Tag: DeFi

Crypto collapse: Treasury comes after DeFi, SEC comes after crypto exchanges, stablecoin bill, FTX first interim report

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“Please god let FTX go back into business, take a lot of money from crypto rubes, then collapse and lose everything again. Please let there be people who lost money in two separate FTX collapses.”

– Ariong

The Treasury brings good news for DeFi

The US Treasury released its “Illicit Finance Risk Assessment of Decentralized Finance.” The 42-page report examines DeFi from the perspective of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws. [Press release; Report, PDF] 

This report is not about consumer protection — it’s about national security, sanctions busting, and terrorist financing. The Treasury is not happy:

“The assessment finds that illicit actors, including ransomware cybercriminals, thieves, scammers, and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) cyber actors, are using DeFi services in the process of transferring and laundering their illicit proceeds.

… In particular, this assessment finds that the most significant current illicit finance risk in this domain is from DeFi services that are not compliant with existing AML/CFT obligations.”

The report makes clear: blockchain analysis is not sufficient for KYC/AML. Calling something “decentralized” or a “DAO” doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. And almost everything in DeFi falls squarely in the ambit of existing regulation.

How’s regulatory clarity for crypto? Just fine, thank you:

“Through public statements, guidance, and enforcement actions, these agencies have made clear that the automation of certain functions through smart contracts or computer code does not affect the obligations of financial institutions offering covered services.”

The report recommends “strengthening U.S. AML/CFT supervision and, when relevant, enforcement of virtual asset activities, including DeFi services, to increase compliance by virtual asset firms with BSA obligations” and “enhancing the U.S. AML/CFT regulatory regime by closing any identified gaps in the BSA to the extent that they allow certain DeFi services to fall outside of the BSA’s definition of financial institution.”

Nicholas Weaver tells us the report “should be thought of as being as serious as a heart attack to the DeFi community, as this represents the US government regulation at its most serious. Indeed, the report can be summarized in a sentence: ‘If you want to continue to OFAC around, you are going to find out.’”

The SEC brings good news for Coinbase and DeFi

SEC chair Gary Gensler is fed up with Coinbase blatantly trading unregistered securities and not registering with the SEC as a proper securities exchange. So he’s going to update the rules.

The SEC has reopened the comment period for a proposal, initially issued in January 2022, that would update the definition of an “exchange” in Rule 3b-16 of the Exchange Act. [SEC press release; Fact sheet, PDF; Gensler statements]

Gensler’s comments are laser-targeted at Coinbase — and also DeFi:

“Make no mistake: many crypto trading platforms already come under the current definition of an exchange and thus have an existing duty to comply with the securities laws.”

He reiterates that “the vast majority of crypto tokens are securities” — the SEC’s position since 2017 — so “most crypto platforms today” meet the definition of a securities exchange. He adds:  

“Yet these platforms are acting as if they have a choice to comply with our laws. They don’t. Congress gave the Commission a mandate to protect investors, regardless of the labels or technology used. Investors in the crypto markets must receive the same time-tested protections that the securities laws provide in all other markets.”

A regulatory framework for casino chips

On Saturday, The US House Financial Services Committee published an as-yet-untitled discussion draft bill for regulating stablecoins a few days before a hearing on the topic on Wednesday, April 19. [Discussion draft, PDF; hearing agenda]

The bill refers to stablecoins as “payment stablecoins.” This is utterly hypothetical. Nobody uses stablecoins to buy things. They’re chips for gambling on speculative assets in the crypto casinos.

This bill was a sudden surprise for a lot of people — but it appears to be a version of a draft bill that Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey (R-PA) was circulating last year. [Stablecoin TRUST Act, 2022]

The bill divides stablecoin issuers into banks and nonbanks. Credit unions and banks that want to issue stablecoins would need approval from the financial regulator they fall under‚ the National Credit Union Administration, the FDIC, or the OCC. Non-bank stablecoin issuers would fall under the Federal Reserve.

For this bill, USDC or Pax Dollars, under the Fed, might pass muster. But Tether would be kicked out of anything touching the US because they wouldn’t be able to meet the transparency or liquidity requirements.  

All stablecoins that circulate in the US would need to be backed by highly liquid assets — actual dollars and short-term treasuries — and redeemable within one day. That doesn’t leave much room for the issuers to turn a profit by putting the deposits in longer-term investments.

Custodia is not a bank under the Bank Holding Act, so for this bill, it would also be considered a non-bank. This bill would derail Custodia’s lawsuit against the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to try to force a Fed master account out of them.

The bill also calls for a moratorium on new algorithmic stablecoins until a study can be conducted.

Finally, the bill includes a request for federal regulators to study a central bank digital currency (CBDC) issued by the Fed. As we noted previously, FedNow would make a CBDC completely superfluous.

Hilary Allen, a professor of law at American University Washington College of Law, points out important shortcomings in the stablecoin bill. She argues that the bill is stacked in favor of stablecoins, and notes that the bill’s payment stablecoin definition could be a way of avoiding SEC jurisdiction. And while the bill calls for monthly attestations, it doesn’t say anything about full audits for stablecoin reserves. [Twitter]

FTX’s first interim report reads like Quadriga

John Jay Ray III, FTX’s CEO in bankruptcy, released his first interim report on the control failures at FTX and its businesses. Ray documents a shocking level of negligence, lack of record keeping, and complete disregard for cybersecurity at FTX. [Doc 1242, PDF]

The report confirms what we’ve been saying all along: all crypto exchanges behave as much like Quadriga as they can get away with. A few highlights:

  • FTX Group was managed almost exclusively by Sam Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang. The trio had “no experience in risk management or running a business,” and SBF had final say in everything.
  • SBF openly joked about his company’s reckless accounting. In internal docs, he described Alameda as “hilariously beyond any threshold of any auditor being able to even get partially through an audit,” and how “we sometimes find $50m of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life.”
  • FTX kept virtually all of its assets in hot wallets, live on the internet, as opposed to offline cold wallets, where they would be safe from hackers. 
  • FTX and Alameda also kept private keys to billions of dollars in crypto-assets sitting in AWS’s cloud computing platform.
  • SBF stifled dissent with an iron fist. Ex-FTX US president Brett Harrison quit after a “protracted argument” with Sam over how FTX US was run. Sam cut Harrison’s bonuses, and when “senior internal counsel instructed him to apologize to Bankman-Fried for raising the concerns,” Harrison refused.

Ray and his team have so far recovered $1.4 billion in digital assets and have identified an additional $1.7 billion they are in the process of recovering. (We’re still waiting for him to ask for money back from The Block, but maybe that’s coming.)

In other FTX news, Voyager and FTX and their respective Unsecured Creditors’ Committees have reached an agreement on the money FTX paid to Voyager before FTX filed bankruptcy that FTX wants to claw back now — $445 million in cash will go into escrow while things are sorted out. [Doc 1266, PDF]

Terraform Labs did nothing* wrong

South Korean prosecutors have seized 414.5 billion won ($312 million) in illegal assets linked to nine Terraform Labs execs. None of the assets tied to Do Kwon have been recovered. Kwon converted everything to BTC and moved the funds — worth an estimated 91.4 billion won ($69 million) — to offshore exchanges. [KBS, Korean]  

Who crashed UST in May 2022? Terraform Labs seems to have played no small part. In the three weeks leading up to the collapse, Terraform dumped over 450 million UST on the open market. [Cointelegraph]

Crypto mining: the free lunch is over

A bill limiting benefits and tax incentives for crypto miners in Texas unanimously passed a Senate committee vote and now it’s in the chamber. The bill was sponsored by three Republican state senators. Even they’re sick of the bitcoin miners. [SB 1751, PDF; CoinDesk; Fastdemocracy]

Bitcoin mining doesn’t create jobs — so Sweden has ended the 98% tax relief it gave data centers, including crypto miners. Crypto is outraged. [CoinDesk]

More good news for exchanges

The downfall of peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful is a comedy goldmine. Paxful cofounders Ray Youssef and Artur Schaback originally blamed Paxful’s closure on staff departures and regulatory challenges — but now they’re turning against each other in court.

