale can create new shares, but it can’t destroy shares to adjust for demand. Grayscale only takes bitcoin out to pay its whopping 2% annual fees, which currently amount to $200 million per year.
In contrast, an ETF trades like a stock on a national securities exchange, like NYSE Arca or Nasdaq. An ETF has a built-in creation and redemption mechanism that allows the shares to trade at NAV via arbitrage. Authorized participants (essentially, broker-dealers, like banks and trading firms) issue new shares when the ETF trades at a premium and redeem shares when they trade at a discount, making a profit on the spread.
How it all works
Grayscale periodically invites rich investors to pledge money into the fund in private placements at its discretion. The minimum investment is $50,000. Grayscale uses the cash to buy bitcoin and issues shares of GBTC in kind.
Investors can also pledge bitcoin directly — a great advantage if you happen to be a large holder who wants to unload your BTC without crashing the market. (More on this later.)
After a lockup period, investors can sell their GBTC on the open markets. Anyone can buy and sell GBTC on OTC Markets Group, the main over-the-counter marketplace, or via a brokerage account, like Schwab or Fidelity.
Up until early last year, GBTC has typically always traded at a premium on the open market. That premium occasionally soared to over 100%. During the 2017 bitcoin bubble, GBTC traded as high as 130% above NAV.
Why would anyone pay the premium? Many institutional investors can’t buy bitcoin directly for compliance reasons. And there are a lot of individuals who don’t want the headache of figuring out how to set up a bitcoin wallet. GBTC was initially the only option for getting exposure to BTC, without having to buy BTC, at least until bitcoin futures came along. However, bitcoin futures contracts came with their own risks, costs, and headaches. GBTC was easier.
In early 2020, GBTC became an SEC reporting company. This allowed investors who purchased shares in the trust’s private placement to sell their shares in 6 months instead of the previous 12 months. You could now make more money faster!
Unsurprisingly, the trust went into overdrive in 2020. Starting in January 2020 up to Feb. 23, 2021, Grayscale filed 35 reports with the SEC indicating that it sold additional shares to accredited investors, according to Morning Star’s Bobby Blue.
The trust’s holdings doubled from roughly 261,000 BTC in January 2020 to 544,000 BTC by mid-December 2020, per Arcane Research.
The @Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has attracted new investors throughout the year, leading to a doubling of Grayscale's BTC holdings from approx. 261k BTC in January to 544k BTC by Dec 12th.
Harris Kupperman, who operates a hedge fund, explained in a November 2020 blog post how GBTC’s arbitrage opportunity created a “reflexive Ponzi,” responsible for sending the price of bitcoin hyperbolic.
There were several versions of the arb. You could borrow money through a prime broker. You could use futures to hedge your bet. You could recycle your capital twice a year.
Every version involved Grayscale purchasing more bitcoin, thus increasing demand, widening the spread in the premium, and pushing the price of bitcoin ever higher. Between January 2020 and February 19, 2021, the price of BTC climbed from $7,000 to $56,000.
“When the spread is 26% wide and liquid to the tune of hundreds of millions per week, you can bet the biggest guys in finance are all over it,” Kupperman said. “As you can imagine, everyone big is putting on some version of this trade.”
Kupperman wasn’t the only person to raise alerts about the fund, which mainly benefited wealthy investors. As soon as GBTC launched, skeptics voiced their concerns.
“You can put a nice wrapper around a turd, and present it in a very well-manicured product to investors that you say is safe,” Barry Ritholtz, a wealth manager and founder of The Big Picture blog, told Verge. “But at the end of the day, it’s still crap.”
In September 2017, Citron Research called GBTC “the widow maker” and “the most dangerous way to own bitcoin.” Citron’s Andrew Left accurately predicted GBTC’s collapse:
“Citron believes that as new methods become available for investors to gain exposure to bitcoin — including traditional ETFs — that money will move to these regulated instruments and out of the uncertain waters of GBTC, which we believe can fall by 50% easily.”
Who holds GBTC?
The press has repeatedly credited Grayscale as a massive buyer of bitcoins, and evidence of institutional money entering the cryptoverse. This may not be the case.
Even though Grayscale states its holdings in dollars, it accepts deposits of bitcoins. A whale, or a good friend of Grayscale, can trade in their BTC for shares of GBTC, which they can flip six months later at well above the actual price of bitcoin.
The last time Grayscale broke out the numbers in Q3 2019, they said that the majority of deposited value into their family of trusts was in crypto, not dollars:
“Nearly 80% of inflows in 3Q19 were associated with contributions of digital assets into the Grayscale family of products ‘in-kind’ in exchange for shares, an acceleration of the recent trend, up from 71% in 2Q19.”
