Tag: CZ

Crypto collapse: Binance is not so fine, FTX Delaware vs FTX Bahamas, Celsius, Voyager, Gemini, Tether

due to a mistake in the internal reporting system, it didn’t tell him that he’d taken all the customers’ money and given it to his hedge fund to gamble with

— Qwertycoatl on SomethingAwful

When your auditor quits, that’s bad

Binance is broke. It’s got the same problem as the rest of crypto — the assets are imaginary, but the liabilities are real.

Remember the 2 billion BUSD bailout fund for distressed crypto enterprises that Binance announced in November? Bitfinex’ed suggested it was for a hole in Binance’s accounts — and now we’re seeing that Binance is sure behaving like there’s a huge hole in their books.

But Binance got an audit! Well, not an audit as such. But it was done by accountants who sometimes audit other things!

The “proof of reserves,” issued by Paris-based accounting firm Mazars, specifically disclaims being anything meaningful. But it makes sure to use the word “proof.”

The report didn’t address any of the tricky bits — it didn’t include non-crypto liabilities, it didn’t assess the effectiveness of internal financial controls, and it didn’t actually vouch for the numbers. Michael Burry: “The audit is essentially meaningless.” [Mazars, archive; WSJ; Twitter, archive] 

Mazars has been issuing these “proofs of reserves” for Crypto.com and Kucoin as well. But now Mazars has abruptly halted all work for crypto firms — and scrubbed all mention of such work from its website. This is Mazars running like hell to get as far away from the bomb as possible before it goes off. [Bloomberg]

Meanwhile, users have been taking their cryptos off Binance and going home. Binance outflows hit $6 billion in the week Mazars halted its work for crypto. [FT]

Binance cut off USDC withdrawals again, claiming a “wallet upgrade.” It just looks a bit like a “wallet inspector.” [Twitter] 

CZ went on CNBC Squawk Box to reassure everyone that everything is fine … though he didn’t seem as at ease as he usually does:

CZ: “We are financially okay.”

Rebecca Quick: “Can you have a 2.1 billion withdrawal?”

CZ: “We will let our lawyers handle that.”

CZ was asked why he wouldn’t engage a Big Four auditor to pick up where Mazars left off. CZ said most of these big firms “don’t even know how to audit crypto exchanges.” Andrew Ross Sorkin then pointed out that Coinbase has a Big Four auditor, Deloitte. Quick rolls her eyes at the end of CZ’s stumbling explanation (0:26 in the Twitter link). [YouTube; Twitter]

Why Binance may not have as much money as they want you to think

When FTX bought out Binance’s share in the company, Binance got paid $2.1 billion in funny money. CZ told Squawk Box that “it was all in FTT tokens, which are now worthless.” [Twitter]

70% of Binance’s reserves are in BUSD, Tether, and BNB — the last of which is their internal exchange token, akin to supermarket loyalty card points, in the style of FTX’s FTT.

The BNB token has crashed in the past week, from $290 to $240, according to Coingecko. 

Keep in mind that BUSD on Binance is internal magic beans, and absolutely not the same as Paxos dollar-backed BUSD. If Binance thinks it could get away with cashing in the bridged BUSD at Paxos, that’s $2 billion of actual US dollars Binance could secure for itself.

BUSD on Binance is on their own BNB blockchain, formerly known as Binance Smart Chain — a very hacked-up fork of the Geth software for Ethereum. The idea is to have a platform that runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine, lets you rug pull, and so on. This “blockchain” features transactions that seem to parachute assets into the system from space with no verifiable history. Data Finnovation digs into the weird bits. “It’s probably not fair to call this a ‘blockchain’ anymore.” [Twitter, archive]

And there’s still no verifiable evidence that tethers can actually be cashed in for dollars — even if you’re Binance.

Sounding smart doesn’t mean you are smart

Confidence men are called that because they can say the most outlandish things and not bat an eye. CZ has mostly come across in media as fundamentally being on the ball.

But remember that Sam Bankman-Fried projected being smart as well — until we got a look inside FTX, and saw how incredibly stupid every single smart guy in FTX really was. 

After Reuters published multiple reports of money laundering at Binance — including Binance letting Iran cash out bitcoins in violation of international sanctions — the U.S. Justice Department is “split” over charging Binance with money laundering. The split seems to be whether to charge them now or later: “Some of the at least half dozen federal prosecutors involved in the case believe the evidence already gathered justifies moving aggressively against the exchange and filing criminal charges against individual executives including founder Changpeng Zhao, said two sources.” The DoJ has discussed various plea deals with Binance’s lawyers. The investigation has been going on since 2018. [Reuters]

Binance was also slashing staff in late November. [Twitter, archive]

It’s only a matter of time before Binance starts freezing withdrawals — just like FTX, Voyager, Celsius, and so many other crypto exchanges in the last seven months.

Who can bail out Binance? Only Tether is left. Perhaps some new crypto exchange will pop up and achieve improbable volumes in a remarkably short time. There should be some Jane Street wunderkind on hand to front the operation.

Strange things in the Bahamas 

The FTX liquidation proceedings in the Bahamas are distinctly odd and in direct conflict with FTX’s Chapter 11 proceedings in the U.S. [Bloomberg]

FTX froze withdrawals on November 8. The Bahamas government placed FTX Digital Markets, FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary, into liquidation on November 10. And John Jay Ray III, who took over as CEO of FTX Trading, filed for Chapter 11 in the US on November 11.

The joint provisional liquidators (JPLs), the three men in charge of liquidating FTX Digital Market’s assets, now want dynamic access to FTX systems — they don’t want just lists of specific data, they want to be able to go fishing through the system themselves.

Ray, who cut the JPLs off from the system on November 12, is saying “no way.” He and his team are pissed because of all the pillaging of FTX that occurred after FTX froze withdrawals.

FTX objected to the Bahamas motion saying there was no urgency and the other side was being utterly uncooperative: [Objection, PDF]

“Debtors have made repeated overtures to JPLs and Commission to meet and those overtures were met with avoidance and obfuscation. The JPLs and the Commission have refused to provide responses to Debtors’ questions about the assets ‘secured’ by the Commission. Instead, the JPLs file baseless motions seeking extraordinary relief on an unnecessarily truncated timeframe.”

Ray thinks FTX cofounders Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, the JPLs, and the Bahamas Securities Commission are all in cahoots. He told Congress: [Twitter, archive]

“The process in the Bahamian islands is not a transparent process. We have opened up the ability to share everything we have with the Bahamian government, similar to how we share with other liquidators around the world not only in this case but in other cases. It’s meant to be a very cooperative situation. The pushback that we’ve gotten is sort of extraordinary in the context of bankruptcy. It raises questions, it seems irregular to me, there are lots of questions on our part, and obviously, we’re investigating.”

James Bromley, one of FTX’s attorneys in the bankruptcy, has filed a declaration with rancorous correspondence between FTX and the Bahamas liquidators attached as exhibits. [Declaration, PDF]

Judge Michael Dorsey, who is presiding over the Chapter 11 proceedings in Delaware, told lawyers for the JPLs and Ray to try to find a middle ground. (His job is to be a referee, after all.) If they can’t work things out, they’ll be facing off in an evidentiary hearing tentatively scheduled for January 6, 2023. [Doc 197, PDF; Doc 203, PDF] 

So that you can understand FTX’s concerns, here’s a rundown of all the questionable stuff that’s happened so far:

On November 9, the day after FTX froze withdrawals, SBF told Bahamas attorney general Ryan Pinder that he would open withdrawals for Bahamian customers. Pinder previously worked at Deltec Bank — Tether’s banker since 2018 — but we’re sure that hasn’t influenced his decision-making, probably. [Doc 203, PDF]

From November 10 to 11, roughly 1,500 individuals, who claimed to be Bahamian residents, withdrew $100 million in crypto from FTX. Every other FTX customer in the world remained locked out of the system.