As an example of their good judgment, in 2016, the pair drew police attention when they were spotted in Miami aiming an A15 rifle off their penthouse balcony for photo purposes. Former employees allege “favoritism, erratic dismissals, lavish spending on travel and reports of routine cannabis usage on the job by Youssef himself.”

Paxful’s business model was based on price-gouging fees on gift cards, according to one former employee. You want 10 euros worth of bitcoin? That’ll be 20 euros worth of gift cards. Coincidentally, money launderers are usually quite happy to pay fees on the order of 50%. Schaback thinks Paxful is still a viable enterprise. [CBS, 2016; CoinDesk]

As you might expect, OPNX, the new exchange for tokenized crypto debt run by the founders of the failed Three Arrows Capital and CoinFLEX, has gotten off to a feeble start. Trading volume in the first 24 hours was $13.64. [The Block]

The Winklevoss twins made a $100 million loan to Gemini. The move came after Gemini had informally sought funding from outside investors in recent months without coming to any agreements. We can’t find if the loan was in actual dollars or in crypto — or if it was just an IOU. [Bloomberg] 

Binance relinquished the financial services license for its Australian derivatives business, Oztures Trading, after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said they were likely to suspend it. Customers have until April 21 to close their accounts. [ASIC] 

Who were the unnamed “VIP” traders on Binance mentioned in the CFTC suit? Jane Street, Tower, and Radix. [Bloomberg] 

The Mt. Gox payout window has opened! Slowly. [Mt Gox, PDF; The Block]

Cryptadamus thinks that Crypto.com’s Canadian bank accounts are frozen. [Mastodon]  

Good news for bitcoin

The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade went through on April 12. You can now withdraw your staked ether! As we predicted, there wasn’t a rush for the exits. [CoinDesk]

Bitfinex money mule Reggie Fowler will be sentenced on April 20. His lawyer wrote a lengthy letter to the judge asking for clemency — no jail time — because Fowler lived a hard life and never did anything wrong before. Nothing he was busted in court for, anyway. [Letter, PDF]

Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy has bought yet more bitcoin, digging itself ever deeper. The company purchased an additional 1,045 BTC for $23.9 million, or an average price of $28,016, between March 23 and April 4. [8-K filing]

Tether got its tendrils into the US dollar system via Signet — former Signature Bank’s real-time payments system. Tether instructed crypto firms to send dollars to its Bahamas-based banking partner Capital Union Bank via Signet. We’re not clear on whether this violated the New York settlement — though if they lied about who they were, it broke banking law. [Bloomberg] 

Cross River Bank, the banking partner of Coinbase and Circle, built its business on buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) and pandemic loans. What could go wrong? [Dirty Bubble] 

With its firm commitment to quality cryptocurrency journalism, CoinDesk is hot on getting into generating its hopium space-filler using AI text generators. [CoinDesk] 

Media stardom

“Ukraine wants to fund its post-war future with crypto” — with quotes from David. [Techmonitor]

“A lot of ordinary people who got into crypto just lost everything in various ways or lost chunks of it,” Gerard said. “And this is a lot of  why I think retail investors should just keep the hell away from crypto.” [Business Insider]  

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: Terra Luna, 3AC’s Singapore liquidation, Celsius, Voyager 

“Lotta stadiums getting renamed in the next few years”

— Ben McKenzie
Daniel Shin and Do Kwon while number was going up. Source: Terraform Labs

TerraUSD

Centralized finance (CeFi) is centralized DeFi — investment firms that played the DeFi markets. CeFi was where a lot of the money in DeFi came from.

CeFi looked like an industry of separate institutions — but it turned out to be a few companies all investing in each other. The chart of who invested in who would look like an inverted pyramid resting on a single point — Terraform Labs’ Anchor protocol.

Anchor offered 20% interest rates on holdings of dollar-equivalent stablecoin Terraform USD (UST), the interest being paid in UST. You could get UST by buying Terraform’s luna token from exchanges like Crypto.com or KuCoin. (Crypto.com Arena used to be Staples Center in Los Angeles.)

All the other CeFi firms just put their money into Anchor at 20%, then offered slightly lower interest to their own investors and skimmed the difference. Terraform made its money by dumping luna on these UST buyers.

UST and luna were both tokens that Terraform made up one day — neither had any reason to be worth anything. Everyone in DeFi knew how rickety UST/luna was for months — they just went along with it while it made them money. A truly fiat currency.

The party ended on May 9, when UST and luna imploded, setting off a cascade of insolvencies across cryptoland. We’re still seeing the fallout.

Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) went into liquidation as it was heavily invested in UST and luna. Firms that had big loans to 3AC, such as Voyager, Celsius, and BlockFi, had to file bankruptcy or seek bailouts from other crypto firms. Even crypto exchanges had been playing the CeFi markets with customer funds, and many had to close their doors.

Thousands of South Koreans also lost money when UST and luna collapsed. Terraform Labs founders Daniel Shin and Do Kwon are stuck in South Korea for now, while investigators look into the incident.

On Wednesday, July 20, investigators from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office raided seven crypto exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, and Coinone. They’re looking for clues as to whether Terraform intentionally caused the collapse. They also raided some exchange executives’ homes and the home of Daniel Shin. [Yonhap News; Donga News, in Korean]

Elsewhere, South Korean prosecutors have discovered a shell company called “Flexi Corporation” that Kwon allegedly used to launder large sums of money out of Terra and into his own private accounts via over-the-counter trades. How can this be? Kwon said he only took a small salary from Terraform. [KBS, in Korean; Twitter] 

Three Arrows Capital 

UST and luna went under, and pulled crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital down with them.

The Terra collapse completely nuked 3AC. Their exposure was about $600 million. (This is triple what co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies had claimed in mid-June.) [Fortune]

Zhu and Davies are in now hiding. Nobody knows where they are. They told Bloomberg they were headed to Dubai. [Bloomberg, archive]

The pair knew immediately that they were screwed. But on May 11, when investors asked if 3AC had survived the Terra collapse, 3AC told them everything was fine — and kept taking in money! 

3AC had abandoned its Singapore office by late May — they just locked the door and skipped the country — and they finally admitted there were problems only in mid-June.

But Zhu and Davies have been telling the public — especially their creditors — how they lost money too, how they fear for their lives, and how they are so overwhelmed that they can’t turn over banking information just yet, but they’ll get to that soon, for sure.

The two old school buddies say they were shocked by how quickly things unraveled. “What we failed to realize was that luna was capable of falling to effective zero in a matter of days.”

Never mind that the instability of UST/luna was obvious to outside observers, that UST/luna worked exactly the same way as the Titan/Iron pair that collapsed in 2021, and that these guys were supposed to be a crypto hedge fund with alleged competence, and not the drooling crypto degen brainlet rubes they appear to have been trading like.

Zhu and Davies never planned for number go down, and had just been piling leverage on leverage. “We positioned ourselves for a kind of market that didn’t end up happening,” Zhu told Bloomberg. Never mind that a “hedge fund” is named for the act of hedging your speculations, and not just assuming you’re a genius because there’s a bubble going on.

Teneo is the firm handling 3AC’s liquidation, and they are moving quickly. They filed Chapter 15 in the US on July 1. Shortly after, they also filed for recognition of 3AC’s British Virgin Islands liquidation with the Singapore high court. 