Grayscale stopped breaking out the percentage of crypto deposits into its trusts after 2019, and just stated everything in dollars. They may want to break out the numbers again, as this is something the SEC might be interested in.
Crypto lender BlockFi’s reliance on the GBTC arbitrage is well known as the source of their high bitcoin interest offering. Customers loan BlockFi their bitcoin, and BlockFi invests it into Grayscale’s trust. By the end of October 2020, a filing with the SEC revealed BlockFi had a 5% stake in all GBTC shares.
Here’s the problem: Now that GBTC prices are below the price of bitcoin, BlockFi won’t have enough cash to buy back the bitcoins that customers lent to them. BlockFi already had to pay a $100 million fine for allegedly selling unregistered securities in 2021.
As of September 2021, 47 mutual funds and SMAs held GBTC, according to Morning Star. Cathie Wood’s ArkInvest is one of the largest holders of GBTC. Along with Morgan Stanley, which held more than 13 million shares at the end of 2021.
Such a lovely place
Grayscale was happy to take investor money during the bitcoin bull runs of 2017 and 2020-21 and saturate the market with shares of GBTC. Anyone sitting on GBTC now is forced to take their losses, or hold out in the hopes Grayscale will do something to fix this.
Investors, many of whom are regular folks with GBTC in their IRAs, have every reason to be upset. Meanwhile, Grayscale is pointing the finger at the SEC as the reason we can’t have nice things.
Michael Sonnenshein, Grayscale’s chief executive, told Bloomberg he would even consider suing the regulator if Grayscale’s application to convert GBTC into a bitcoin ETF is denied.
Sonnenshein argues that because the SEC has approved bitcoin futures ETFs, it should also approve a bitcoin spot ETF.
This makes absolutely no sense. The two investment vehicles are totally different animals.
A bitcoin futures ETF indexes a bitcoin futures contract on the CME. It is a bet in dollars, paid in dollars. Nobody touches an actual bitcoin at any point. In contrast, Grayscale’s spot bitcoin ETF application represents an investment that is backed by bitcoins — not derivatives tied to it.
A spot bitcoin ETF is good for bitcoin, because it means more actual cash flowing into the cryptoverse. Crypto promoters are pushing hard for this. Bitcoin is a negative-sum game that relies on new supplies of fresh cash to keep it going.
But what happens if the SEC doesn’t approve Grayscale’s application?
Grayscale can issue more buybacks. In the fall of 2021, DCG began buying back over $1 billion worth of GBTC. In March 2022, it announced another $250 million in buybacks for Grayscale trusts. The effort had little impact. GBTC continued to trade well below the price of bitcoin.
As Morning Star points out, Grayscale has the power to make this right. It can redeem shares at NAV and simply return investors their cash or bitcoin. That is, if Grayscale really does care about crypto investors.
Grayscale offered a redemption program before 2016. However, the SEC issued a cease and desist order because the repurchases took place at the same time the trust was issuing new shares, in violation of Regulation M.
The situation is different now. Grayscale stopped issuing new shares in March 2021. That leaves the door open for it to pursue a redemption program and bring GBTC closer inline with the price of bitcoin.
I doubt this will ever happen. Grayscale is sitting on a cash cow. As long as it can redirect investor anger at the SEC, why change?
“There is no obligation to convert to an ETF,” David Fauchier, a fund manager at London’s Nickel Digital Asset, told me in a tweet. “If things stay as they are, they will print money into perpetuity basically, it’s a FANTASTIC business if BTC doesn’t zero.”
Ha. No, the status quo is to keep the trust as is. There is no obligation to convert to ETF. If things stay as they are, they will print money into perpetuity basically, it’s a FANTASTIC business if BTC doesn’t zero
Fed by stimulus money, tethers, and a new grift in the form of NFTs, the price of bitcoin reached a record of nearly $69,000 in November 2021. Bitcoiners rah-rahed the moment.
However, the same network effects that brought BTC to its heights are working in reverse and can just as easily bring it back down again. At its current price of $40,000, amidst 8.5% inflation, bitcoin is not proving itself to be the inflation hedge Grayscale hyped it up to be.
I encourage anyone reading this to submit your comments to the SEC regarding Grayscale’s application for a spot bitcoin ETF. Jorge Stolfi, a computer scientist in Brazil, has provided an excellent example, and so has David Rosenthal, also a computer scientist. You can submit your own comments here.
