Tag: Gary Gensler

Crypto collapse: New Sam Bankman-Fried charges, New York targets CoinEx, Coinbase losses, Voyager, Celsius

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“Sam Bankman-Fried walks into the courtroom. his pants split with a sound like thunder and guns and cocaine spill out all over the floor. he spins around and punches a security officer hard in the face sending him flying. he turns, sits down calmly on his chair and says, to thunderous applause from the fans gathered to hear his famous catchphrase, ‘OK your honour, here’s what I think happened’”

— Hammerite

Mycrimes.txt (2) (FINAL) (USE THIS ONE).docx.pdf

The criminal indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried has been updated, with a superseding indictment on February 23. [Superseding indictment, PDF]

The new charges are clearly informed by the cooperation of Sam’s former co-conspirators — and by his crime confession tours in the press and on Twitter.

The Federal Election Commission is now listed as a victim of Sam’s fraud, with allegations that SBF tried to buy influence over crypto regulation in Washington. 

The indictment details all the tricks that Sam (allegedly) pulled to influence both Democrats and Republicans, in concert with other FTX executives — and how he tried to conceal his influence.

Other new allegations include bank fraud. The act of misleading a bank in the course of business is a crime all by itself — such as when you accept money in the name of one entity (Alameda) for another entity (FTX), or when you set up a shell corporation (North Dimension) and lie to your bank (Silvergate) about what that shell does.

Sam also used Alameda to fill a $45 million hole in FTX US. He gave Alameda a $65 billion credit line, which allowed it unlimited access to customer funds on FTX. Customer and company funds were thoroughly commingled. 

The indictment doesn’t specify the cause of the hole in FTX US, but Sam has repeatedly claimed that FTX US was solvent. 

Sam ultimately controlled both FTX and Alameda, even after claiming to have stepped away from Alameda.

The indictment also lists billions of dollars worth of assets that have been forfeited, including multiple SBF accounts at Binance.

FTX and its subsidiaries was never a legitimate business. It was Sam’s piggy bank. 

New York goes after CoinEx

The New York Attorney General’s office is suing the CoinEx crypto exchange. The NYAG alleges that CoinEx sold securities and/or commodities, did not register with the CFTC or SEC, and misrepresented itself as registered. [Press release; Complaint, PDF; Affidavit of OAG Detective Brian Metz, PDF]

CoinEx, which is based in Hong Kong, has responded by barring all US citizens. You have until April 24 to get your cryptos off the exchange. [Twitter]

New York alleges that CoinEx offered to New York customers various cryptos that are securities — AMP, LUNA, RLY, and LBC  — while the exchange was not registered to deal in securities.

AMP is the token of Flexa, who want to use it to sell burritos. LBC is the token of video site LBRY, which the SEC recently had a slam-dunk win against in court, finding that it was absolutely the security it clearly was. Luna is the twin coin of TerraUSD, which crashed all of crypto last May.

New York says these tokens are all securities under New York’s Waldstein test: “any form of instrument used for the purpose of financing and promoting enterprises, and which is designed for investment, is a security.” They say the tokens are also securities under the federal Howey test — as LBC was recently shown to be.

It happens to be a violation of New York commercial law to call yourself an “exchange” if you offer trading in securities or commodities and you’re not registered with the CFTC or SEC.

CoinEx also failed to respond in any way to a previous NYAG subpoena — and, per General Business Law §353(1), failure to comply with a subpoena is prima facie proof that the subpoenaed entity “is or has been engaged in fraudulent practice.” 

New York wants CoinEx to block New York from its website, pay restitution, disgorgement, and costs, “and provide New York investors with the option to rescind their transactions.”

New York is bringing a “special proceeding” — it wants the court to rule on its filing. “A special proceeding goes right to the merits. The Court is required to make a summary determination upon all the pleadings, papers, and admissions to the extent that no triable issues of fact are raised.”

Why did New York go after CoinEx in particular? This complaint is detailed, but it also looks like a template. We suspect this may be the first of many such complaints against crypto platforms. CoinEx ignoring the subpoena probably annoyed New York a lot too.

The SEC previously called out each of the tokens on CoinEx that the NYAG names as securities:

  • In a July 2022 insider trading complaint against Coinbase, the SEC said AMP and RLY were securities. [Complaint, pdf] 
  • In Feb 2023, the SEC said LUNA was a security [Complaint, pdf]
  • In November 2022, the SEC won in court against LBRY on whether its LBC token was an unregistered security offering. [SEC]

Binance US has delisted AMP. But Coinbase still lists AMP and RLY. Gary Gensler has been saying for a while that he thinks nearly all crypto tokens are securities and that Coinbase should register with the SEC.

Coinbase posts another loss

Coinbase’s Q4 earnings report is out, as part of its 10-K annual report for the year ending December 31, 2022. Trading volumes are down even further, and they’re still losing money. [10-K]

As a public company, Coinbase has to put on a happy face for investors — but they’ve been bleeding money for a year now. Net loss for 2022 was $2.625 billion, per GAAP. The COIN stock price has gone down 70% in the past 12 months.

Coinbase would prefer you to look at non-GAAP “adjusted EBITDA,” which comes out to a loss of only $371.4 million. Their “adjusted EBITDA” excludes stock-based compensation expenses in particular. Yes, we’re sure your numbers look better if you exclude the bit where you have to pay your employees.