Someone leaked Teneo’s 1,157-page Singapore filing earlier this week. The comprehensive document is a gem — it gives us a full update on the bankruptcy proceedings up to July 9. Teneo’s Christopher Farmer and Russell Crumpler left no rock unturned. [Filing, archive]

We recommend reading at least the first 35 pages — it tells the story of Ponzi borrowing, multiple defaults, ghosting creditors and liquidators, and doing deals with some lenders while cutting out others. The rest of the filing is exhibits, other court filings, and affidavits of furious creditors.

3AC’s biggest creditor is Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, the parent company of Genesis Trading, which had a $2.4 billion partially collateralized loan to 3AC. DCG is now stuck with up to $1.1 billion in losses. [The Block]

Other large creditors include Voyager Digital ($687 million), Blockchain.com ($302.6 million, up from the originally claimed $270 million), and Deribit ($80.6 million).  

Kyle Davies’ wife, Chen Kaili Kelly, filed a claim for $65.7 million, and Zhu Su himself submitted a $5 million claim. We have no idea how 3AC was structured to allow an owner and a cofounder to be a listed creditor in a bankruptcy.

Zhu and Davies reportedly made a $50 million down payment on a yacht — with borrowed money, while they defaulted on their lenders. (We’re definitely feeling the Quadriga vibes with this one.) They wanted it to be bigger than any of the yachts owned by Singapore’s billionaires, and ready for pick-up in Italy. Zhu told Bloomberg that the yacht story was a “smear.”

Tai Ping Shan Capital, an over-the-counter desk in the BVI, claimed it operated independently of 3AC, but it turns out to have tight connections. On June 14, 3AC transferred $30.7 million in USDC and $900,000 in USDT to TPS. It’s unclear where those funds subsequently went. [Coindesk]

Good news! In a supplemental Chapter 15 filing, Teneo says it’s recovered $40 million of assets! The bad news is that this is a drop in the bucket. Creditors have so far submitted $2.8 billion in claims, and there’s plenty more coming. [Court filing]

3AC creditors have picked a creditor committee consisting of the largest creditors: Voyager, DCG, CoinList, Blockchain.com, and Matrixport. The committee will work closely with Teneo to “maximize the value of the assets available for distribution.” [The Block] 

Blockchain.com is struggling to survive in the aftermath. It just laid off 25 percent of staff. [CNBC] 

In addition to owning CryptoDickButt #1462, 3AC had also started a $100 million NFT fund with pseudonymous NFT trader Vincent Van Dough. They supplied the funding, while Van Dough curated the art. (We mentioned CryptoDickButt last time, and we’re shocked that some of you thought we were just making that up. You should know by now that crypto is always stupider.)

The fund, called “Starry Night Capital” planned to launch a physical gallery in a “major city” by the end of 2021. [The Block, 2021]

The Defiant noted on June 17 that the Starry Night portfolio had been aggregated into a single Ethereum address, probably controlled by Zhu, Davies, and Van Dough. Teneo has noticed and is concerned. [The Defiant]

Celsius

Celsius promised 18% returns on your crypto. When too many people tried to pull their money out at once, Celsius paused withdrawals on June 21 and filed for bankruptcy on July 13. We covered the bankruptcy filing and CEO Alex Mashinsky’s declaration in our last post. 

Celsius admits to a $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet. Others think the assets are fake and the liabilities are very real, which would put the hole at $4 billion to $5 billion.

Mashinsky says that Celsius’ losses include $15.8 million from investments in UST and luna, along with $40.6 million in loans to 3AC. He also said that Celsius lost 35,000 ether tokens in 2021 due to an incident involving a staking provider that “misplaced” the keys to its tokens. Oops!

Celsius held its first bankruptcy hearing on July 18. SDNY Judge Martin Glenn is presiding over the case. Kadhim Shubber from the Financial Times live-tweeted the hearing, which took place over Zoom. Here’s a copy of the presentation Celsius gave to the judge on Monday. [Stretto; Twitter thread]

Celsius’ lawyer Patrick Nash told the judge there won’t be a liquidation. Celsius has a recovery plan: to HODL — and mine bitcoins! That’s right, Celsius wants to mine their way out of bankruptcy. Nash says the plan is to mine 10,000 bitcoins in 2022.

How did Celsius end up in bankruptcy? You might think it had something to do with Celsius making horrible investments and losing everyone’s money, but no! As Nash explained, Celsius was driven to insolvency by unfounded Terra/luna fears, worries about Coinbase’s bankruptcy risk factor disclosure in May, and a bank run that knocked over an otherwise well-run business.

Former Celsius employees tell a different story. Celsius compliance and financial crimes director Timothy Cradle spoke of the company’s “sloppiness and mismanagement.” [Coindesk] 

Cradle also told CNBC that Celsius execs “were absolutely trading the token [CEL] to manipulate the price.” A former HR employee said she was told not to do a background check on Yarom Shelem, the former Celsius CFO who was arrested in Israel for fraud. [CNBC]

Celsius creditors have been filing claims since July 18. [Twitter] The letters make for some disturbing reading. Molly White has been posting excerpts on Twitter. It’s a reminder that Celsius investors were ordinary people lured in by Mashinsky’s false promises. [Twitter thread]

Québec pension fund CDPQ also has some questions to answer. CDPQ invested $150 million in Celsius in October 2021 as part of a $400 million funding round co-led by WestCap Investment Partners LLC. “We understand that our investment in Celsius raises a number of questions.” [Bloomberg] 

Celsius’ next bankruptcy hearing is August 10.

Voyager

Crypto broker Voyager said its secret sauce was “low-risk investments.” Yet it loaned out three-quarters of its assets under management to 3AC.

In June, the firm signed an agreement with Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Ventures for a revolving line of credit so it could keep the music playing a bit longer. But on July 1, Voyager Digital filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Coffeezilla points out that Voyager is trying to sell people on this “Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorg,” and hides the fact that under bankruptcy law, a company that describes itself as a broker cannot file Chapter 11. They should be required to liquidate under SIPA. (Securities Investor Protection Act) [Youtube; Twitter]

The CEO of of crypto media outlet Benzinga will be on the unsecured creditor committee in the Voyager bankruptcy. Jason Raznick is among the largest unsecured creditors for Voyager. [Inside Bitcoins]

Voyager’s next bankruptcy hearing is on August 4. It has $350 million of customer money in an omnibus account at Metropolitan, and it keeps reassuring everyone that they’ll get their money soon! It just has to work things out with the judge first. [Voyager blog; archive]

In the meantime, Bankman-Fried proposed a partial bailout. Under his proposal, Voyager customers would have the opportunity to open new accounts at FTX with a cash balance funded by their bankruptcy claim. They would be able to withdraw the cash, or use it to purchase crypto on FTX. [FTX press release; FT, archive]

Other CeFi firms that are definitely robust and doing fine 

Vauld is a Singapore-domiciled crypto lender that serves mainly customers in India. It stopped withdrawals on July 4 and owes $402 million in crypto to its customers. 

After suspending withdrawals and laying off 30% of its staff, Vauld filed for protection against creditors in Singapore on July 8. [WSJ]

A Singaporean moratorium order is similar to Chapter 11 in the US. It allows Vauld to avoid a complete cessation of operations and liquidation of assets, while it tries to get its act together. 

Vauld later disclosed they were short $70 million, partly from exposure to UST/luna. Vauld issued a statement on July 11. Vauld and Nexo are still discussing an acquisition of Vauld. [Vauld blog, archive]

BlockFi released its Q2 2022 transparency report. The report showed it had $1.8 billion in open loans from retail and institutional investors by the end of June and $600 million in “net exposure.” [BlockFi blog, archive; Decrypt]

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: 3AC, Voyager, Celsius, and other DeFi casualties

Crypto contagion

The price of Bitcoin has bobbled along above $20,000 since mid-June. There seems to be serious interest in keeping it above that number!