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We are three-quarters of the way through the first month of the new year. We have a new president in the Whitehouse, and people are getting vaccinated—a glimmer of hope at the end of a long dark tunnel. I’m doing some volunteer work for VaccinateCA, making calls to pharmacies. (I saw @patio11 tweeting about the project and wanted to contribute.)
Maybe toward the end of 2021, we’ll see more in-person crypto conferences, but for now, it looks like Coindesk’s big money-maker Consensus will be virtual again—only $50 to register compared to $2,500 for the real thing in past years. Currently, bitcoin is trading at around $32,000 after climbing to an all-time high of nearly $42,000 earlier this month, and Tether is closing in on $25 billion worth of tethers.
A reminder that I have a Patreon account. If you find my work useful, informative, entertaining, please become a subscriber for as little as $5 a month. I could certainly use the support.
Tether needs 30 more days, restarts presses
Jan. 15, the big document deadline day for Bitfinex/Tether in the NY AG fraud investigation, came and went. On Tuesday, after a three-day weekend, Tether’s law firm requested a 30-day extension to give them more time to turn over documents. The request was on behalf of all parties, so NYAG was apparently okay with this.
We won’t get another status update until mid-February. Until then, Tether has agreed to maintain the status quo, meaning the injunction is still in effect, and Bitfinex cannot dip into Tether’s reserves. (Court filing)
For now, it’s back to business as usual. After what appeared to be a short reprieve, Tether is once again printing tethers with abandon. (On Jan. 19, Tether printed another 400 million USDT.) They literally can’t stop, won’t stop, because they are too deep into the game.
In lieu of an audit, which would put this whole matter of “Are tethers backed?” to rest, Tether continues to recruit reporters, bank execs, and other gullible parties to profess to the world that tethers are fully backed. Meet the next actor in this ongoing charade: Gregory Pepin, Deltec Bank’s deputy CEO. Deltec is an offshore bank in the Bahamas where Tether has been doing its banking since 2018
“Every tether is backed by a reserve and their reserve is more than what is in circulation,” Pepin told Laura Shin on the Unchained Podcast. “We can see it firsthand, so I can confirm that,” he said, while repeatedly dismissing the anonymous “Bit Short” article,” mentioned in my last newsletter, as FUD.
If any person/company was facing allegations related to fraud then why would their bank be rushing to their defence? I have never seen this before, at least not from any large well known bank. If Deltec and Tether/Bitfinex truly are independent of each other it is very strange.
Tethers are fully backed, but backed with what? Before they were called tethers, realcoins were supported by “one-to-one fully auditable stores of dollars,” according to a July 2014 article in the Independent Investor. “The bearer of these realcoins will have the first right to redeem them for subsequent U.S. currency.”
A reasonable assumption at this juncture is that tethers are backed by loans to third parties, bitcoins, equity in an offshore bank, a pile of shit coins, and increasingly fewer real dollars.
So far, we’ve heard from Stuart Hoegner,Paulo Ardoino, and a reporter from The Block, all talking up Tether lately, while the triad—Phil Potter, J.L. van der Velde, and Giancarlo Devasini—have slid off into the hills. (Granted, Potter claims he stepped down a while back.)
Tether invests in Fleet
Tether has invested $1 million of its customer’s money into an ICO. Game publisher Exordium, the company behind Infinite Fleet—a name perhaps borrowed from a popular saline enema product—has launched a public security token offering. It is unclear if Tether invested USDT or real dollars, but public participants can put in euro, BTC, or USDT, according to a company press release. (Decrypt, Infinite Fleet)
Infinite Fleet is Samson Mow’s blockchain game. Coincidentally, Mow is the chief strategy officer at Blockstream, a company responsible for a huge chunk of Bitcoin’s source code. Bitfinex is also a Blockstream investor. These types of incestuous relationships help explain why so many Bitcoin-related company execs are so fiercely defensive of Tether.
after the August 2016 hack, the community director for Bitfinex informed users that Bitfinex had investments in: Blockstream, Shapeshift, Netki, and Tether
There is reason to suspect Tether is partnering with startup exchanges by giving them USDT. Over the past year, all kinds of smaller exchanges have been announcing sizable tether giveaways. Alex Dreyfus, CEO and founder of Chiliz, for instance, said he was preparing for a 100,000 USDT giveaway. He also admitted he is a client of Tether and Deltec Bank.
Do a search for “USDT” and “giveaway” on Twitter and plenty will come up. Kucoin is one example. (Binance, an established Tether customer, is also giving away tethers.)
#KuCoin P2P's Reward to All THB 🇹🇭 Users, 10,000 $USDT to Give Away!