SBF said the Bahamas Securities Commission had told him to let the local customers in. The BSC denied this. [Twitter, archive]

SBF later told Tiffany Fong that he let the locals get their cryptos out because “you do not want to be in a country with a lot of angry people in it.” Could he have had in mind, not a mob, but particular individuals who might have had very robust opinions about not getting their cryptos back? [YouTube]

Separately from these withdrawals, at least two actors accessed FTX systems and withdrew another $477 million — hours after Ray filed for Chapter 11 on November 11. They also minted new FTT tokens. [Elliptic]

Ray and his lawyers say that SBF and Wang, who, acting on orders from the Bahamas Security Commission, minted FTT and transferred funds to a cold wallet under the control of the Commission. Ray still hasn’t figured out who the other actor was, but he’s working on it.

The JPLs have been tight-lipped as to what assets the Commission seized or how the assets were transferred.

There’s also the issue of the $256 million that FTX spent on 35 properties in the Bahamas — including land for a massive headquarters that never got built. The Bahamas regulators want to claim the properties back and they want the sale of the properties administered locally. Ray is likely to push back on this as well. [CNBC]

It’s hard to say for sure what’s going on here. We are beginning to suspect that FTX was a money-laundering chop shop, with some crypto businesses on the side. This would further suggest possible bribery of some local authorities. But the dots aren’t yet joined up.

Rats turn on each other

After four days, SBF has decided that Bahamas prisons aren’t so great, and he would rather be in a nice U.S. jail instead. [Reuters] 

Ryan Salame, co-chief executive of FTX Digital Markets, is the first FTX insider on record as spilling the beans on SBF. He told the Bahamas Security Commission on November 9 that FTX customer funds had been used to cover losses at Alameda Research. [Doc 225, PDF, page 34; FT, archive]

In 2021, Salame was a budding megadonor to U.S. Republican Party candidates — in step with SBF donating to Democratic candidates. Salame took out a $55 million loan from FTX, paid cash for a $4 million home in Maryland, and was buying up restaurants in Lenox, a town in Western Massachusetts. [NYT]

We’re not saying that’s what he used it for — but restaurants are notorious as a vehicle for laundering dubious cash.

Total donations by FTX to US politicians seem to be about $89 million when you trace all the darkish money as best as possible. [Institute for New Economic Thinking] 

$73 million of those political donations are at risk of being clawed back in the bankruptcy proceedings. [Bloomberg]

The correct regulator for crypto is the Department of Justice

Molly White live-tooted the Senate hearing on FTX and summarized it in her newsletter. [Mastodon; Substack] 

Here are all of the written testimonies. [Senate Housing Committee, PDFs] 

John Jay Ray III wants to sell FTX subsidiaries, starting with LedgerX, FTX Japan, and FTX Europe AG. [Doc 233, PDF]

FTX now has an official creditors’ committee of nine firms or individual investors, including crypto trading firm Wintermute. They still need to pick counsel, which should happen any day now. One of the first matters they will be weighing in on is a proposal to redact personal information rather than publishing a full list of creditors. [Doc 231, PDF]

When the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan invested in FTX, it asked the company a slew of questions related to their financial affairs — but received answers only to a few of them. OTPP put in $95 million anyway. [Globe and Mail, archive] 

How a crypto exchange can inveigle itself into the banking system — and how FTX seems to have done this with its Farmington equity purchase. Buy a bank, convert to a Federal Reserve member bank, notify the Fed that you’re going into digital assets and you’ve determined it’ll all be fine and you’re totally going to set up risk management. “If you’re lucky, your bank won’t be examined for a year or two. By then, you might have cranked up quite a dumpster fire.” [American Banker; Wall Street on Parade]

Canada has tightened crypto regulation even further in the wake of FTX. Client cryptos must be stored with a custodian and have no margin or leverage for Canadian customers. Non-Canadian platforms with Canadian customers will also be required to follow these rules. The Ontario Securities Commission had already refused FTX permission to operate in the province, but other provinces didn’t — and many Canadian FTX customers got caught up in the bankruptcy. [Leader Post]

Eliezer Yudkowsky, the AI risk guy who named “Effective Altruism,” advises his fellow Effective Altruists to take the FTX money and run. For the sake of charity, you understand. Others mention that clawbacks in bankruptcy exist — but ehh, it’ll probably be fine, right? [Effective Altruism forum, archive]

David spoke on CBC on Tuesday about FTX. It went pretty well. “TWO AND TWO MAKES FOUR! GRAVITY WORKS! MAGIC DOESN’T HAPPEN!” [Twitter; Yahoo News]

Celsius and Voyager

There’s no interesting news in the Celsius Network or Voyager Digital bankruptcies. Looking through the filings, it’s all procedural sports ball and not matters of real import. Everyone’s on holiday and nothing is going to happen until January. Perhaps Celsius won’t have run out of cash by then.

The next report of the examiner on Celsius was supposed to be out in December — but the court still hasn’t resolved the question of who investigates whether Celsius was Ponziing, which is the big bomb here.

Voyager is just sitting around and giving money to expensive bankruptcy professionals. Binance was talking about buying Voyager’s assets — but frankly, that’s a deal we suggest the creditors not take. They only just escaped being caught up in FTX’s bankruptcy.

Celsius has filed a motion to commence a $7.7 million clawback action against Voyager, as well as an extension of time to file a claim against Voyager’s estate. The Voyager Unsecured Creditors’ Committee is reviewing Celsius’ motion with the intention to object. [Twitter, archive]

Bankruptcy professionals will cost Celsius $115 million in the three months leading up to mid-February. [Doc 1676, PDF] 

Gemini

Crypto broker Genesis owes the Gemini exchange $900 million. Gemini has now formed a creditors’ committee to recoup the funds from Genesis and its parent DCG. [FT]

Did you know that 80% of the current market cap (613 million) of Gemini’s dollar stablecoin GUSD was printed in the weeks before the FTX collapse? Even odder, one unlabeled wallet appears to have minted 460 million GUSD. [Twitter, archive] 

On September 30, 2022, Gemini sought to incentivize GUSD adoption by increasing GUSD deposits to MakerDAO’s PSM (peg stability mechanism). MakerDAO was unimpressed. [The Defiant] 

Tether

Tether’s accountant, BDO Italia, is reconsidering whether it wants to do crypto attestations. “In common with several other professional service firms, we are currently evaluating our approach to this sector and the work we undertake for our clients.” Tether only hired them in August. [WSJ, paywalled]

In the lead-up to FTX going down, CZ from Binance was very upset that SBF appeared to be destabilizing Tether’s peg with … a mere $250,000 trade. We know this because there’s a secret chat group for the exchanges to conspire, er, sort out issues. SBF also put screenshots from these chats into the Congressional Record in his bizarre written testimony before the hearing, which he didn’t manage to attend. [WSJ; Forbes]

The secret ingredient is still crime. Police in China have arrested a gang who laundered $1.7 billion via crypto, including Tether — even after Beijing’s crackdown on crypto. [CNBC]

Other crypto firms who are fine

Three Arrows Capital (3AC)’s liquidator Teneo estimates 3AC’s assets at $1 billion as of July. That’s $37 million of actual money, $238 million in cryptos, $22 million in NFTs, and $502 million in venture and other investments. A lot of those “assets” are obviously imaginary. 3AC’s liabilities, which are extremely real, are over $3 billion. [The Block]

Grayscale wanted to turn GBTC into an exchange-traded bitcoin fund. The SEC said “LOL, no.” Grayscale sued claiming unequal treatment compared to the bitcoin futures ETFs, and even questioning whether the SEC had the right to decide against its ETF proposal. Now the SEC has written a 73-page response to Grayscale’s dumb lawsuit. [SEC, PDF]

Argo Blockchain Plc, a UK-incorporated bitcoin miner, has had trading in its shares suspended by the Financial Conduct Authority. The company is planning to file for bankruptcy. [Twitter; Bloomberg]

MicroStrategy is still going down the toilet. Bitcoin prices fell well below the “low watermark” for carrying value in Q3 2022. The company will likely face a new record digital-asset impairment charge in Q4. [Marketwatch] 

Dump on retail managed: Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong no longer holds any Coinbase stock. But he’s very bullish on crypto, he wants to make clear! [Protos] 

Image: Robyn Damianos for the Wall Street Journal

Posted on by Amy Castor 7

Crypto collapse: J. Pierpont Moneygone — FTX rekt, bought by Binance

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
  • Send us money! Our work is funded by our Patreons — here’s Amy’s, and here’s David’s. Your monthly contributions help greatly!