Sam Bankman-Fried has been playing the J. Pierpont Morgan of crypto, rescuing sinking companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets. His companies FTX and Alameda have so far bailed out Voyager Digital and BlockFi. He says he’s got a few billion left to keep other crypto companies from slipping into the dark abyss of liquidation. [Financial Post]  

All Bankman-Fried can do is buy time. The entire cryptosystem is imploding. People are finally realizing that most of the money they thought they had in crypto was imaginary. You didn’t lose money in the crash — you lost your money when you bought crypto.  

We’ve been busy keeping up with the fallout, and mining comedy gold. Who thought staying poor would be this much fun? It was nice of the coiners to suggest it.

The liquidation of Three Arrows Capital

Three Arrows Capital (3AC) went into liquidation as of June 27. Two applications were filed in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) where 3AC is incorporated — one by 3AC themselves, and the other, a provisional liquidation, by 3AC creditor Deribit. [LinkedIn]

In a liquidation, a liquidator is appointed to tally up all the assets of a company and distribute them to creditors. It’s the end of the company. Provisional liquidation is not quite the end yet — it’s like bankruptcy protection, even though you know the company is probably insolvent. Wassielawyer has a great thread explaining all this. [Twitter thread]

Why would 3AC petition to liquidate themselves? CEO Zhu Su has shamelessly listed himself as a creditor in the liquidation!

Teneo is the court-appointed liquidator. They’ll be assessing the assets and the claims against the company and its directors. 

The liquidators are able to convert any crypto assets into US dollars. This could mean a few billion dollars worth of bitcoin getting dumped any day now — or maybe not, if 3AC’s own bitcoin wallets turn out to be empty. 

Less than a week later, 3AC filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the US on July 1. 3AC’s assets are (likely) not in BVI, but in the US and Singapore. Chapter 15 allows the BVI court to be recognized in the US — and protects US assets during the liquidation process. [Bloomberg, archive; bankruptcy filing, PDF] 

According to its bankruptcy filing, 3AC had $3 billion under management in April 2022. Analytics firm Nansen reported the company held $10 billion in assets in March. Money disappears fast in crypto land! [Bloomberg]

Also according to the filing — and we’re sure this is fine! — 3AC’s two founders have gone missing: “Mr. Davies and Mr. Zhu’s current location remains unknown. They are rumored to have left Singapore.” 

The last we heard from Zhu Su on Twitter was a vague tweet on June 14 — “We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out” — a month after the Terra Luna collapse, which set this entire cascade of dominoes falling. [Twitter]

Zhu is currently trying to offload a bungalow in Singapore that he bought in December for SGD$48.8 million (USD$35 million). The house is held in his son’s trust. [Bloomberg]

Fatmanterra (who is pretty on the ball) says he heard Zhu is planning to transfer the funds from the sale of the bungalow to a bank account in Dubai and has no intention of paying creditors with the proceeds. [Twitter]

3AC has other troubles, such as a probe by Singapore’s central bank. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said that 3AC provided them with false information, failed to meet regulatory requirements when moving fund management to the BVI, and ignored limits on assets under management. They weren’t supposed to manage more than SGD$250 million (about $178 million). [MAS press release, PDF; Blockworks]

Oh, look! 3AC’s money has an over-the-counter trading desk: Tai Ping Shan (TPS) Capital. 3AC seems to have a bunch of money sheltered in this entity, and TPS is still trading despite the liquidation order! Sources told Coindesk that TPS was “where the action was” for 3AC,  and where most of 3AC’s treasury is held and traded.

TPS insists it’s completely independent of 3AC, even though Zhu and Davies of 3AC are still part-owners, and the companies have long had multiple links. [CoinDesk; Twitter; CoinDesk]

Peckshield noticed that on 4 July, 3AC transferred $30 million in stablecoins to Kucoin — 10 million USDT and 20 million USDC. This is after the firm was ordered to liquidate. [Twitter]

Rumor has it that 3AC also looked to crypto whales for loans. [Twitter]

3AC also owns a bunch of NFTs — because we all know that NFTs are a great investment and very liquid. [Twitter]

Big plans for Voyager Digital (in bankruptcy)

Less than a week after crypto lender Voyager halted withdrawals, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on July 5. [Filing; press release; Ehrlich Twitter thread; FT] 

Voyager says it has $110 million of cash and “owned crypto assets” on hand, plus $1.3 billion in crypto assets on its platform. It owes nearly $1 million to Google and $75 million to Alameda Research — which recently threw Voyager a lifeline of $485 million. The rest of its large unsecured creditors are customers.

Alameda says it’s “happy to return the Voyager loan and get our collateral back whenever works for Voyage” — we’re not even sure what that means. [Tweet]

Voyager holds $350 million of customer money in an omnibus account at Metropolitan Commercial Bank — just an undifferentiated pile of cash, with only Voyager knowing which customers’ money it is. The judge says “That money belongs to those customers and will go to those customers” — but the company will have to sort through who owns what and conduct a “fraud prevention process” (KYC, we presume) first. [Bloomberg, archive]

Voyager sent its customers an email stressing that it’s not going out of business — it has a plan! [Reddit]

“Under this Plan, which is subject to change given ongoing discussions with other parties, and requires Court approval, customers with crypto in their account(s) will receive in exchange a combination of the crypto in their account(s), proceeds from the 3AC recovery, common shares in the newly reorganized Company, and Voyager tokens. The plan contemplates an opportunity for customers to elect the proportion of common equity and crypto they will receive, subject to certain maximum thresholds.”

Instead of getting your crypto back, you’ll get a corn beef hash of magic beans, and we’ll call that money, okay?

The only issues here are that future Voyager tokens, future proceeds from the 3AC recovery, and future equity in the reorganized company will all be close to worthless.

Putting this nonsense through the bankruptcy court will take months, and Voyager customers get to stand back and watch in horror as the value of their crypto plummets to nothing. Look what’s happened to Mt. Gox customers — they are still waiting.

Jim Chanos weighs in on Voyager’s apparently false claims that its money is FDIC insured: “Making false claims to attract depositors/investors is financial fraud, plain and simple. No regulatory jurisdiction tug-of-war need come into play here, if true.” [Twitter]

The FDIC is also looking into Voyager’s FDIC claims. [WSJ]

Patrick McKenzie writes one of his informative blog posts on money transfer systems, this time explaining what a deposit is — and what a deposit isn’t. Unsurprisingly, he rapidly gets to our friends at Voyager Not-A-Bank. [Kalzumeus]

Voyager is just trying to buy time. But given their apparently false claims of FDIC insurance, the odds they can get a judge to let them avoid liquidation this way are zero.

When the accountants get hold of the books and start going through everything, the real story will be shocking. We saw all this happen with QuadrigaCX.

Voyager stock trading was halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, after the bankruptcy filing. [Newswire] 

Cornell Law professor Dan Awry writes: “If you thought securities regulation was a jolt to the crypto community, just wait until they learn about bankruptcy law.” [Twitter]

Here’s a Voyager ad preying on artists. Why be a poor artist when you can get rich for free by handing them your crypto? [YouTube]

And here’s a Twitter thread detailing Voyager’s shenanigans in getting a public listing in the first place. They bought a shell company and did a reverse-merger — and then pumped the stock, only to dump it during crypto’s bull run. [Twitter thread]  

It’s worth a closer look at just how much ickiness from Voyager the Metropolitan Commercial Bank risks getting on itself. Dig page 30 of this March 2022 investor presentation, talking up Metropolitan’s foray into crypto customers. The presentation mentions elsewhere how Metropolitan wants to get into crypto. [Investor presentation] 

Celsius: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead!