Coinbase makes its money from (1) BTC and ETH trading, and (2) their share of the interest on the USDC reserve. Also, the majority of their volume comes from a few large customers. So Coinbase would extremely much like to diversify.

CFO Alesia Haas said in the investor earnings call: “Our fourth quarter net revenue increased 5% quarter-over-quarter to $605 million. This was driven by strong growth in our subscription and services revenue.” She means that Q4 revenue was only up because of interest on USDC. [Coinbase, PDF]

Coinbase wants to list every token going — even as many of the hottest tokens are blitheringly obviously securities under the Howey test. Coinbase has spent the past several years helping their very good venture capital friends such as a16z dump their bags on retail.

Coinbase goes on at length about the amazing ambiguity in what constitutes a security under US law. Who can even know what might be deemed a security tomorrow? It is a mystery.

Sure, the Howey test is simple and broad, and sure the SEC has won every case it’s ever brought where it claimed a given crypto was a security. But do you feel lucky?

The 10-K even includes a list of tokens Coinbase trades that the SEC has already said are securities! Coinbase questions whether these tokens are really securities, and confidently asserts that “Despite the SEC being the principal federal securities law regulator in the United States, whether or not an asset is a security under federal securities laws is ultimately determined by a federal court.”

This is true. But it’s also true that the SEC has won every single time. And the consent orders in these cases — because almost nobody was stupid enough to take their case to trial — note that the tokens in question were always offerings of securities. It wasn’t a court finding that made the token a security.

But Coinbase is desperate to diversify and makes it clear that they really want to risk their backsides on this business line of maybe-securities that don’t even make them a lot of money.

The SEC shut down Coinbase’s Earn staking product in 2022 before it could be launched. Haas explained in the analyst call why Coinbase thinks its staking product isn’t a security: “we are passing on rewards directly from the protocol. We are not establishing an APY, we are not establishing the reward rate. That is established at the protocol level. And then we are passing that through and collecting a fixed commission on that amount.” We guess we’ll see if the SEC concurs. [Coinbase, PDF]

Coinbase literally lists Satoshi Nakamoto as a risk factor for its business:

“the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins”

The FTX fallout continues

FTX Japan K.K. users are getting back 100% of their cryptos. Users in other jurisdictions are likely to get cents on the dollar, if that. This is because the US crypto lobby viciously fought any sensible regulation for years — but Japan locked crypto down hard after Mt. Gox exploded in 2014. Taste the freedom! [Bloomberg]

Galois Capital, a real-money hedge fund that thought they’d get into some crypto, shuts its doors after losing $40 million, half its assets, in the collapse of FTX. Whoops! [Twitter, FT, archive]

The Bank for International Settlements — the central bank for central banks — reports that the fall of FTX didn’t have much impact on the rest of the financial world: [BIS bulletin, PDF, Coindesk] 

“Nevertheless, despite crypto’s large user base and the substantial losses to many investors, the market turmoil in 2022 had little discernible impact on broader financial conditions outside the crypto universe, underlining the largely self-referential nature of crypto as an asset class.”

Regulatory clarity

Caitlin Long’s Custodia Bank was refused an account at the Kansas Fed. Custodia appealed the decision. The Federal Reserve Board has looked at Custodia’s appeal and told them to go away. [Federal Reserve]

We’ve mentioned previously that the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) is introducing new rules for crypto exchange registration in the wake of the collapse of FTX. The new regulations, which will apply in all provinces, have been released:

  • Customer cryptos will need to be segregated into an address per customer.
  • Exchanges cannot pledge or rehypothecate customer cryptos. Margin trading is forbidden.
  • Proprietary tokens — in-house supermarket loyalty card points, in the manner of FTT or BNB — require prior written consent and can’t be counted as an asset in your accounts.
  • No stablecoin dealing without prior written consent.

These apply to any exchange with Canadian customers, including non-Canadian exchanges. [Press release; OSC, PDF]

The Financial Action Task Force, the multi-country advisory group set up to combat money laundering, is not happy that its rules on crypto traceability, such as the travel rule, have not been implemented sufficiently widely. At the FATF Plenary on February 22-24, “delegates further agreed on an action plan to drive timely global implementation of FATF standards relating to virtual assets.” [FATF]

The International Monetary Fund has put out a paper, “Elements of Effective Policies for Crypto Assets,” with guidelines that any country that ever might want to hit up the IMF for a loan would be well advised to follow — “amid the failure of various exchanges and other actors within the crypto ecosystem, as well as the collapse of certain crypto assets. Doing nothing is untenable as crypto assets may continue to evolve despite the current downturn.” [Press release; paper, PDF]

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission is consulting on licensing requirements for crypto exchanges to be allowed to sell to retail customers. Hong Kong wants safe custody of customer cryptos — they’re not demanding third-party custodians, an arms-length subsidiary will be sufficient — KYC, cybersecurity, accounting and auditing, risk management, AML, and prevention of market misconduct. So, the very basic requirements of being a financial institution. Responses should be in by March 31. [SFC; SFC, PDF]