The 2021–2022 crypto bubble made a lot of traders look like geniuses. Then the bubble popped, the tide went out, and the traders turned out to be hugely overleveraged formerly-lucky idiots.

Sociologists know that when a cult prophecy fails, most cultists exit the cult, and the remaining factions turn on each other.

Crypto watchers know that this can also be exceedingly funny.

Imaginary assets, real liabilities

Sam Bankman-Fried’s boosters compare him to the legendary banker J. P. Morgan. He’s spent the crypto collapse bailing out ailing companies to keep the entire market afloat.

Bankman-Fried runs three large crypto enterprises:

  1. Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund;
  2. FTX, his unregulated offshore crypto casino that doesn’t allow US customers;
  3. FTX US, his exchange for US customers that purports to operate under US law and accepts actual dollars.

On November 2, Coindesk’s Ian Allison posted an explosive story on a partially leaked balance sheet for Alameda. [CoinDesk]

Of Alameda’s $14.6 billion in claimed assets, $5.8 billion is FTT — FTX’s internal exchange token. You can use FTT for cheaper trading fees and increased commissions. FTT is also traded outside FTX.

Allison also noted that $5.8 billion is actually 180% of the circulating supply of FTT!

Alameda’s liabilities are listed at $8 billion, most of which is $7.4 billion of loans — quite a bit of that from FTX.

Alameda is super cashed-up … if you account for FTX’s own FTT token at mark-to-market, and not what you could actually get for that much of their private illiquid altcoin.

To make matters worse, Dirty Bubble notes that a lot of Alameda’s other assets are crypto tokens from other Sam Bankman-Fried enterprises. [Dirty Bubble Media]

Alameda and FTX seem to have printed FTT, pumped its price using customer assets — FTX was quite open that it was the FTT market maker, and there’s no other real demand — and used the mark-to-market value of their illiquid made-up token as collateral for loans, or as evidence that pension funds should invest in crypto companies.

This works great while number is going up!

Regular readers will know that this sort of flywheel scheme is precisely what Celsius Network tried to run with their CEL token and Nexo with their NEXO token. Celsius is bankrupt, and regulators have noticed that Nexo is only solvent if you allow them this particular tricky bit of accounting.

Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison said the leaked balance sheet Coindesk got a hold of was “incomplete,” and there were $10 billion in assets not listed there. [Twitter, archive] 

The crypto world spent a few days wondering if Alameda was the next Three Arrows Capital.

CZ pulls the plug

Large flows of FTT were noticed on the blockchain on November 6. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao confirmed that this was Binance selling off its FTT: [Twitter, archive]

“As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books.”

The remaining FTT that Binance sold was worth $530 million. [Bloomberg]

CZ was also annoyed at Bankman-Fried’s lobbying efforts for crypto regulation in Washington: “We won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs.” [Twitter, archive]

The crypto market is incredibly shaky. Alameda and FTX operate as separate corporations, but the market seems to think they’re closely entwined. Trouble at Alameda leads to worry about FTX.

So panicked holders, thinking Alameda might be insolvent, started withdrawing funds from FTX as fast as possible — and hardly deposited anything at all.

FTX paused all withdrawals on the Ethereum, Solana, and Tron blockchains around 11:37 a.m. UTC on November 8, according to Steven Zheng at The Block. [The Block]

Finally, just after 4 p.m. UTC, Bankman-Fried and CZ announced that Binance was buying FTX. Specifically, they have a non-binding letter of intent, pending due diligence. [Twitter, archive; Twitter, archive]

Essentially, CZ started a bank run on FTX, then swooped in to buy his competitor after breaking it. CZ did to Bankman-Fried what Bankman-Fried has been accused of doing to a string of others.

At present, this is only a letter of intent, not a done deal — CZ is making Bankman-Fried suffer. He could just let FTX go hang.

How screwed are FTX and Alameda?

CZ said FTX was in a “significant liquidity crunch.” This is the sort of “liquidity crunch” that everyone else calls “insolvency.” If it were just liquidity, FTX could have borrowed against its assets and found another way out of this. [Twitter, archive]

We don’t know for sure that Alameda was trading with FTX customer funds — but this sort of fractional reserve operation is the only not-entirely-fraudulent reason that FTX could have run out of customer funds in this way.

Bankman-Fried claimed on November 7 that “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. We don’t invest client assets (even in treasuries).” This appears not to have been true, and he later deleted the tweet. [Twitter, archive]

If FTX couldn’t get its funds back from Alameda quickly, that would have then led to the liquidity crunch.

What about FTX US?

Bankman-Fried was quick to reassure customers that FTX US was not affected and that it was “fully backed 1:1, and operating normally.” So at least FTX US explicitly claims it isn’t playing the markets with your deposits. [Twitter, archive]  

FTX US is also attempting to buy the remains of the bankrupt Voyager Digital, a deal that we think is likely to go through.

The separation of customer funds and platforms is the whole point of FTX US versus FTX. It’s there to make Sam look good to regulators.

But it’s all Sam Bankman-Fried. It’s Sam’s left pocket versus his right pocket.

We think that if your paycheck goes into FTX US, you probably want to stop doing that immediately.

What happens next? It’s contagion time!

Alameda has likely been borrowing against the FTT it held — the FTT that is now crashing. (Earlier today, FTT was worth $19; as we post this, it’s trading at $4.60.)

Binance might rescue FTX, but it’s sure not going to rescue Alameda.

This means a series of margin calls by everyone who’s lent to Alameda. If Alameda defaults, those lenders will likely end up with worthless FTT.

BlockFi and Genesis have a pile of money in Alameda. BlockFi is or will be owned in some unspecified manner by FTX US, but that doesn’t make the books balance — there’s already a rumor of a 24-hour margin call by BlockFi against Alameda. [Twitter]

Remember that Three Arrows Capital collapsed when their UST turned out to be worthless. This then took out a pile of other crypto trading firms — most notably Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.

We’re left with two questions:

  1. Who is lending to Alameda?
  2. Who’s lending to those lenders — and risks going down in turn?

The crypto market is not happy. Bitcoin has been up and down like a yo-yo today, from $19,500 just before 4 p.m. UTC to a peak of $20,500 and a trough of $17,500.

We predict more market excitement to come — specifically, a possible Alameda collapse, a chain reaction of lender failures, and attempts to cover sudden balance-sheet holes, much as we saw after the Terra-Luna and Three Arrows collapses.

But Caroline Ellison from Alameda insists there’s another $10 billion behind the sofa or something. Maybe it’s all fine!