Celsius Network Ltd. has a new board of directors. They’re all bankruptcy attorneys. [Companies House]

But Celsius is not bankrupt yet! As such! In fact, Celsius is still paying debts! If selectively. Though paying down debts is likely a sign that Celsius is getting its books in order before filing for bankruptcy.

Celsius has repaid $150 million worth of DAI to MakerDAO. Celsius still owes MakerDAO about $82 million in DAI. [FXEmpire]

On July 4, Celsius took out 67,000 ETH ($72 million) from Aave (30,000 ETH) and Compound (37,000 ETH). [Etherscan; Peckshield; Tweet]

Celsius has laid off 150 employees. [Ctech]

Let’s keep in mind that Celsius isn’t just about crypto bros wrecking each other. Celsius investors were lied to and stolen from: “Celsius customers losing hope for locked up crypto.” [WSJ]

Celsius’ CEO has a book on Amazon — you know, in case anyone felt they needed the financial wisdom of Alex Mashinsky in their life. What editor at Wiley thought this was a good decision? “This book belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in financial independence, cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, blockchain, or the battle between decentralization and centralization.” Also, how to take everyone’s money and lose it playing the DeFi markets. [Amazon]

KeyFi sues Celsius: I’m shocked, shocked to find that Ponziing is going on in here!

0x_b1 was a crypto whale, active on Twitter, who traded vast sums of crypto in the DeFi markets. He was the third-largest DeFi user at one point, with only Alameda Research and Justin Sun doing larger volumes. 0x_b1 was highly respected, yet nobody knew who he was or where he got his wealth from — until now.

0x_b1 turns out to be Jason Stone, the CEO of trading firm KeyFi, a.k.a. Battlestar Capital, who says that KeyFi managed Celsius’ DeFi portfolio from 2020 to 2021. The cryptos that 0x_b1 traded were hundreds of millions of dollars (in crypto) of Celsius customer funds.

As Battlestar Capital, Stone first hooked up with Celsius in March 2019. Battlestar said that customers could earn an astonishing “up to 30 percent” annually from staking their cryptos. [CoinDesk, 2019]

Jason Stone and KeyFi are now suing Celsius, saying they never got paid. A case was filed 7 July by Stone’s attorney, Kyle Roche of Roche Freedman. The complaint is incendiary. [complaint, PDF]

Celsius saw DeFi take off in 2020. Celsius figured they could use customer funds to play the markets and make some yield, so they hired KeyFi to trade for them, with a handshake agreement to share the “hundreds of millions of dollars in profits” —  rather than anything so trad-fi as, e.g., a written contract. (They did finally write up contracts after KeyFi had been working for Celsius for six months.)

Celsius invested cryptos, and its liabilities to customers were denominated in cryptos — but Celsius accounted for everything in US dollars. So if an asset appreciated, Celsius and KeyFi might show a dollar profit — but Celsius might not be able to repurchase the ETH or whatever, to return it to the customer who lent it to them, without losing money to do so.

KeyFi says it would have been trivial to hedge against such an event by purchasing call options at the spot price it originally paid. KeyFi says that Celsius didn’t do this — but told KeyFi it had. It’s not clear why KeyFi didn’t just do something similar themselves.

Celsius gave customers a higher yield for accepting payment in their own CEL tokens. The yield was calculated in dollars. Stone alleges that Celsius used customer bitcoins to pump the price of CEL through 2020, meaning they paid out less CEL for a given dollar yield.

Alex Mashinksy also sold $45 million of his personal CEL holding during this time.

“The Celsius Ponzi Scheme” starts on page 23 of the complaint. Celsius had liabilities to customers denominated in ETH — but bitcoin and ether prices started going up dizzyingly in January 2021:

“87. As customers sought to withdraw their ether deposits, Celsius was forced to buy ether in the open market at historically high prices, suffering heavy losses. Faced with a liquidity crisis, Celsius began to offer double-digit interest rates in order to lure new depositors, whose funds were used to repay earlier depositors and creditors. Thus, while Celsius continued to market itself as a transparent and well capitalized business, in reality, it had become a Ponzi scheme.”

Jason Stone and KeyFi quit in March 2021. 

In September 2021, Roche wrote demanding a full accounting from Celsius, and all the money that Celsius hadn’t paid KeyFi. This was the start of the present action, and this is what KeyFi is suing over.

This suit is important because it sets out a clear claim that Celsius operated as a Ponzi scheme. If the courts find that Celsius was in fact a Ponzi, then any money or cryptos that Celsius paid out to customers or some creditors could be clawed back in bankruptcy.

Stone is seeking damages for an amount “to be determined at trial.”

It’s not clear that Stone was as great a trader as he paints himself. A report from Arkham details how Stone racked up $350 million in losses. [Arkham, PDF]

CoinFLEX

We’ve been watching online interviews with Mark Lamb of CoinFLEX, which stopped withdrawals after $47 million of bitcoin cash (BCH) went missing.

Lamb, who appears alone in the interviews, keeps saying “we” and referring to his “team.” His wife is the chief marketing officer of CoinFLEX and Sudhu Arumugam is listed as a cofounder, but where’s the rest of the team?

How Lamb’s business really works: [Twitter]

  1. Create fictitious dollars (FlexUSD).
  2. Lock them up in a lending scheme.
  3. Offer unsustainably high yields to attract retail deposits. 

CoinFLEX had a special deal with CoinFLEX investor Roger Ver, where it would not liquidate Ver’s account in the event of a margin call — a highly risky proposition for Coinflex.

Ver had taken a large long position in BCH, which was losing value. [Twitter] Lamb claims Ver needed to deposit $47 million to meet a margin call.

But it looks like Lamb liquidated Ver’s BCH anyway by selling it on Binance, even though he’s claimed to know nothing of this. CoinFLEX claims that Ver owes them $47 million, while Ver considers that Lamb broke their agreement.

Lamb lent one-third of all CoinFLEX’s customer money to one guy. Now, with the “significant loss in liquidating his significant FLEX coin positions,” the deficit for Ver’s account is $84 million. CoinFLEX says that they’ve brought an arbitration against Ver in Hong Kong. It will take 12 months to get a judgment. [blog post]

Meanwhile, CoinFLEX are … issuing a new coin (rvUSD), out of thin air, to pay back their existing customers.

Lamb explained his incredible plan to rescue CoinFLEX in an interview with Ash Bennington on Real Vision. Lamb refused to reveal how big the hole in his books actually is. “I can’t comment on those specific figures at this time.” [Twitter]

But creditors will be made whole and transparency will come — in the fabulous future, along with an audit! 

Lamb’s plan includes issuing rvUSD, a debt token. You get 20% returns — also to be paid in rvUSD. Lamb says the returns will be funded by Ver paying the money, which Ver still maintains he doesn’t owe.

Lamb has clearly thought all of this through carefully with his “team.” Their hard work is apparent — the rvUSD whitepaper is three pages long. [Whitepaper, PDF]

Who would want to buy rvUSD? Lamb told Bennington he has lots of “big” investors lined up. CoinFLEX says it will resume 10% of withdrawals in a week and everyone will get their money as soon as these big investors come through. 

There are 197 million FlexUSD tokens in the wild, according to Coingecko. Even if Ver owes $47 million, there should still be a difference of $150 million in collateral there — if FlexUSD is indeed fully backed by USDC, as Lamb claims it is. Additionally, CoinFLEX still has $10 million of BCH held for its bridge to its SmartBCH chain. And there are user deposits on the exchange.