In the US, the SEC got a lot of stick for not going after crypto harder in the bubble. Then it came out that the Blockchain Eight group of representatives had written to Gary Gensler telling him to back off. Now the legislature has demanded action, and Gensler is delivering. Here’s how the Blockchain Eight got the opposite of what they wanted. [The American Prospect]

“Gensler also made clear that he has been grappling with the same question as many of the rest of us: What, exactly, is the point of crypto?” [Intelligencer]

John Naughton on the latest UK Treasury crypto consultation paper. “The second lesson is that permissionless blockchains can never be allowed within the financial services sector.” [Guardian]

Voyager Digital

97% of Voyager creditors have voted for Binance to buy Voyager Digital! We think it’s unlikely that regulators will let the deal go through, and Binance US doesn’t have the money to cover all those liabilities to Voyager customers — but hey, who knows? [CoinDesk]

FTX in Chapter 11 is suing Voyager Digital in Chapter 11 for the return of a loan that Alameda paid back to Voyager just before it went into bankruptcy protection. FTX, Voyager and both companies’ Unsecured Creditors’ Committees have come to a settlement! An ad-hoc group of Voyager creditors objects to the deal. [Doc 1048, PDF; Doc 1084, PDF]

The Voyager UCC has subpoenaed the ex-top brass of FTX for depositions — Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Trabucco, and Daniel Friedberg. The notices to the court don’t detail what the UCC wants to ask — just that they are asking. Voyager’s link to FTX is the huge pile of FTT that the company counted as part of its assets. [e.g., Doc 1018, PDF]

SBF’s lawyers have already moved that the subpoena was deficient because it was handed to Sam’s mom Barbara Fried and not into Sam’s own hands personally. [Doc, PDF]

Celsius Network and your pension

Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ) was the pension fund that invested USD$150 million into equity in Celsius Network. Executive vice-president and CTO Alexandre Synnett, who was the executive involved in the Celsius investment, “left the organization on his own volition about two weeks ago,” said CEO Charles Emond in the 2022 earnings call. CDPQ will not be touching crypto going forward. [BetaKit; The Logic, paywalled]

Other good news for bitcoin

Bitcoin miners are diversifying because mining is sucking as a business. Riot Blockchain has changed its name to Riot Platforms. [Coindesk]

Crypto firm Phoenix Community Capital and its founder Luke Sullivan, with links to various UK parliamentary groups, appears to have vanished. Some of the firm’s assets and its name appear to have been sold to a new company run by an individual called “Dan,” who has told investors it has no obligation towards them. [Guardian]

Data Finnovation, who took out BUSD, now looks into weird bridging on Tether. [Medium] 

Image: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is being patted down with a makeup sponge as a big green screen looms behind him. Fortune

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: SEC tightening crypto custody rules, why you can’t cash out your BUSD, Binance and Catherine Coley, SEC charges Terra-Luna

Stuff keeps happening. Make it stop happening. In today’s selection: [David Gerard]

  • The SEC’s proposed new custody rule is another vicious attempt to destroy crypto by suggesting it follow the rules everyone else has to.
  • Whatever happened to Catherine Coley at Binance US?
  • Why you can’t cash your BUSD out
  • SEC charges against Terra-Luna
  • Voyager, FTX, other Good News for bitcoin

Image: Groundskeeper Gensler

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

SEC sues Genesis and Gemini, Genesis owes $3 billion to creditors

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

Kids, kids, you’re both ugly

There’s a huge conflict between the Gemini crypto exchange and the Genesis crypto investment firm over the Gemini Earn product — and what happened to the money.

Fortunately, the SEC has stepped in to clear things up — they’re suing both of them! [Press release; Complaint, PDF; Docket]

The charge is that the Gemini Earn program, which offered retail investors up to 8% return on crypto they lent to Genesis, was an unregistered securities offering. This is because it was really obviously an unregistered securities offering.

Genesis had hitherto only dealt with accredited and institutional investors, which is fine. But starting in February 2021, Gemini Earn gave Genesis access to money from ordinary retail investors. Somehow, this didn’t set off the “Howey test” alarms for anyone at either company.

(Coincidentally, February 2021 is when the GBTC premium dried up. Did someone need money quickly?)

The SEC says: “Both Defendants were integral to the operation and success of the Gemini Earn program.”

Retail customers suffered hugely — they are out $900 million — as Gemini froze withdrawals without warning in November, after Three Arrows Capital (3AC) collapsed in July, then FTX collapsed in November. The SEC has actual harm it can point at.

Gemini terminated the Earn program on January 8, when it pulled the plug on its Master Loan Agreement between Genesis and Gemini.

The SEC is getting out there and just busting unregistered crypto securities now that the government and public are onside.

Here’s Gary Gensler, explaining in a video what the SEC just did in very small words. [Twitter, video] 

The SEC complaint

The SEC’s complaint outlines how Gemini Earn worked.

Genesis was founded in 2018. It marketed its services to institutional and accredited investors — and that was more or less fine.

With Gemini Earn, however, Genesis got into soliciting retail investors, via Gemini — and selling to retail requires companies to file paperwork with the SEC and make important financial disclosures, so the public can make an informed decision about what they are investing in. Of course, neither company bothered with that part.

Earn investors agreed they were sending their cryptos to Genesis. Gemini acted as the agent in the offer. In the first three months of 2022, Gemini received about $2.7 million in agent fees from the Gemini Earn program, according to the complaint.