Image: FT Alphaville

Posted on by Amy Castor 2

News: Jennifer Robertson speaks (QuadrigaCX), BTC tumbles, Crypto.com hacked, SEC shoots down another Bitcoin ETF

“Bitcoin Widow” went on sale this week. Jennifer Robertson was busy giving interviews to promote her book. It’s the first time we’ve gotten to see her live and hear her voice.   

Robertson was married to Gerald Cotten, who ran QuadrigaCX like a Ponzi. He mysteriously died in India just before things fell apart. Robertson was clever enough to go to college and start a business, but somehow remained completely clueless when it came to her partner’s shenanigans. The lavish vacations, the houses, and private plane trips were nice, though. 

Globe and Mail interviewed Robertson. Actually, they interviewed the journalists who interviewed her. You still get to hear a little of Jen’s voice. The interview is pretty dry. No tough questions. (Globe and Mail) 

The National, CBC’s flagship current affairs program, was a lot tougher. As politely as possible, they asked why she wouldn’t simply allow Cotten’s body to be exhumed and checked to make sure it’s really him. I make an appearance on the show. (YouTube)

Matt Galloway on The Current spoke with Robertson at length. (The Current)

Galloway: “Did you ever ask why hundred dollar bills were scattered around your house?” 

Robertson:  “It was kind of a Gerry thing.”

As a follow-up to Galloway’s interview, CBC On The Coast interviewed me about QuadrigaCX and asked me what I thought about the book. Worth a listen! (CBC, My review of the book) 

BTC keeps falling

Bitcoin is down to $35,000 from its November record of nearly $70,000. The sell-off has outpaced that of the U.S. stock market. David Gerard opines his thoughts on what is driving down the price. (blog post)

He notes the crypto miners are holding on to their bitcoin. If they sell, they know they will crash the markets, so they’ve got to sit tight on their piles of BTC.

There are still $78 billion tethers out there. Tether hasn’t minted any new tethers in 2022, for some reason. And the Tether transparency page has a new look and feel. 

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is now trading at 28% below NAV, its lowest ever. (YCharts)

MicroStrategy stock is dropping in tandem with the price of BTC. MSTR tumbled nearly 18% this week. (And the SEC doesn’t care much for the company’s crypto accounting methods, either.) (CNBC)

Another exchange hack

Fortune favors the brave, or does it? Maybe not.

Crypto.com, the fourth largest crypto exchange, was hacked on Jan. 17 in a 2FA compromise. All told, the thieves got away with $34 million in crypto — 4,836 ETH, 443 BTC, and about $66,000 in another crypto. All funds are SAFU.

The hack was confirmed by Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, but otherwise, the company has been murky on the details, noting “suspicious activities,” and referring to the event as an “incident.” (Crypto.com announcement, Techcrunch)

Crypto derivatives trading platform BitMEX aspires to become a “regulated crypto powerhouse” in Europe. Its European arm BXM Operations AG wants to purchase Bankhaus von der Heydt, a bank in Munich. BaFin, Germany’s financial watchdog, has yet to approve the transaction. The purchase price is undisclosed. (Bitmex blog, Decrypt)

Last summer, BitMEX agreed to a $100 million settlement with FinCEN and the CFTC. Regulators accused the Seychelles-based exchange of failing to maintain a compliant AML program.  

In an effort to clean up its image, BitMEX has hired former Coinbase managing director ​​Marcus Hughes as its chief risk officer. (Bitmex blog, WSJ)

Everybody still despises Binance.

Armed with fake credentials, journalist Hary Clynch went undercover to interview for a top position at Binance. Naturally, he was offered the job. Part two of his three-part story is up. (Disruption Banking)

In her latest blog post, Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex, provides visual proof that price manipulation bots on Binance caused massive liquidations on July 25-26, 2021. (blog post) 

In public, Binance CEO CZ welcomes regulatory oversight and boasts about his sparkly AML program. Behind the scenes, he withholds information about finances and corporate structure from regulators, according to a report in Reuters.

Everything is “FUD,” says CZ. (Twitter)

Regulations

The SEC shot down a spot market Bitcoin ETF from First Trust Advisors and SkyBridge. The ETF didn’t meet “the requirement that the rules of a national securities exchange be ‘designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices’ and ‘to protect investors and the public interest,’” the regulator said.

In other words, all the things that the SEC previously objected to—wash trading, whale manipulation, mining manipulation, manipulative activity involving Tether, fraud and manipulation on exchanges, and so on—were never addressed in the proposal. (SEC, p. 15; Decrypt)

Meanwhile, in Europe, regulators are clamping down on crypto advertising.

Spain’s market regulator issued a mandate that ads for crypto assets must carry a warning that investors risk losing all their money. (Bloomberg)

In Singapore, the city-state is getting rid of bitcoin ATMs as it moves to dramatically limit consumer marketing of crypto. (Bloomberg)

In Italy, Consob, the country’s financial services regulator, has warned of risks linked to an increasing number of financially illiterate Italians investing in crypto. (FT)

And in the UK, the Treasury wants to bring advertising for the crypto industry under the same standards as other types of financial products. (Official statement, FT)  

Bitcoin miners running out of places to go

The bitcoin network consumes vast amounts of energy, mainly fossil fuels. As countries in Eastern Europe struggle to rein in electricity use in the coldest months of winter, they want the miners out. 

The Bank of Russia is doing all it can to pull the plug on crypto and make bitcoin mining and crypto trading illegal. (Bloomberg)

In Kosovo, where the government has temporarily banned bitcoin mining, miners are now rushing to get out of the business, selling their mining equipment at bargain-basement prices. (Guardian) 

And in the Ukraine, authorities bust another crypto mining farm illegally stealing power from the grid. (SSU)

NFTs and more NFTs

Every celebrity and big business wants to get into the NFT market, it seems.

Gamers won’t have it. They don’t like NFTs because they’re already familiar with broadly similar exploitative paid weapons, skins, loot, etc. When their favorite online games announce plans to incorporate NFTs, gamers push back. (NYT)

If only consumers would push back on this nonsense with a similar passion as gamers.

Dan Davies, author of “Lying for Money,” says gamers are more aware than most of AML compliance issues. He pointed out that Tencent shut down its online version of Call of Duty, after discovering the platform was being widely abused by criminals. (Twitter)

Scammers set up a new server at the URL previously used by Ozzy Osbourne’s NFT project, stealing over a hundred thousand dollars in ETH. (The Verge)

Flyfish Club is an exclusive NFT restaurant in New York City. When it opens in 2023, you can only enter if you buy an NFT. You still have to pay for your food in dirt fiat, because they won’t accept crypto in the establishment. Parent company Crypto VC Group has raised $14 million selling Flyfish tokens, which are being flipped on OpenSea. (Fortune) 

What would you expect from an NFT restaurant? Stephen Colbert investigates. (YouTube)

I see a new trend developing, and the SEC is not going to like it. BrewDAO just announced it wants to start a brewery. (Twitter)

Coinbase is teaming with Mastercard, so you can purchase NFTs with your credit card on its soon-to-launch NFT marketplace. (Coinbase blog, CNBC)

Walmart is considering creating its own crypto and selling NFTs. Of course, it is. (Bloomberg)

Meta wants to profit on NFTs as well. Facebook and Instagram are prepping a feature that will allow users to display their NFTs on their profiles. Meta is also working on a prototype for minting NFTs. (FT)

After spending $3 million on a rare Dune book, SpiceDAO is still looking for a way to justify the expense. It failed to negotiate IP rights. Now it wants to develop an entirely independent animated series. (Twitter)

RatDAO, which wants to accumulate blue-chip art, says it’s bought an unsigned Banksy print. Most DAOs I’ve looked at tend to focus on NFTs. (Twitter)

Cryptoland’s plans to buy a $12 million Fijian island have fallen through. The real estate agent selling Nananu-i-cake said the contract to sell it to Cryptoland’s backers fell through and the island is back on the market. Here is the listing, in case you’re interested. (Guardian)

One Jan. 18, Cryptoland founders Max Olivier and Helena López did an AMA. Molly White uploaded it to YouTube. It’s hysterical if you can stand to listen. If not, Molly has threaded the highlights.