So what percentage of assets does CoinFLEX still have? Why won’t they release assets and liabilities?

Other legitimate trading firms that are definitely stable going concerns

BlockFi: BlockFi and FTX reached a deal on 1 July, where FTX will buy BlockFi for a “variable price of up to $240 million based on performance triggers” that will provide Blockfi with a $400 million credit facility.  [BlockFi; Twitter thread]

Babel: Orthogonal Trading issued a default to defunct DeFi lender Babel regarding a $10 million loan. [Twitter]

Genesis: Genesis is one of the largest cryptocurrency brokerages for institutional investors. The company confirmed speculation that it had exposure to 3AC. Genesis is part of Digital Currency Group, who put in some cash to prop them up. [Bloomberg; Twitter]  

Blockchain.com: another crypto exchange that thought playing the DeFi markets with customer funds was a good and cool idea. They lost $270 million in loans to 3AC. They told shareholders: “Three Arrows is rapidly becoming insolvent and the default impact is approximately $270 million worth of cryptocurrency and U.S. dollar loans from Blockchain.com.” [CoinDesk]

Uprise: Korean crypto startup Uprise lost $20 million shorting luna in May. They were right about luna — but their short was wiped out anyway, by a sudden spike in the price. [The Block]

CoinLoan: Crypto lender CoinLoan restricted withdrawal limits on 4 July — from $500,000 per day down to only $5,000 per day. They are calling this a “temporary change” to withdrawal limits. Presumably, it’s “temporary” because it will soon be $0. [Tweet; Bitfinex Tweet] 

They directly say this is because of “a spike in withdrawals of assets from CoinLoan.” How dare you try to get your funds out! [blog, archive]

Nexo: has signed a term sheet to acquire 100% of defunct Indian crypto exchange Vauld. It’s not clear what’s left in Vauld, or if Nexo thinks they can pillage the corpse but pretend Vauld’s considerable liabilities to customers don’t exist. [Coindesk]

Our friend Michel does the numbers. He estimates $300 million was lost by Vauld in the UST/luna collapse. [Twitter]

Bitcoin Core ETP: this is an exchange-traded product, a bit like a bitcoin ETF, but based in Switzerland. How does the ETP plan to make money? By lending out the bitcoins on the DeFi markets! That will definitely work out fine, probably. [FT, paywalled]

Posted on by Amy Castor 2

Who had Voyager Digital next in the DeFi dead pool?

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
  • Become a patron and support our work — Amy’s Patreon is here; David’s is here.

In our last episode, Voyager Digital was looking shaky. Voyager had a massive hole in its balance sheet, courtesy of Three Arrows Capital (3AC), which had imploded. Voyager had maxed out its line of credit from Alameda for the month — it could only withdraw $75 million in credit for each 30-day rolling period. 

On Friday, July 1, Voyager announced it was “temporarily suspending trading, deposits, withdrawals and loyalty rewards.” [Voyager, archive; WSJ]

How screwed is Voyager? Three-quarters of their assets — about $600 to $700 million in BTC and USDC owed by 3AC — are missing. [Press release; Yahoo Finance]

How screwed are Voyager’s customers? “Your debit card will stop working … exploring strategic alternatives,” the crypto broker said. “We are in discussions with various parties regarding additional liquidity and the go-forward strategy for the company.” [Voyager blog, archive]

Whoever had Voyager Digital next in the DeFi dead pool: you may now claim your 100 trillion luna.

Voyager’s business

Voyager is — or was — a crypto investment firm. You deposited dollars or crypto into Voyager, and you earned up to 12% interest on your deposits via their Earn program. The company claimed 3.5 million customers. 

It also had a mobile app that allowed you to trade 100 different cryptocurrencies commission-free. [Voyager, archive]

Voyager was a “CeFi” company, or centralized DeFi — an investment firm that played the DeFi markets.

It also offered a debit card. Customers deposited dollars, which were immediately converted to the USDC stablecoin, which Voyager paid a yield of up to 9% on. “Earn like crypto, spend like cash.” [Voyager, archive]

Voyager very much wanted its customers to treat the company like their bank — and deposit their money. It encouraged customers to directly deposit their paychecks into their Voyager debit card account.

It’s not a bank, though. We’ll see in a moment why that turned out to be important.

The company offered “even greater rewards” if you owned their VGX token! This was aimed squarely at the cryptocurrency audience: “When it comes to your crypto, every satoshi counts.” With VGX you could get up to a 12% yield! [Voyager; archive]

Voyager is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. However, its services were only available to Americans — not Canadians. [Voyager terms of use; archive]

At the end of March 2022, Voyager got cease-and-desist letters and orders to show cause from the states of New Jersey, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Vermont, and Washington — who considered Voyager’s yield platform to be an unregistered offering of securities. [CoinDesk; press release]

Voyager’s liabilities

Here is Voyager’s press release for their Q3 2022 numbers, released on May 16. (Voyager’s financial year is July to June, so January to March is Q3.) The headline announced that revenue was up — $102 million! [Voyager, archive]

But the numbers show that year-over-year losses were also way up — Voyager had operating losses of $43 million. The company was burning money to pump up revenue and user numbers. Voyager promoted both these numbers to investors in June 2022 without mentioning the losses that were getting it there. [Voyager, archive]

The Q3 2022 numbers were announced when UST and luna had gone to zero, and Terraform’s Anchor protocol had collapsed. Voyager CFO Evan Psaropoulos said on the quarter’s earnings call: [Seeking Alpha]

“It is important to note with recent news related to UST and LUNA, that Voyager does not have UST listed on the platform and has not placed any access in any DeFi lending protocols such as the Anchor platform.”

But it turned out that Voyager was heavily exposed to UST, luna, and Anchor — via their largest debtor, Three Arrows Capital. The guys at 3AC knew they were in terminal trouble, but hadn’t told anyone yet — including their creditor, Voyager.

In the Q3 2022 earnings call, voyager CEO Steve Ehrlich said:

“We also spoke to all of our counterparties on lending and verified that there were no issues. In the past, we’ve had questions from investors about one counterparty. And as of today, we have no exposure to that counterparty.

… the people we lend to are some of the biggest names in the industry. As we stated, too, we had conversations and verified there was no contagion with them, had conversations with every single one of them. And since we limit who we lend to, to these parties, we’re really comfortable we did not have to call anything in and we had zero issues with any of our borrowers.”

Which counterparty could that have been?

Voyager released new financials yesterday afternoon, July 1, as part of its announcement that it was suspending withdrawals, detailing the 3AC-shaped hole in their numbers.

Is Voyager FDIC insured? No, but they’d like you to think so

If you had dollars on deposit with Voyager, you should assume they’re gone and not coming back.

Voyager tried very hard to imply in the large print that customer deposits were insured up to $250,000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) if something happened to Voyager — and only admitted in the small print that they weren’t. Voyager tweeted on November 12, 2020: [Twitter; archive]

“Have you heard? USD held with Voyager is FDIC insured up to $250K. Our customers’ security is our top priority. Start growing your crypto portfolio today.”

But your dollars had already been converted into USDC. Voyager then used the USDC, a liability to you, as collateral for loans it took out elsewhere. The user agreement explicitly allows this: [Voyager, archive]

“Consent to Rehypothecate. Customer grants Voyager the right, subject to applicable law, without further notice to Customer, to hold Cryptocurrency held in Customer’s Account in Voyager’s name or in another name, and to pledge, repledge, hypothecate, rehypothecate, sell, lend, stake, arrange for staking, or otherwise transfer or use any amount of such Cryptocurrency, separately or together with other property, with all attendant rights of ownership, and for any period of time and without retaining a like amount of Cryptocurrency, and to use or invest such Cryptocurrency at Customer’s sole risk.”