Gemini Earn took in billions of dollars worth of cryptos — mostly from US retail investors. Both companies widely marketed Gemini Earn by promoting its high interest rates.

By November 16, 2022, when Genesis froze withdrawals, it was holding $900 million in Gemini Earn investors’ cryptos, from 340,000 customers, mostly in the US.

The SEC holds that Gemini Earn is an investment contract, per the Howey Test:

  1. Gemini Earn involved the investment of money;
  2. in a common enterprise;
  3. and investors reasonably expected to profit from the efforts of the defendants.

If you want to sell such an offering to retail investors, you have to file the paperwork. Or the SEC can bust you.

Prayer for relief

The SEC asks that the defendants don’t offer unregistered securities ever again, that they be enjoined from offering Gemini Earn and any similar offering in the future, and they disgorge all ill-gotten gains — that includes interest and all profits associated with Earn — and pay civil penalties.

Most SEC suits never go to trial, they just end in a settlement. There is no settlement as yet.

By the way, investors will likely be able to claim the right of rescission — if you buy something that’s found to be an unregistered security, you can just demand all your money back. Section 12(a)(1) of the Securities Act says “Any person who — (1) offers or sells a security in violation of section 5, … shall be liable, subject to subsection (b), to the person purchasing such security from him”

If the SEC prevails, investors will be able to demand their money back from Gemini as well as from Genesis — the SEC considers both companies were offering Gemini Earn, even as their internal agreement said Gemini was just acting as Genesis’ agent. After all, one of these two companies appears to be solvent.

Former SEC chief of Internet Enforcement John Reed Stark tells us:

An SEC victory would take disgorgement and penalties and perhaps deposit it all in a FAIR fund for investors. The sole priority of the SEC staff filing the action will be to give those investors their money back who hold the $900M of Earn that is now worth nothing. Any remedial steps would typically entail hiring a law firm to create and manage a distribution plan, working feverishly towards that goal of helping investors who incurred losses.

That the SEC seeks disgorgement of profits and penalties to make investors whole is good news for Gemini’s Earn investors. Given that Gemini has the assets to satisfy a judgment, there is cause for some optimism, as opposed to other situations involving bankrupt entities where angry customers are more likely stuck last in line as unsecured creditors.

It’s an outrage!

Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini has responded to the SEC’s action: [Twitter]

It’s disappointing that the @SECGov chose to file an action today as @Gemini and other creditors are working hard together to recover funds. This action does nothing to further our efforts and help Earn users get their assets back. Their behavior is totally counterproductive.

Fortunately, there’s a remedy: the suit demands that Gemini and Genesis give everyone’s money back — $900 million — out of their own pockets, which the Winklevosses are entirely capable of doing because they still sit atop a mountain of bitcoins.

Tyler further pleads that “the Earn program was regulated by the NYDFS and we’ve been in discussions with the SEC about the Earn program for more than 17 months.”

That’s great! Were the SEC discussions along the lines of “you really need to register this stuff before we shut you down”? Perhaps Tyler could clarify.

Also, the SEC complaint notes specifically that New York didn’t regulate anything about how Gemini Earn operated. One of the points of the SEC complaint is that there was no other regulator.

The Daily Beast spoke to former Gemini employees about the Earn program. They had boggled at the terms and conditions — deposits were uninsured and crypto was lent out on an unsecured basis, meaning Genesis wasn’t putting up any collateral. “We were like, ‘Holy sh-t, are you f-ing kidding me?’” [Daily Beast]

The SEC had previously gone after BlockFi for failing to register its crypto-lending program, and they stopped Coinbase from launching its crypto-lending program, so they are getting serious about ending this sort of nonsense.

Current unconfirmed rumor: Gemini will get only this SEC charge and will settle with a fine — and disgorgement. But the Department of Justice and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York are coming quickly for Genesis and its parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG). [Twitter, archive]

Genesis is in hock for $3 billion

Genesis owes more than $3 billion to creditors, according to sources who spoke to the Financial Times. DCG is looking for silverware to sell to plug the gap. DCG has a huge venture portfolio it’s looking at dipping into. [FT, archive]

DCG had been trying to raise capital — about $1 billion — after 3AC blew up Genesis’ books. But it couldn’t get any takers. So now DCG’s only option is to try to sell what it’s got. 

DCG’s portfolio includes 200 crypto companies — and most of them are illiquid because crypto is a losing business right now.  

Some direct customers of Genesis — not Gemini Earn customers, but Genesis’ accredited and institutional customers — are claiming that Genesis lied to them to get them to reinvest after they pulled out: [Protos]

He says he was lured back in by reassuring emails from Genesis salespeople and the delivery of monthly balance sheets that seemed to show in late summer and early fall that the firm’s financial position was stable. The creditor now says those financial documents were inaccurate and hid the firm’s growing financial problems.

Media stardom

David went on Blind Spot Markets Live on Friday morning. The transcript is up now. Izabella Kaminska talked to David about FTX, Nexo, Genesis vs. Gemini, and US banking for crypto companies. This episode was sponsored by Big Nocoin, the Federal Reserve, and the Pentagon. [The Blind Spot]

Image: They fired 10% of their staff and went on tour. Instagram.