Wikipedia editors have voted not to classify NFTs as art, sparking outrage in the crypto community. Beeple and Pak will not be included on its list of the most expensive art sales by living artists. (Artnet)

A women-led NFT project, Famed Lady Squad, is actually being led by guys, the same guys who are behind a bunch of failed NFT projects. (Input magazine) 

Other interesting bits

President Nayib Bukele, thinking Moody’s had downgraded El Salvador’s credit rating, said he “DGAF.” It turns out, Moody’s had not downgraded his country’s credit rating. Moody’s has rated El Salvador Caa1, a very high credit risk, since a downgrade in July. (Bloomberg)

Crypto media outlet CoinDesk is offering employees an equivalent of stock in its parent company DCG, which has its hands in hundreds of crypto companies. David Gerard notes that DCG has a history of pressuring CoinDesk employees to pump company interests. (Blog post) 

VC firm A16z wants more money for crypto investments. It’s seeking another $4.5 billion—more than double than what it raised less than a year ago. VCs are fueling the boom in everything crypto. (FT) 

MetaMask founder Dan Finlay acknowledges they’ve failed to remedy an IP address leak vulnerability that’s been “widely known for a long time.” (Twitter)

A flood of crypto rich are moving to Puerto Rico for the tax breaks, driving up real estate prices and making the natives unhappy (CNBC)

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk exchange tweets about synthetic wombs. (Twitter)

Dan Olsen posted a two-hour YouTube video explaining NFTs and the problems with blockchain in general. The video is going viral. (YouTube)

Martin Walker explains Web 3.0 in a 20-minute interview. (YouTube)

Crypto promoters often tell us it’s still “early days.” Molly White says the nauseating phrase sounds like it’s coming from people with too much money sunk into a pyramid scheme. (blog post)

Stephen Diehl has a great take on Web3, if you haven’t read it yet. (blog post)

Cryptocurrency is a giant Ponzi scheme. (Jacobin) 

Fais Khan illustrates that Coinbase Ventures-backed coins tend to underperform bitcoin after an initial pop on crypto exchange Coinbase—when the VCs cash out. (blog post)

Laura Shin’s book “Cryptopians” is coming out next month. It’s nearly 500 pages long. Public Affairs is the publisher. If you don’t have the time to read it, Patrick McGinty, who teaches in the English Department at Slippery Rock University, wrote up a great review. (Baffler)

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News: Signal goes worldwide with payments, IRS sets sights on NFTs, Bukele’s bad bets on BTC

Encrypted messaging app Signal made its new payments feature, which uses MobileCoin (MOB), available to the world in mid-November. Signal made no big announcement at the time, but the stories are coming out now. (Wired)

I wrote about MobileCoin back in April 2020 — and so did David Gerard — when Signal first announced the feature. MobileCoin was a side hustle for Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike. He was an advisor to the project and then got Signal to integrate the token.

I suspect Marlinspike was paid in MOB — advisors to crypto projects typically are paid in shitcoins — and is now looking to dump his bags. (My blog; David Gerard) 

Other messaging apps, like Whatsapp and Facebook, have payments built in. What sets Signal apart is it wants to combine end-to-end encryption in messaging and a cryptocurrency with privacy features designed to make any transactions anonymous.

That has Signal employees worried. They’re concerned anonymous payments will attract criminals and thus draw regulator scrutiny, ruining everything that’s good about Signal. Signal supporters warned Signal this was a terrible idea. Signal went ahead with its plans anyway. (Verge)

Anyone can use MobileCoin via the Signal mobile app to make payments — the directions are here. The problem is getting MOB to put in your wallet. MOB is listed on Bitfinex and FTX, but it’s not available to U.S. consumers. You would have to use a VPN to get around that. 

Marlinspike wrote a blog post about Web3 that’s gotten a lot of attention. (Fortune)

The story is good; he blasts Web3. However, in it, he says he was “never particularly drawn” to crypto. That’s not quite accurate. He simply put his crypto into his messaging app.

On Jan. 11, only a few days after word of Signal’s shitcoin hit the whirling blades of the fan, Marlinspike  stepped down as CEO of Signal — with no notice and no replacement. Executive chairman Brian Acton will serve as acting CEO until someone new is found. (Moxie’s blog post)

Signal, which was introduced in 2014, gets its support via donations. With 40 million active users, the project is now poised to transition into a sustainable and profitable model, so it will be telling to see who steps in to take over.

In the meantime, Signal supporters are losing confidence in the app.  

Nicholas Weaver, an infosec expert and staff researcher at UC Berkeley, says that even by shitcoin standards, MobileCoin is “high on the fraud factor.” (Twitter Thread).​​

MobileCoin’s primary privacy mechanism is that the ledger runs inside the SGX enclave (a separate and encrypted region on the Intel chip for code and data), which means privacy rests entirely on the hardware — not the blockchain. You have to trust the nodes in the system. 

Marlinspike is a cryptographer and a computer security researcher. He should know better.

“Put bluntly, the only way as a security professional you would endorse this as a valid ‘privacy coin,’ let alone push it out to your huge user base, is if you were faced with a dump-truck full of money,” Weaver said. “I hope Moxie’s dump-truck was suitably large.”

Day trading is hard

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has been day trading public bitcoin, and he is not very good at it. Bloomberg says he is probably losing money. (Bloomberg)

The country is about $1 billion in debt already. It doesn’t help that bitcoin took a nosedive recently, losing 40% of its value since its early November high of $69,000.

I know of someone else who gambled away other people’s money: Gerald Cotten, the CEO of failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX. The exchange carried the seeds of its demise for two years before the Ponzi was exposed. Cotten died mysteriously in India just before things fell apart.

I don’t see Bukele disappearing, so who will he blame when things fall apart? Probably his adoring bitcoin supporters.

We know Bukele doesn’t like the press. Turns out he has been spying on them. Since mid-2020, dozens of journalists in El Salvador have been subjected to phone hacks using Pegasus software, according to Citizen Lab and Access Now. Pegasus is the spyware developed by Israeli company NSO Group for governments. It can infect phones running either iOS or Android. (Project Torogoz, Reuters)

If you can get past the bitcoin boosterism, this story in Bitcoin Magazine by Anita Posch has a wealth of information in it about Bukele’s plans for bitcoin in El Salvador. 

I wrote before about “volcano bonds” — bonds Bukele is using to lure $1 billion from outside investors he will use to buy more bitcoin and build a crypto metropolis. Bitcoin City is set to go near the Conchagua volcano, so geothermal energy can power the city. It is uncertain whether the volcano is even active. “I was told that the volcano is dead, and there is no geothermal energy left to be used,” said Posch.  

We don’t hear much from Strike CEO Jack Maller on El Salvador anymore. Rumor has it, the reason he didn’t build the government’s official Chivo wallet is because he wanted $300 million for the job, and because Algorand or Cardano or Koibanx paid the government $20 million to get the contract.

Mallers is now boasting about how Strike is going to save the poor in Argentina. “Today, we use the world’s open monetary network, bitcoin, to give hope to the people of Argentina,” he tweeted. Only he left out the part where it only works with tethers, not bitcoin. (Decrypt)  

NFTs collectors, the IRS wants your money

The NFT market ballooned to $44 billion in 2021, and the IRS is on the case. It wants its cut of the profits.