Here is something that hasn’t gotten enough attention. Grayscale Investments has played a role in fueling the bitcoin bubble. By convincing institutional investors they could buy into GBTC at net asset value and sell on secondary markets at a 20% to 30% premium after a six-month lock-up, it has created a self-reinforcing market dynamic.
Accredited investors looking to take advantage of an arbitrage opportunity, bought into GBTC, pushing up GBTC assets under management, which was then used to promote the idea that institutional investors, dominated by hedge funds, were scooping up bitcoin products. All this, in turn, lured more retail suckers into the market. “Look, all the big companies are rushing in! This must be a safe bet!”
But now that premium has dried up as fewer retailers are showing an interest in bitcoin, given the price has dropped by $10,000 in recent weeks. GBTC was recently trading at just 2.8% over NAV, leaving accredited investors stuck with GBTC in an illiquid market. (Bloomberg,Trolly’s thread)
Meanwhile, it looks like Barry Silbert has left the chatroom. He stepped down as CEO two weeks ago.
Now billions of “sophisticated” investments are trapped in an illiquid vehicle with no obvious way to get out. I mean at $20B AUM it was pretty clear the end of the road was in sight. What pumped Bitcoin up, will now crush it to the basement. Negative carry is a bitch.
Surprise, surprise. Former Ripple board member Ken Kurson was one of the 74 people Donald Trump pardoned at the last minute on Jan. 19. Kurson is also the co-founder of crypto rag Modern Consensus, where I worked for an intolerable six weeks. It’s just unbelievable this guy, who was criminally charged with cyberstalking, got a pardon. (Full list of pardons, NBC)
While many of Trump’s pardons went to political pals—including Steve Bannon, another pro-bitcoin guy—Kurson’s was an obvious favor to Jared Kushner, whose father, Charles, also received a pardon. Kurson’s pardon stands out, in part, because of the risk it poses to some of the women he stalked and harassed. (The Daily Beast, paywalled)
“Suffice it to say, what he was actually arrested for was part of an ongoing pattern of abuse, revenge, & sociopathy,” Deborah Copaken, a contributing writer at the Atlantic, said on Twitter. She worked for Kurson in the past, wrote about the experience, and helped the FBI with their investigation. “All jokes aside, I am worried about my own safety. @FBI – How do you protect those who helped you but who are now totally exposed because of a presidential pardon?”
Is this how YOUR boss sends you instructions for getting paid? "In another life, I'd be Mr. Copaken"???? What's the point of #MeToo and speaking up if doing so leaves one further afraid and exposed? Why do #pardons even exist for proven stalkers? Who protects those they stalked? pic.twitter.com/hhH7wKBCf0
“How can $24 billion worth of tethers move a $650 billion bitcoin market cap?” The is an insufferably dumb question, and I explain why in a recent blog post. (My Blog)
David Gerard wrote about the history of wildcat banks and early “stablecoins” with excerpts from an 1839 Michigan Bank Commissioner report. (Gerard’s blog)
Craig Wright is at it again. He is now claiming the Bitcoin white paper and Bitcoin.com are his. He is trying to force Bitcoin.org to take down the white paper, which they now refuse to do. (Coindesk)
Balaji Srinivasan outdid himself on Twitter when he compared bitcoin, one of the world’s biggest energy hogs, to a battery, setting off the “bitcoin is a battery” meme.
The Bitcoin battery is leaking. Someone call the Tether mechanic! 🔋
Stephen Diehl, a programmer, compares crypto to a “giant smoldering Chernobyl sitting at the heart of Silicon Valley which a lot of investors would prefer you remain quiet about.” His thread went viral.
Gary Gensler is officially named for SEC chair. (NYT) We can expect greater crypto oversight from him. (Bloomberg)
Meanwhile, Allison Herren Lee was sworn in as SEC acting chair until Gensler takes over. (SEC,Decrypt)
MicroStrategy bought another 314 bitcoins for $10 million cash. Saylor’s company now holds 70,784 bitcoins acquired at an aggregate $1.135 billion. (SEC Filing,Coindesk)
Circle has surpassed $5 billion worth of its USDC stablecoin. They produce regular monthly attestations. But as Frances Coppola points out, if Circle/Centre were a bank, they would have to produce actual audited accounts.
oh and if Circle/Centre had to become a bank it would have to produce actual audited accounts, not "attestations" from an accountant that don't tell us anything about the composition of reserves.
— (((Frances *Cassandra* Coppola)))🕷️ (@Frances_Coppola) January 24, 2021
Updated on Jan 24 with more info on Kurson’s pardon and a quote from Deborah Copaken. Also added the bit about Craig Wright.
Amy Castor 