Posted on by Amy Castor 3

The SEC busts Kim Kardashian over EthereumMax, pour encourager les autres

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard, for their sins
  • Our work is funded by our Patreons — here’s Amy’s, and here’s David’s. Your monthly contributions help us greatly in steeling ourselves to dive into this jaw dropping foolishness!

Reality show queen Kim Kardashian is not stupid. She’s a billionaire businesswoman. She clearly has basic competence.

Kardashian is even studying law. She passed the first-year “baby bar” exam in December 2021, on her fourth attempt. (This isn’t unusual — the pass rate is around 21%.) [The Guardian; Elle]

But that doesn’t mean she understands securities laws — or that putting “#ad” on the end of an Instagram post promoting a security does not, in fact, leave you in the clear.

Section 17(b) of the Securities Act specifically states that you need to spell out how much you’re being compensated for a promotion — and Kardashian neglected that bit when she posted about EthereumMax (EMAX) to her 225 million Instagram followers on June 16, 2021.

How could Kardashian have known EthereumMax was a security? Paragraphs 6 to 9 of the SEC order against her detail how blatant EMAX was. Kardashian’s post even promoted a token burn that was supposedly “giving back” to the “community” — implying financial benefit. [SEC press release; Order, PDF]

The SEC came down hard on Kardashian. She has agreed to a $1 million fine, and disgorgement of the $250,000 she was paid plus $10,415.35 in prejudgment interest. Kardashian must not promote a “crypto asset security” in the next three years. She will also “continue to cooperate with the Commission’s investigation in this matter.”

We’re pretty sure Kardashian knows what a security is now.

Kardashian is currently launching a private equity firm, SKYY Partners. So she’d better be on top of this stuff. [Fortune]

What’s EthereumMax?

EthereumMax is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. The promotion for EMAX promised all sorts of amazing visionary aspirations — but it’s just another worthless altcoin that doesn’t do anything. [CoinDesk; EthereumMax white paper, archive, PDF] 

EMAX was launched in May 2021, only a month before the June 2021 celebrity push. Kardashian, boxer Floyd Mayweather, and former NBA player Paul Pierce hawked EMAX to their massive social media followings — though this didn’t halt the token’s ongoing price collapse. 

Paid to pump

In September 2021, a few months after Kardashian’s EMAX post, Charles Randall, the head of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, gave a speech that called on online platforms to crack down on financial scams. He specifically noted Kardashian’s post: [FCA speech]

“Which brings me on to Kim Kardashian. When she was recently paid to ask her 250 million Instagram followers to speculate on crypto tokens by ’joining the Ethereum Max Community,’ it may have been the financial promotion with the single biggest audience reach in history.

The problem is much wider than Kardashian. Celebrity endorsements for financial toxic waste are an ongoing problem. Actor Ben McKenzie speaks up about it from time to time — including on the case of Kardashian — and suggests celebs stick to promoting non-trash: [Slate]

“To criticize celebrities shilling crypto isn’t to impugn them as people or to say that I’m above accepting an easy payday. (Call my agent, legit companies with not-scammy products!)”

Citing quotes from a “crypto marketing agency” executive, the Financial Times wrote this on celeb crypto promotions: [FT, archive]

“It’s considered easy money,” said an executive at a crypto marketing agency, who asked not to be named, adding that the endorsements are often pushed by talent agents who will offer deals that include posts by several of their high-profile clients, with price tags ranging from tens of thousands to millions of dollars. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Fundamentally, Kardashian’s people failed to realize that the EthereumMax sponsorship would blow up on her. We expect a deeply displeased Kardashian sent more than a few heated texts to her minions along the lines of “what on earth?” — or however you phrase that in Kardashian.

We don’t know of any evidence that Kardashian cared about EthereumMax or knew anything about crypto in general. The only past involvement she had with crypto is that she apparently used some chips with bitcoin logos on them in a charity poker game in 2018. We doubt she cared about crypto then either. [Cointelegraph]  

How about those NFT shills?

Celebrities have been hawking NFTs at top volume for the past year — such as Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton pumping bored apes on late-night television, and Madonna tweeting that she finally got her “very own ape” in March. (Madonna’s talent manager Guy Oseary represents Yuga Labs, the company behind the BAYC project. He is also an investor though his fund Sound Ventures.) [Mashable; Twitter]

Almost no celebs would understand the many NFT deals we saw them taking through 2021. Likely, their people would have just told them: “It’s a sponsorship for internet art, free money!” and they’d go “Sounds good, tell me when you need me to nod and smile.”

So far, NFTs are not securities. Mostly. Probably. But they’re still stupid investments best left entirely to the crypto speculators.

Celebrity NFT promotion would be under Federal Trade Commission rules — where disclosing that your promotion is an “#ad” is probably sufficient. Though almost no celebrity Bored Apes promoters did so, for instance.

Some of this stuff flies a bit close to the sun. When celebrities go on TV promoting Bored Apes NFTs, they’re not just promoting Bored Apes, but the entire ecosystem that Yuga Labs has created — including Apecoin, which is an obvious and blatant security offering. 

It’s so unfair!

The SEC moved quicker on Kardashian than on many previous crypto-related violations. It only took a little over a year to charge Kardashian. The SEC hasn’t charged EthereumMax directly for not registering its offering. 