It’s not clear if NFTs are taxed as regular capital gains or as “collectibles,” which means you will have to pay slightly more — but that doesn’t mean you should put off filing. (Bloomberg)

Media outfit Dirt raised money selling NFTs. Now it wants to incorporate those NFTs into a DAO, so members can vote on the editorial process. What could possibly go wrong? (Verge)

CityDAO bought 40 acres of land in Wyoming for a blockchain city. The group is offering citizenship and governance tokens in exchange for the purchase of a “land NFT,” which gives you rights to a plot of land. Everything was going swimmingly until the project’s Discord server was hacked and members’ funds were stolen. So far investors have lost 29.67 ETH, worth about $92,000. (Vice)

The news industry is struggling. The Associated Press has found a solution: It is launching a marketplace for selling NFTs of its photojournalism. (Press release; Verge)

Arthur Suszko was into Beanie Babies as a kid and began collecting them again as an adult. His current project is to create NFTs of his Beanie Babies. “It’s a merger of my childhood dreams and modern passions coming together,” he said. (Vox)

The Seattle NFT Museum is charging $175 to $200 a ticket for opening weekend, for those who want to “explore the future of art,” ensuring only the most gullible will walk through its doors. (Eventbrite)

Did you read about the woman selling fart jars as NFTs? It turns out the farts-in-a-jar story was just a big publicity stunt. The entire thing appears to be made up. (Input Mag)

CZ wants to give it all away

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) has a net worth of $96 billion. This is impressive given that his company does not even have an official headquarters. (Bloomberg)

That’s okay because CZ told the AP he is giving it all away. When you are constantly on the move dodging regulators, it’s nearly impossible to buy a mansion and settle down anyway. 

CZ said the only coin he holds is Binance Coin because he doesn’t like a conflict of interest and he doesn’t want to do anything unethical. Binance never does anything unethical. (AP)

An undercover journalist applied for a job at Binance under a fake name with fake credentials. Four interviews later, he was offered the senior role in Binance’s futures business. (Disruption Banking)

Elsewhere in the news

Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is investing in Citadel Securities. Sequoia Capital and Paradigm will invest a total of $1.15 billion in the stock trading giant at a valuation of about $22 billion. 

Citadel handles 27% of the shares that are traded in the U.S. stock market. A large part of that comes from processing trades for online brokerages such as Robinhood. (Press release, WSJ)

Citadel does not trade crypto. CEO Ken Griffin has been dismissive of crypto in the past — “I don’t see the economic underpinning of cryptocurrencies,” he told CNBC. But something changed his mind, probably the money.

After banning crypto mining in the country in an effort to deal with its energy crisis, Kosovo police seized hundreds of crypto miners. One crypto-miner admitted to paying 170 euros ($193) per month for electricity and getting 2,400 euros ($2,700) per month in profit. (Kosovo police, Balkan Insight)

Metamask is a popular browser plugin that serves as an Ethereum wallet. Matthew Green, a cryptographer and computer scientist, took a casual look at its code. He came back with “an uncomfortable feeling about the complexity and quality of MetaMask’s (current) crypto code, and some unhappy feelings about its dependency structure.” (Blog post)

Tesla now accepts dogecoin for accessories. It takes up to six hours for a transaction to go through. You cannot cancel an order. You cannot return or exchange an item bought with dogecoin. All purchases made with dogecoin are final. The future of finance! (Tesla website, Verge)

The disclaimer from Tesla’s merch store is worth a read. “..if you enter an amount MORE than the Dogecoin price, we might not be able to return the extra amount.”

Block (formerly Square) CEO Jack Dorsey is pissed off at Craig Wright’s legal nonsense. He is leading a legal defense fund for bitcoin developers, according to an email he sent to the bitcoin developers list. The fund’s first task will be to assist developers facing a lawsuit from Tulip Trading Limited, the firm associated with Wright. (Email, NYT)

Last year, Wright filed a lawsuit against bitcoin core developers after losing a pile of bitcoin in a hack, saying they refused to help him recover the lost coins. 

Dorsey manages a bitcoin exchange, a bitcoin development fund, a bitcoin L2 project — and now a legal defense fund. Bitcoin is decentralized. 

Cryptoland is a dream project to turn a private Fijian island into a libertarian utopia. After software engineer and Wikipedia editor Molly White made fun of them on Twitter, Cryptoland sent a cease and desist letter to her for making fun of them on Twitter. (Twitter)

They also sent a “cease and decease.” (Twitter)

After getting a lot of bad press, Cryptoland is fighting back! (FT)

As part of that, Cryptoland took down its cringe-worthy video. However, the Internet is decentralized. Someone uploaded a copy to Peertube. There is also an extended version if you really enjoy torture.

Celsius Network is a crypto lending and borrowing platform, whose former CFO was arrested last year. Network data shows CEO and founder Alex Mashinsky and his wife Krissy have sold approximately 20 million CEL since October 2020, netting at least $60 million. (blog post)

How Matt Damon thought we’d react to his crypto.com commercial. (Youtube)

Jamie Zawinski, the creator of Mozilla, who makes the Firefox web browser, wrote “Today on Sick Sad World: How The Cryptobros Have Fallen.”

Dave Troy, the creator of Mailstrom, has a great thread on the awful history of cryptocurrency. (Twitter)

(Updated on Jan. 17 to include how much money investors lost on CityDAO.)

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Binance: Fiat off-ramps keep closing, reports of frozen funds, what happened to Catherine Coley?

Last thing I remember,
I was running for the door.
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.
Relax,” said the night man.
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave.”

~ Eagles

Binance customers are becoming trapped inside of Binance — or at least their funds are — as the fiat exits to the world’s largest crypto exchange close around them. You can almost hear the echoes of doors slamming, one by one, down a long empty corridor leading to nowhere. 

In the latest bit of unfolding drama, Binance told its customers today that it had disabled withdrawals in British Pounds after its key payment partner, Clear Junction, ended its business relationship with the exchange.

Clear Junction provides access to Faster Payments through a UK lender called Clear Bank. Faster Payments is a major UK payments network that offers near real-time transfers between the country’s banks — the thing the US Federal Reserve hopes to get with FedNow.

In a statement on its website on Monday, Clear Junction said:

“Clear Junction can confirm that it will no longer be facilitating payments related to Binance. The decision has been made following the Financial Conduct Authority’s recent announcement that Binance is not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK. 

We have decided to suspend both GBP and EUR payments and will no longer be facilitating deposits or withdrawals in favor of or on behalf of the crypto trading platform. Clear Junction acts in full compliance with FCA regulations and guidance in regards to handling payments of Binance.” 

The Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, ruled on June 26 that Binance cannot conduct any “regulated activity” in the UK. Binance downplayed the ruling at the time, telling everyone the FCA notice related to Binance Markets Ltd and had “no direct impact on the services provided on Binance.com.”

Binance waited a day after learning it was cut off by Clear Junction before emailing its customers and telling them that the suspension of payments was temporary. 

“We are working to resume this service as soon as we can,” Binance said. It reassured customers they can still buy crypto with British Pounds via credit and debit cards on the platform.   

This is the second time in recent weeks that Binance customers have been frozen out of Faster Payments. They were also frozen out at the end of June. A few days later, the service was restored — presumably when Binance started putting payments through Clear Junction.

I am guessing that Clear Bank’s banking partners warned them that Binance was too risky and that if they wanted to maintain their banking relationships, they’d better drop them as a customer asap, so they did. 

Binance talks like all of these issues are temporary snafus that it’s going to fix in due time. In fact, the exchange’s struggle to secure banking in many parts of the world is likely to intensify. 