Your dollars were transformed into Voyager’s USDC the moment you deposited.

Voyager has an omnibus account with Metropolitan Commercial Bank, where it deposited its customers’ dollars. An omnibus account is a single holding account for money from multiple investors. Voyager acts as the money manager of the omnibus account — and maintains full control of the money.

Pass-through FDIC insurance, which would cover the customers and not just Voyager, is a bit tricky. You have to meet several requirements. Fundamentally, the funds need to be a liability of the bank, e.g., Metropolitan, not the account holder, e.g., Voyager. [FDIC; Seward & Kissel LL]  

If Metropolitan failed, the FDIC insurance would cover Voyager up to $250,000. But Voyager’s customers were not FDIC insured. And Metropolitan is doing just fine. 

Voyager repeatedly and consistently led customers to believe their US dollar deposits were safe if Voyager failed.

Usually, Voyager just tried to imply that customer deposits were directly FDIC-insured — and then detailed in the fine print how this wasn’t the case. Occasionally, Voyager slipped up and claimed this directly, such as in this blog post of December 18, 2019: [Medium, archive]

“Through our strategic relationships with our banking partners, all customers’ USD held with Voyager is now FDIC insured. That means that in the rare event your USD funds are compromised due to the company or our banking partner’s failure, you are guaranteed a full reimbursement (up to $250,000). We’re excited to offer our customers an extra level of security, so they can feel more comfortable holding their USD with Voyager.” [emphasis ours]

Let’s say that again: “you are guaranteed a full reimbursement”

This claim was simply not true.

Metropolitan Bank has issued a statement on Voyager and FDIC insurance — we expect they’ve been getting a lot of calls from Voyager customers: [Metropolitan, archive]

“FDIC insurance coverage is available only to protect against the failure of Metropolitan Commercial Bank. FDIC insurance does not protect against the failure of Voyager, any act or omission of Voyager or its employees, or the loss in value of cryptocurrency or other assets.”

Several Voyager customers on Reddit were very confused about all of this. Many were trying to figure out how to file an insurance claim to get their cash back. Others were learning for the first time that their dollar deposits were not, in fact, safe. [Reddit; Reddit] 

Reddit user DannyDaemonic called up the FDIC: [Reddit]

“I called the FDIC earlier and they said Voyager Digital LLC was not a bank and was not FDIC insured. They said for future reference, LLCs cannot be banks, ever. So when you see “LLC,” any claim of FDIC insurance is false. They did confirm that Metropolitan Bank is FDIC Insured but just because Voyager Digital stated “each Customer is a customer of the Bank” doesn’t mean they were funding those accounts. It just means if Metropolitan Bank failed, any holdings Voyager Digital placed under your name there would be safe. But since it’s only Metropolitan Bank that’s FDIC insured, Voyager Digital failing wouldn’t trigger the FDIC insurance.

I imagine Voyager is allowed to withdrawal from those accounts to pay debt or make investments. It’s also possible, if Voyager Digital is insolvent, that they haven’t even been depositing cash into the Metropolitan Bank for quite some time.

It doesn’t look good.”

The precise law that Voyager seems to be playing fast and loose with is 18 USC 709 — “False Advertising or Misuse of Names to Indicate Federal Agency”: [Onecle]

“… or falsely advertises or otherwise represents by any device whatsoever the extent to which or the manner in which the deposit liabilities of an insured bank or banks are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation…”

As of March 31, Voyager claimed to have $175 million in cash. At present, it’s not clear they have any cash. They said they had $355 million in cash “held for customers” as of June 30, per their press release. However, they haven’t spelled out liabilities, including “cash owed to customers.” What really matters to customers is the balance held at Metropolitan, and we don’t know what that is.

At this point, Voyager either needs to get another loan from FTX or declare bankruptcy.

If Voyager does need cash, they’ll have to sell their bitcoins and ether — driving down the prices of those. 

The purpose of CeFi is to mis-sell investments

The CeFi lenders who are collapsing right now, such as Voyager and Celsius, are in the business of packaging up extreme risk as a shiny product — so that they can mis-sell these to the public as retail-suitable investments.

DeFi is a bunch of wires on a lab bench — not a finished product. CeFi puts a shiny box around the breadboarded system held together with clips and lumps of explosive.

The CeFi companies then lie to their customers that the remarkable interest rates on offer can exist without a jaw-dropping amount of hidden risk.

The very stupid and very crypto thing is when their fellow crypto institutions think “this is fine!” and do things like putting all their money into 3AC, which put all its money into Anchor.

It’s supposed to be retail — and not institutional traders — that sees a 5%, 10%, or 20% interest rate and stops thinking of anything but the big number. Perhaps crypto companies need to be legally restricted to retail-friendly investments? Or we could send some of these guys to jail for fraud, that works too.

Posted on by Amy Castor 18

Crypto collapse latest: the DeFi dead and dying list

David and I just finished an update on the spreading DeFi contagion. David posted it on his blog, so head on over there and read it.

We recap the latest on Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Voyager Digital, Celsius, BlockFi, and more.

In 2012, Trendon Shavers (Pirateat40) ran a Ponzi scheme on the BitcoinTalk boards called Bitcoin Savings and Trust. At one point, BTCST held 7% of all bitcoins.

Pirate’s Ponzi had a pile of pass-through funds — which invested only in BTCST. There were even funds insuring against the collapse of BTCST … who put the insurance premiums into BTCST.

History repeats, but only the stupid stuff. 

Image: Night of the Living Dead, 1968

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

The tale of a whale who took Solend’s money

DeFi stands for decentralized finance, but don’t let the “decentralized” part fool you. These protocols are almost always controlled by a central party who calls the shots.

When you hand them your money, they can do whatever they want with it, when they want. Offshore crypto exchanges exhibit similar behavior.

On Sunday, Solend, a “decentralized” lending platform on the Solana blockchain, passed a proposal that would give them permission to take over the account of a “whale” — a large holder — who posed a threat to the price of SOL, the native token of Solana. 

The whale had deposited a large amount of SOL into Solend in exchange for a “loan” of USDC and USDT, two popular stablecoins, and then disappeared. Make no mistake: this was an exit, not a loan. The whale essentially sold a huge amount of SOL for a two highly liquid assets — at a substantial discount, granted, but that amount of SOL would have crashed the market otherwise.

The problem was that if the price of SOL dropped below a certain point, the Solend platform would auto-liquidate his funds, selling off a large chunk on a decentralized exchange. This would create cascading liquidations across the books of the decentralized exchanges, potentially driving the price of SOL to zero. 

Solend Labs made a bad loan and overpaid for the SOL. To fix this, they came up with a solution: set up a sham DAO and conduct a sham vote to take over the whale’s account and sell the coins over the counter (OTC) to avoid crashing the market. “Code is law” only applies until the big boys might lose money.

How DeFi works

In October, Solend raised $6.5 million from Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures, and Alameda Research, among others. The following month, the firm raised another $26 million worth of USDC in an initial coin offering, selling its SLND token. Investors and insiders got a percentage of SLND. [Crunchbase; SLND distribution]

Solend is one of the largest DeFi lending protocols on Solana. You deposit assets as collateral and take out loans against those assets, generally in the form of stablecoins.  

This isn’t true lending. True lending involves giving money to people who don’t have money in exchange for illiquid collateral, such as a car or a house, or something that is liquid but the lender cannot or does not want to sell, such as controlling shares in a company. In contrast, DeFi lending is giving people money against collateral that is a larger amount of fungible money. Another crucial distinction is that with true lending, you keep possession of the home, car or stock; whereas, in DeFi lending, the lender takes possession of the collateral, which you then cannot use in any way, not even for POS staking.