Anyone who calls this “regulation by enforcement” is a clown. This is just enforcement. There’s absolutely no reasonable question of the facts or laws here. The SEC has been warning about this nonsense since 2017. [SEC, 2017] 

Floyd Mayweather in particular already settled with the SEC in November 2018 for failing to disclose payment for promoting ICO tokens. That settlement barred Mayweather from accepting payment for promoting securities — and his EthereumMax promotion in June 2021 would have been within that period. We wonder if there’s an order coming his way too. [SEC press release, 2018; order, PDF, 2018] 

Action against unregistered securities isn’t restricted to the SEC — private citizens can bring actions against unregistered offerings, and against their promoters. In January, a class action was brought against EthereumMax founders Steve Gentile, Giovanni Perone, and Justin French, and promoters Kardashian, Mayweather and Pierce, claiming investor losses on this alleged unregistered security. [Complaint, PDF; The Block]

Kardashian didn’t just fly too high — she set a course directly for the sun, and she got burnt. EMAX was blatantly an offering of securities, the SEC had given clear warning over the previous several years, and there are clear laws governing disclosures when you promote a security. 

Why did she so blatantly just not follow the law? Because she was likely ill-advised, and crypto seemed like easy money.

But it is incredibly irresponsible — and that’s why it’s so reprehensible. You’re encouraging people to engage in risky investments, where they invariably lose money. 

Kardashian is a billionaire — $1.26 million is a trivial fine for her. But this is excellent enforcement by the SEC, pour encourager les autres.

SEC chair Gary Gensler even made a nice video about celebrity endorsements! Securities TikTok awaits. [YouTube]

Posted on by Amy Castor 4

News: Axie Infinity hacked, Germany takes down Hydra, SEC rejects Cathie Wood’s spot bitcoin ETF application

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About that Axie-Ronin hack

On March 23, a hacker stole an eye-watering $625 million in crypto from the Ronin network, the blockchain powering the popular play-two-earn game Axie Infinity.

Six days later, the hack was discovered. Where was Axie cofounder Jeff Jiho Zirlin on that day? He was at a party in Los Angeles caught off guard by the press. (CNN Business)

“Shortly after his first interview, which was on the record and recorded, Zirlin asked if CNN could run his answers by his PR team before publishing. CNN declined the request.”

Axie originally ran on Ethereum. But since Ethereum is too sluggish and costly to use, it now runs on Ronin. How do you get your ETH onto Ronin? The Ronin Bridge. 

In the world of DeFi, a bridge lets you use crypto from a different blockchain.

The Ronin bridge locks up ETH, the native crypto of Ethereum, and issues a token on the Ronin sidechain that represents ETH called wrapped ETH, or WETH.  

Molly White wrote a post describing how everything works. A bridge is like a casino where you trade in your actual money for casino chips. Someone robbed the money and now you’re stuck with worthless chips. (Blog post)

Bridges are a honeypot for hackers. Qubit Bridge, Wormhole Bridge, Meter.io Bridge, and Poly Network Bridge have all suffered similar fates.

Why does this keep happening? David Gerard says DeFi is akin to a piñata. “You whack it in the right spot, and a pile of crypto falls out.” (Blog post) 

Ed Zitron points out that the real ones suffering from the Ronin hack are not the investors, the developers, or those in power, but regular folks who needed the money. (Substack)

The hackers are now in the process of cleaning their ill-gotten ETH. After a six-day head start, they sent $70 million in ETH through privacy mixer Tornado Cash. (Decrypt)

Venture capitalists need P2E

Venture capitalists are betting big on play-to-earn games, like Axie. A hack this size should put Axie and its developer Sky Mavis out of business, however, this is crypto.

Axie is backed by a16z. The Silicon Valley VC firm also has a big stake in Yuga Labs, which is transforming itself into a P2E gaming company as I type. Even though its founders have zero experience in gaming. I predict someone will bail Axie out with magic beans shortly. (My blog post)

In fact, Sky Mavis just raised $150 million in a funding round led by Binance, a leading Tether exchange, with help from the usual suspects, including a16z. (Substack)

Gensler wants Coinbase to register with the SEC

The SEC is weighing a path forward for Coinbase, and other crypto exchanges, so they can register with the agency. (FT)

Coinbase is not registered as a securities broker-dealer, even though the majority of tokens that it lists resemble securities. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been urging Coinbase to submit to SEC oversight for months.

In speaking at Penn Law, Gensler said that he’s asked his staff to work with the CFTC to find ways to “register and regulate platforms where the trading of securities and non-securities is intertwined.” (Prepared remarks)

Crypto exchanges trade both crypto commodities and crypto securities, so Gensler wants to get the CFTC involved as well. 

Since crypto exchanges also custody crypto assets and act as market makers, he also wants to see if it makes sense to separate custody and market-making. 

Gensler’s comments come just weeks after Yuga Labs launched Apecoin, which resembles an unregistered securities offering. The same day Apecoin launched, it was listed on Coinbase.