Despite numerous claims in the past about taking its legal obligations seriously, Binance has been loosey-goosey with its anti-money laundering and know-your-customer rules, opening up loopholes for dirty money to flow through the exchange. Now that the word is out, no bank is going to want to touch them. 

Other developments

I wrote about Binance’s global pariah status earlier this month. Since I published that story, UK high-street banks have moved to ban Binance, all following the FCA ban.

On July 5, Barclays said it is blocking its customers from using their debit and credit cards to make payments to Binance “to help keep your money safe.” Barclays customers can still withdraw funds from the exchange, however. (Since Clear Junction cut Binance off, credit cards remain the only means for UK customers to get fiat off the exchange at this point.)

Two days later, Binance told its users that it will temporarily disable deposits via Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) bank transfers — the most used wire method in the EU. Binance blamed the move on “events beyond our control” and indicated users could still make withdrawals via SEPA.

On July 8, Santander, another high-street bank, told its customers it was also stopping payments to Binance.

“In recent months we have seen a large increase in UK customers becoming the victims of cryptocurrency fraud. Keeping our customers safe is a top priority, so we have decided to prevent payments to Binance following the FCA’s warning to consumers,” Santander UK’s support page tweeted.

As I detailed in my earlier story, regulators around the world have been putting out warnings about Binance. Poland doesn’t regulate crypto markets, but the Polish Financial Supervisory Authority also issued a caution about the exchange. Its notice included links to all the other regulatory responses.

Amidst the firestorm, Binance has been whistling Dixie. On July 6, the exchange sent a letter to its customers, saying “compliance is a journey” and drawing odd parallels between developments in crypto and the introduction of the automobile. 

“When the car was first invented, there weren’t any traffic laws, traffic lights or even safety belts,” said Binance. “Laws and guidelines were developed along the way as the cars were running on the road.” 

Frozen funds, lawsuits, and other red flags

There’s a lot of unhappy people on r/BinanceUS right now complaining their withdrawals are frozen or suspended — and they can’t seem to get a response from customer support either.

Binance.US is a subsidiary of Binance Holdings Ltd. Unlike its parent company, Binance.US, does not allow highly leveraged crypto-derivatives trading, which is regulated in the US.

A quick look at the subreddit’s weekly support thread reveals even more troubling posts about lost access to funds. 

This mirrors Gizmodo’s recent findings. The media outlet submitted a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Trade Commission asking for any customer issues filed with the FTC about Binance. The agency located 760 complaints filed since June of 2020 — presumably mainly from Binance.US customers.  

In an article titled “32 Angry Complaints to the FTC About Binance,” Gizmodo uncovered some startling patterns. “The first, and arguably most alarming pattern, appears to be people who put large amounts of money into Binance but say they can’t get their money out.”

Also, Binance is known for having “maintenance issues” during periods of heavy market volatility. As a result, margin traders, unable to exit their positions, are left to watch in horror while the exchange seizes their margin collateral and liquidates their holdings.  

Hundreds of traders around the world are now working with a lawyer in France to recoup their losses. In a recent front-page piece, the Wall Street Journal said it suspected that the collective complaints may be the reason why Binance has received continuous warnings from many countries.

If you still have funds on Binance, I would urge you to get them off the exchange now — while you still can. When hoards of people start complaining about lost and frozen funds, it’s usually a sign of liquidity problems.  

We saw a similar pattern leading up to February 2014 when Tokyo Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox bit the dust. And also just before Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX went belly up in early 2019. In both instances, users of those defunct exchanges are still waiting to recoup a portion of their lost funds. Bankruptcy cases take a long, long time, and you are lucky to get back pennies on the dollar. 

Finally, where is Catherine Coley?

In another bizarre development, folks on Twitter are wondering what happened to Catherine Coley, the previous CEO of Binance.US. She stepped down in May when Brian Brooks, the former Acting Comptroller of the Currency, took over. Nobody has heard from her since. Where did she disappear off to?  

Coley’s last tweet was on April 19. And both her LinkedIn Profile and Twitter account indicate she is still the CEO of Binance.US. 

She hasn’t been in any interviews or podcasts. She doesn’t respond to DMs, and there are no reports of anyone being able to contact her. 

A Forbes article from last year says that Binance.US may have been set up as a smokescreen — the “Tai Chi entity” — to divert US regulators from looking too closely at Binance, the parent company. 

Binance.US maintains that it is a separate entity. However, Forbes 40 under 40 reported that Coley was “chosen” by CZ, the CEO of Binance, which suggests that Binance is more involved with Binance.US than it claims. 

Has CZ told her to stop talking? What does she know? Catherine, if you are reading this, send us a message!

(Updated July 13 to clarify that Barclays still allows customers to withdraw funds via credit card and to note that Binance.US is the Tai Chi entity.)

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Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Binance: A crypto exchange running out of places to hide

Binance, the world’s largest dark crypto slush fund, is struggling to find corners of the world that will tolerate its lax anti-money laundering policies and flagrant disregard for securities laws. 

On Thursday, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority issued a statement that Binance, the Binance Group and Binance Holdings Limited are not registered, licensed, regulated, or otherwise authorized to operate a crypto exchange in the Cayman Islands.

“Following recent press reports that have referred to Binance, the Binance Group and Binance Holdings Limited as being a crypto-currency company operating an exchange based in the Cayman Islands, the Authority reiterates that Binance, the Binance Group or Binance Holdings Limited are not subject to any regulatory oversight by the Authority,” the statement said.

This is clearly CIMA reacting to everyone else blaming Binance on the Caymans, where it’s been incorporated since 2018. 

On Friday, Thailand’s Security and Exchange Commission filed a criminal complaint against the crypto exchange for operating a digital asset business without a license within its borders. 

Last week, Binance opted to close up shop In Ontario rather than meet the fate of other cryptocurrency exchanges that have had actions filed against them for allegedly failing to comply with Ontario securities laws.

Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said Thursday that it would look into Binance Asia Services Pte., the local unit of Binance Holdings, Bloomberg reported. 

The Binance subsidiary applied for a license to operate in Singapore. While it awaits a review of its license application, Binance Asia Services has a grace period that allows it to continue to operate in the city-state. 

“We are aware of the actions taken by other regulatory authorities against Binance and will follow up as appropriate,” the MAS said in a statement.

On June 26, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority issued a consumer warning that Binance’s UK entity, Binance Markets Limited, was prohibited from doing business in the country. 

“Due to the imposition of requirements by the FCA, Binance Markets Limited is not currently permitted to undertake any regulated activities without the prior written consent of the FCA,” the regulator said.

It continued: “No other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of UK authorisation, registration or licence to conduct regulated activity in the UK.” 

Following the UK’s financial watchdog crackdown, Binance customers were temporarily frozen out of Faster Payments, a major UK interbank payments platform. Withdrawals were reinstated a few days later.

Only a few days before, Japan’s Financial Services Agency issued a warning that Binance was operating in the country without a license. (As I explain below, this is the second time the FSA has issued such a warning.)

Last summer, Malaysia’s Securities Commission also added Binance to its list of unauthorised entities, indicating Binance was operating without a license in the Malaysian market.

A history of bouncing around

Binance offers a wide range of services, from crypto spot and derivatives trading to tokenized versions of corporate stocks. It also runs a major crypto exchange and has its own cryptocurrency, Binance Coin (BNB), currently the fifth largest crypto by market cap, according to Coinmarketcap. 

The company was founded in Hong Kong in the summer of 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, more commonly known as “CZ.” 

China banned bitcoin exchanges a few months later, and ever since, Binance has been bouncing about in search of a more tolerant jurisdiction to host its offices and servers.  

Its first stop after Hong Kong was Japan, but Japan was quick to put up the “You’re not welcome here” sign. The country’s Financial Services Agency sent Binance its first warning in March 2018. 