Traders use DeFi lending platforms to leverage long or short positions. It’s a form of gambling. If your bet goes south, you lose your collateral. Everything in DeFi is done with smart contracts, which are just simple and dumb computer programs, so liquidations are automatic — unless they’re not. 

In the case of Solend, a whale took out a large margin position. They parked 5.7 million SOL (currently worth $170 million) onto the platform to withdraw $108 million in USDC and USDT. The whale then vanished, and would not pay down the loan or respond to tweets from Solend’s pseudonymous founder Rooter. [Tweet]

This is one of the reasons we’ve seen such a proliferation of stablecoins in 2021 — they are used in DeFi lending. Retailers (the public) buy stablecoins and stake them on DeFi platforms hoping to earn higher interest than they can from traditional banks. The market cap of USDC was 4 billion in early 2021. Today, it is 56 billion.

The whale’s position represented 95% of all Solana deposits on Solend and 88% of all USDC the platform had lent out. If Solana dropped to $22.30, the whale risked partial liquidation — about $21 million worth of SOL — even though they didn’t seem to care. And the retail stakers risked losing their USDC. 

SOL is currently trading at $35, according to Coin Gecko. It still has a way to fall, but in the current market, the value of all cryptos only seems to be going down. 

Let’s let the DAO decide

To get itself out of this sticky situation, Solend Labs spun up a decentralized autonomous organization. The purpose of a DAO is to allow the community to vote on proposals. Solend’s governance token is SLND. The more SLND you hold, the larger influence you have on a proposal passing. DAOs typically aren’t created on-demand, but this one was. 

On June 19, Solend put the first proposal to its DAO: “SLND1: Mitigate Risk From Whale.” [Proposal, Solend blog]

“DEX liquidity isn’t deep enough to handle a sale of this size and could cause cascading effects. Additionally, liquidators will be incentivized to spam the network to win very lucrative liquidations. This has been known to cause load issues for Solana in the past which would exacerbate the problems at hand.”

… It’d be difficult for the market to absorb such an impact since liquidators generally market sell on DEXes. In the worst case, Solend could end up with bad debt.”

That last line is misleading. Solend already had bad debt. It was simply trying to fumble its way out of a horrible situation of its own making.  

SLND holders could vote as follows:

“Vote Yes: Enact special margin requirements for large whales that represent over 20% of borrows and grant emergency power to Solend Labs to temporarily take over the whale’s account so the liquidation can be executed OTC.

Vote No: Do nothing.”

One yea voter (a SLND whale) provided 1 million votes out of the 1.15 million votes in favor. In fact, they moved a million governance tokens into their account, voted, and moved them back out again — not the greatest example of corporate governance. Users had only six hours to vote, and the voting site was down for three hours during the voting. Solend claims the Solend core team did not vote. Just some random person who borrowed 98 percent voting power. [Twitter; Twitter]

The Solend community was livid and Solend was getting all kinds of bad press over the incident, so Solend submitted a second proposal to invalidate the first and start over: “SLND2: Invalidate SLND1 and Increase Voting Time. [Proposal; Solend blog]

“We propose to: Invalidate the last proposal, Increase governance voting time to 1 day, Work on a new proposal that does not involve emergency powers to take over an account.”

This second proposal was also passed, largely due to the same SLND whale. 

The ‘future of finance’

Solend is currently experiencing a bank run, as lenders rush to get their deposits off the platform. If the money is borrowed, Solend can’t pay it back. The whale has almost completely drained Solend of any actual value and left it filled with assets that cannot be sold. [Tweet; Reddit; Solend dashboard]

The Solend platform did exactly what it was designed to do — lend money. The problem was that Solend massively overpaid for SOL. Put simply: the whale had trouble offloading a huge amount of SOL, so he offloaded it onto Solend, and they, in turn, are struggling to offload the SOL. 

DAOs are corporate governance but with a concussion. Automated voting is a terrible idea. Being able to borrow an overwhelming number of votes just for the vote is extremely dumb. This is exactly what happed to Beanstalk. 

Crypto boosters and VCs, such as Andreessen Horowitz, have been promoting DeFi as “the future of finance” and the foundation of “Web3,” which is nothing more than a way for people to create money out of thin air in the form of tokens, and for investors to cash out by dumping those tokens on the public.

Retailers deposited their stablecoins on Solend in the hope of making high returns. What they got instead was a whale that took off to sea with all of their money.

Updated to include the bit about the bank run.

Additional reporting by David Gerard.

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Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Bitcoin fell below $20,000 — and why it has further to go

Bitcoin broke below $20,000 last night. I got a message on Signal while I was sleeping. 

On June 18, 2022, at 6:51 UTC, the price of bitcoin fell from $20,377 to $19,245 on Kraken and then slipped to as low as $18,728 before catching its breath. As I write, it is now $19,174.

Ether also broke below $1,000. The buy wall was destroyed in a matter of seconds.

Bitcoin has now fallen below the previous all-time high it set on December 17, 2017 — officially marking the end of the crypto bubble. The party is over.

Two years ago, as bitcoin embarked on its incredible journey to $69,000 — a number it reached on November 9, 2021 — it was $10,000. At the start of 2020, bitcoin was trading even lower, at around $7,000.

Those numbers give you a sense of how much further bitcoin can fall. As dramatic as the run-up was to $69,000 when every bitcoin bro imagined bitcoin would shoot to the moon, the fall can be equally so, and that is what we are seeing now. 

Of course, everyone is asking, why did bitcoin plunge so quickly Saturday night? What pushed it below $20,000 so suddenly? Somebody is selling. Who needs to sell? 

Miners have to sell to pay their power bills. They mine 900 newly minted bitcoin per day. The bitcoin network consumes a country’s worth of energy. 

The miners have been borrowing money from their buddies, DCG and Galaxy, to cover business costs rather than selling since July 2021. But they can’t borrow any more dollars, so they’re dumping their coins. They also have to pay their credit bills when those loans come due. 

Who else is selling? Any number of crypto lenders, yield farms, and other decentralized finance firms that are running desperately low on liquidity — and there are many of them. 

Last month, Terra/Luna toppled over. This was DeFi’s Bear Stearns moment. Things seemed to settle down for a moment, but behind the scenes, a titanic shift had begun — the wrecking ball was in action. In the chain of reactions that followed, two other Ponzi schemes collapsed: Celsius and 3AC. Smaller outfits Finblox and Babel soon followed — and more are to come.

When investigators look back and piece together the causes of the crypto apocalypse of 2022, key factors will be huge VC money pouring into the space, the massive printing of Tethers — from 4 billion at the start of 2020 all the way to 83 billion earlier this year — and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust.

GBTC was an attempt to wrap Bitcoin in an institutionally compatible shell. As I wrote in “Welcome to Grayscale’s Hotel California,” GBTC’s arbitrage trade brought billions of dollars of real money into the crypto ecosystem.  

It also caused explosive growth in crypto leverage. Many of the firms that are collapsing now, looked to GBTC as a way to deliver ridiculously high returns. They would exchange their cash or bitcoin for shares of GBTC and after a 6-12 month lockup, sell those shares on the secondary market for a premium to retail investors. That premium averaged around 18% in 2020. 

It was a sure-fire way to make money until the premium dried up. GBTC has been trading below the price of bitcoin since February 2021.  

All through 2020 and into 2021, there was a massive retail inflow of cash chasing a “reflexive Ponzi” in the form of a GBTC arb situation. And all Ponzi schemes end the same way — they crash stupendously.

See also David Gerard’s post on the bubble pop.

Further reading: “The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto Crashing,” by David Gerard and Amy Castor

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Posted on by Amy Castor 0