SEC rejects yet another bitcoin ETF 

The SEC rejected an application for a spot bitcoin ETF led by Cathie Wood of Ark Invest. (SEC form S-1, SEC order, Decrypt)

The regulator rejected the application for all of the same reasons it has rejected every spot bitcoin ETF application put before it in the past: fraud, manipulation, wash trading, manipulative activity involving Tether, and so on.

At this point, the SEC is simply copying and pasting text.

Grayscale is clinging on to hope. The asset manager is so desperate to get its application for a spot bitcoin ETF approved that it is threatening to sue the SEC. (Bloomberg)

It’s also running a targeted ad campaign — taking over the entire advertising space between two mass transit hubs and their Amtrak trains for three months, so bitcoiners will drown the SEC in comment letters. (Business Insider)

The SEC’s deadline to rule on Grayscale’s application to convert its $30 billion GBTC into a physically-backed ETF is July 6. 

GBTC is now trading at 25% below NAV, meaning that investors, who are subject to a six-month lockup period, are losing money compared to those buying BTC directly. In addition, the fund has an investment minimum of $50,000 and an annual management fee of 2%. 

Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein says the SEC has created an unfair playing field and forced investors into a futures-based bitcoin. 

There is a good reason why the SEC will allow a bitcoin futures contract and not a spot bitcoin ETF. Doomberg wrote a great post explaining it, which I highly recommend reading. (Doomberg Substack)

It comes down to this: Bitcoin futures are settled in cash, and the direct flow of dollars never enters the crypto ecosystem. In contrast, bitcoin spot ETFs are designed to buy and hold bitcoin directly, injecting much-needed U.S. dollars into the crypto universe. 

The bitcoiners need a bitcoin spot ETF because utility companies don’t accept tethers, and miners need to pay their power bills. Galaxy and DCG are propping up the U.S. miners. They’ve been lending U.S. miners money so they don’t have to sell their “stockpile” of freshly mined BTC.

Germany takes down Hydra

German federal police — known as the BKA — shut down Hydra, the largest Russian darknet market for selling drugs and money laundering. 

Working with U.S. law enforcement, BKA seized Hydra’s servers in Germany, along with 543 BTC ($25 million). (BKA statement, US Dpt. of Treasury press release) 

In conjunction with the shutdown of Hydra, the DOJ announced criminal charges against Dmitry Olegovich Pavlov, the site’s alleged operator.

Since it launched in 2015, Hydra facilitated more than $5 billion in transactions for 17 million customers. The site was written in Russian and most of its drug-related business was with sellers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and surrounding countries. (Elliptic)

Hydra was more than just a drug market. It offered a mixing service to launder dirty crypto and exchange it for rubles, taking in $200 million in stolen crypto in 2021 and early 2022 alone. 

Vendors on Hydra even sold bundles of rubles for bitcoin, buried in dead drops for customers to dig up. (Wired)

Hydra was also used to launder funds from the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack. 

The BBC has a story on how the police sting began with a tip-off and led to finding the “bullet-proof” hosting company in Germany. (BBC)

Elsewhere in crypto

Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain produced 511 BTC in March and holds 6,062 BTC. Why are they holding? Coindesk didn’t bother asking. (Coindesk)

HIVE Blockchain released its March 2022 mining figures. It produced 278.6 BTC and over 2,400 ETH. As of April 3, 2022, HIVE is sitting on 2,568 BTC and 16,196 ETH. (Yahoo Finance)

I guess miners figure bitcoin will go up in price forever. Or may there is just nobody left to sell it to?

Crypto hacks in the first quarter of 2022 have amounted to $1.2 billion in crypto — that’s up nearly 700% from the same period last year. Web3 is going great. (Techcrunch) 

Buzzfeed did an in-depth story on Worldcoin, a bizarre crypto project that involves scanning the retinas of people in Africa and elsewhere in the global south in return for crypto. But with Worldcoin’s token yet to launch, participants feel robbed. (Buzzfeed)

Worldcoin is backed by Y Combinator President Sam Altman, a16z, and Khosla Ventures. It’s raised $100 million in funding so far.  

After purchasing 9.2% of the social media giant, Elon Musk has become the largest shareholder of Twitter. He also got a Twitter board seat. (NYT)

MicroStrategy purchased another 4,167 BTC for $190 million. It took out a loan against its bitcoin holdings to buy more bitcoin. What could possibly go wrong? Michael Saylor’s company now holds a total of 129,218 bitcoins. (SEC form 8-K, Bloomberg)

Federal prosecutors in Miami seized $34 million worth of crypto in one of the largest crypto forfeiture actions ever filed by the U.S. (DOJ press release, Miami Herald) 

After the horrible Kevin Roose story, the New York Times interviewed crypto critic Dan Olson to get his views on crypto. This is worth a listen. The transcript is also available. (Ezra Klein show, transcript)

Crypto investor Katie Haun has raised $1.5 billion for her new firm Huan Ventures after leaving a16z last year. (Wired)

Crypto asset funds are seeing surging assets under management. A16z’s crypto-focused funds are worth around $9 billion.(Cointelegraph)

While the SEC drags its feet to enforce securities laws, which are clear and have been in existence since the 1930s to protect investors, the powers-that-be are gathering more money to invest in token projects. 

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: Regulators zero in on stablecoins, El Salvador’s colón-dollar, Tether printer remains paused

My Patreon account saw seven new subscribers this month, so far. Thank you! Your support is a big deal. It helps me keep doing what I’m doing.