“The exchange has irked the FSA by failing to verify the identification of Japanese investors at the time accounts are opened. The Japanese officials suspect Binance does not have effective measures to prevent money laundering; the exchange handles a number of virtual currencies that are traded anonymously,” Nikkei wrote. 

Binance responded by moving its corporate registration to the Cayman Islands and opening a branch office in Malta, the FT reported in March 2018.

In February 2020, however, Maltese authorities announced Binance was not licensed to do business in the island country. 

“Following a report in a section of the media referring to Binance as a ‘Malta-based cryptocurrency’ company, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) reiterates that Binance is not authorised by the MFSA to operate in the crypto currency sphere and is therefore not subject to regulatory oversight by the MFSA.”

The ‘decentralized’ excuse

CZ lives in Singapore but has continually refused to say where his company is headquartered, insisting over and over again that Binance is decentralized. This is absolute nonsense, of course. The company is run by real people and its software runs on real servers. The problem is, CZ, whose net worth Forbes estimated to be $2 billion in 2018, doesn’t want to abide by real laws. 

As a result, his company faces a slew of other problems. 

Binance is currently under investigation by the US Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service, Bloomberg reported in May. It’s also being probed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over whether it allowed US residents to place wagers on the exchange, according to another Bloomberg report. 

Also in May, Germany’s financial regulator BaFin warned that Binance risked being fined for offering its securities-tracking tokens without publishing an investor prospectus. Binance offers “stock tokens” representing MicroStrategy, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, and Coinbase Global.  

Binance has for five years done whatever it pleases, all the while using the excuse of “decentralization” to ignore laws and regulations. Regulators are finally putting their collective foot down. Enough is enough.

Image: Changpeng Zhao, YouTube

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News: Money laundering in real time, Binance has you covered, maybe, and Bitfinex ready to IEO with LEO

A lot is going on in cryptoland right now—most of it involves investigations, a New York Attorney General (NYAG) lawsuit and missing funds, but I don’t want to sound negative.

The destiny of all crypto exchanges is to be hacked, apparently. Last year, thieves stole $950 million worth of cryptocurrency from exchanges. So, in many ways, it’s not surprising to hear that Binance, the largest crypto exchange by volume, got hacked a second time.

Binance, all funds SAFU

Thieves looted more than 7,000 BTC from Binance in a single transaction. The hackers, however, are not free yet! They still need to move that $41 million worth of BTC into fiat,  a feat that typically requires layering funds into smaller and smaller amounts (generally using a script of some sort), moving it through coin mixers, and then funneling it through various exchanges until they can exit into cash. 

Thanks to blockchain, we can watch this money laundering happen real time. The first transaction out of Binance consisted of of 44 outputs. The hackers have since consolidated the bitcoin into seven addresses of mostly amounts. Now we wait.

After the hack, Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawals for seven days. Traders on the platform can’t dump their bitcoin—or their tether. If bitcoin were to crash, they would be trapped. Fortunately, bitcoin is not crashing—it’s pumping. As I write, bitcoin is now at $6,800, having shot up $1,000 within a week.

According to one expert, the boost is partially due to “a rare alignment of celestial bodies forged in an ancient supernova”—thus, number go up. Makes total sense to me.

Binance says it has an insurance policy—its SAFU fund—to cover losses on the exchange. Nobody knows for certain what is in that fund, because there has never been an outside audit, but Binance’s CEO CZ says they have enough bitcoin to cover the losses. Phew!

In a recent blog post, CZ also said the exchange is revamping its security measures, including its 2FA, API and withdrawal validation processes. Also, withdrawals and deposits should resume “early next week.”

Bitfinex’s legal woes

If you need to get up to speed with the Bitfinex and Tether saga, I covered the NYAG lawsuit in my previous newsletter. Robert-Jan den Haan also wrote a complete timeline of Bitfinex’s history with its third-party payment processor Crypto Capital.

We have podcasts, too. I discuss the Bitfinex drama with Sasha Hodder on HodlCast, and Robert talks about it with Laura Shin on her Unconfirmed podcast.

In response to the NYAG’s court order, Bitfinex submitted a motion to vacate. The NYAG filed an opposition, and Bitfinex responded. At a hearing on May 6, New York Supreme Court judge Joel M. Cohen called the preliminary injunction “amorphous and endless.” The prelim will stand, but he is giving both parties a week to sort it out.

Bitcoin was selling at a 6% premium on Bitfinex—a sign that traders are willing to pay more to get rid of their tether and get their funds off the exchange. The price of bitcoin on the exchange was so off-kilter that CoinMarketCap, a website that aggregates bitcoin pricing from top exchanges, stopped pulling from Bitfinex.

The Bitfinex premium disappeared when Binance halted withdrawals on its platform, Larry Cermak doubts it has anything to do with Binance though. He thinks it’s because Bitfinex started processing cash withdrawals again.

Twitter user “Bitfinex’ed,” disagrees. When bitcoins and tethers are stuck on Binance,  that effectively reduces the supply and makes it that much easier to pump the market, he told me. He think prices will crash when Binance reopens withdrawals.

“I am lion, hear me roar”

Screen Shot 2019-05-10 at 9.39.37 PMBitfinex has a $851 million shortfall due to issues with Crypto Capital. How is it going to fix that? Here is an idea: Why not just print more money?

The exchange’s latest plan is a token sale, or exchange traded offering (ETO), on its own platform. It will be selling a new token LEO—as in lion.

Earlier this week, iFinex, the parent company of Bitfinex, released a white paper outlining the business proposition behind the token offering. Each LEO is worth 1 USDT, which is worth $1 USD. This is not the first time Bitfinex has issued a new token to pull itself out of a financial mess. (It created a BFX token after it was hacked in 2016.)

Bitfinex shareholder Dong Zhao told CoinDesk that iFinex has received hard and soft commitments of $1 billion for the token sale. Perfect. That should definitely eleviate all of Bitfinex’s money problems.

QuadrigaCX

Ernst & Young, the trustee for failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, released a preliminary report describing the company’s assets and liabilities. In a nut, Quadriga has US$21 million in assets, but owes creditors US$160 million.

Elsewhere

Recently, Negocie Coins, a crypto exchange that you probably have never heard of, rose to number three on CoinMarketCap’s top exchange’s list sorted by volume. How is this even possible? Clay Collins, founder of market data company Nomics, made a video, explaining how crypto exchanges use ticker stuffing and volume spamming to game the system.

FinCEN has released a new “interpretive  guidance” for money services businesses using cryptocurrency. If you are not sure if you are a money transmitter, David Gerard breaks it down for you. Sasha Hodder also covers the new guidance in Bitcoin Magazine. And there were several tweet storms—here, here, and here.

The FinCEN document has far reaching implications, such as, it appears Lightning Network (LN) operators qualify as money transmitters. Emin Gün Sirer says he is not surprised “given how similar LN is to hawala networks, and given the role hawala networks played in financing terrorism pre-9/11.”

The US banking committee is concerned about Facebook’s attempt at a cryptocurrency—Facebook coin—and how the social media giant is treating people’s’ financial information. It’s published an open letter with questions for Facebook.

Redditor u/BioBiro, who needed to acquire bitcoin for a totally legal purchase, complains about the rigamarole he had to go through. Among other things, “Now there’s two pictures of me and my driving license on their server for the rest of time, I guess.”

Consensus, CoinDesk’s big money maker conference, kicks off in New York next week. Last year it had 8,500 attendees, pulling in ~$17 million in ticket sales—and that’s before sponsorships. Arthur Hayes, CEO of bitcoin derivative exchange BitMEX, was one of several who rolled up to New York Hilton Midtown in a lambo.

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Posted on by Amy Castor 1