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Here’s what’s happening in the land of crypto. 

Regulations 

A new academic paper on stablecoins is up on the Social Science Research Network. It’s called “Taming Wildcat Stablecoins.” The 49-page paper was co-authored by Gary Gorton, a finance professor at Yale, and Jeffery Zhang, an attorney at the Federal Reserve.

The pair say that Tether is an equity contract, similar to a money market fund, while other stablecoins, such as USDC, Paxos Standard, and the Gemini Dollar, are more like debt. Liberty Reserve isn’t mentioned anywhere in the paper but the authors draw parallels between stablecoins and 19th Century wildcat banks — which is saying a lot because wildcat banks needed corralling. 

Frances Coppola, a UK freelance writer who spent 17 years in banking, tweeted some harsh criticisms of the report. Overall, I think it is worth a read. FT Alphaville has their own take on the paper.

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen met with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets — aka “The Plunge Protection Team” or the “holy shit guys” — to discuss stablecoins. The group includes the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Treasury Press Release; WSJ, paywalled)

Their discussion builds on a document the PWG published in December outlining regulatory issues regarding stablecoins — back from when former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin brought them all together to discuss Facebook’s Libra, now Diem. That paper, in turn, grew out of the Financial Stability Board’s final report on the regulation of stablecoins in October.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler spoke about crypto exchanges at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange and FinTech conference. “When you go into one of these exchanges, you don’t know whether the order book is accurately reporting the bids and the offers,” he said. “You don’t really know if there is front-running. You don’t know whether some of the trading that is reported is real or fake.” (WSJ, paywalled)

Elizabeth Warren, a Senator from Massachusetts — so famous, she gets into international news slightly more than most senators — sent a letter to Gensler about crypto exchanges telling him that “the lack of common-sense regulations has left ordinary investors at the mercy of manipulators and fraudsters.” She wants the SEC to use its “full authority” to address these risks.

El Salvador and bitcoin

Bitcoin will officially become legal tender in El Salvador on Sept. 7. The fast-approaching deadline has left the country’s President Nayib Bukele and his team scrambling to figure out a way to pull this off without landing on their collective rear ends. 

“So far, it looks like Bukele will be getting everyone onto the government’s official Chivo custodial wallet, using that as an officially-supported payment system, and saying that’s ‘Bitcoin.’” David Gerard wrote in a recent blog post spelling out how Chivo is coming along. Hint: not very well.

In a normal world, you would create the payment system first and then add in the crypto later once you made sure everything was working properly. El Salvador is going about it ass backwards — taking bitcoin, and trying to build a payment system around that. 

The challenge is that bitcoin doesn’t really function as a payment system — and the Lightning Network, a second layer solution that was meant to scale bitcoin, can’t handle a small country with 6.5 million users. 

The Chivo wallet is the one thing that Bukele and his buds can’t afford to screw up on. It’s their wallet, so they’ve hired someone named “Lorenzo” to get the job done right. I assume that Bukele and co’s first instinct was to find someone they could trust to do their bidding — not necessarily someone competent. 

The weird thing is you don’t really need to build a payment system. You can literally hire a white label payment gateway and use it under your name while the processing is done by a third party.

Anyhow, it looks like “Lorenzo” is Lorenzo Rey, the Venezuelan developer from Dash — a crypto that started off as a fork of bitcoin. I’m sure the bitcoin maxis will love that.

El Faro reports that the Bukele regime is now planning to launch a national stablecoin called “colón-dollar.” Colón (Columbus) was the name of El Salvador’s currency before it was replaced by the dollar. It’s technically still legal tender in the country, but nobody uses it. 

According to the plan, the colón-dollar will be issued by El Salvador’s Central Reserve Bank, backed by a reserve of US dollars, and integrated with the Chivo wallet. “The move would restore a key element of monetary policy, which the country lost when it adopted the US Dollar in 2001: the ability to issue national currency,” says El Faro.

A stablecoin makes sense given that Bukele needs greenbacks to pay for the national debt, finance his new party’s campaigns, and pay back owed favors to shadowy figures like José Luis Merino, a high-ranking government official in El Salvador. 

You’ll find Morino’s name — along with several others associated with the Bukele regime — on the US Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors report.

Bukele doesn’t like El Faro — which translates to “The Lighthouse” — a publication that for two decades has dug into corruption, human-rights abuses, and gang violence. 

His government recently expelled an El Faro editor who was Mexican, saying it could not verify his work credentials. (Washington Post, paywalled)

El Faro is co-owned by Jose Simán, Bukele’s rival, so of course, Bukele hates them. The paper has fought a tough battle, but its toughest battle yet may be against the Bukele regime. (Global Investigative Journalism Network)

Circle’s sly plan to go public

I wrote about Jeremy Allaire’s Circle, how it plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company, and why SPACs are bad. (My blog) 

Circle hasn’t been transparent about what is backing its now 26.4 billion USDC. They haven’t released their Q1 financials to the public, so now we are waiting for the SPAC to file an S-4 sometime in Q4. The S-4 will be the real test of transparency. 

[Update, moments after I published this newsletter, Circle came out with its May attestation. It’s a step toward greater transparency, but we still have questions. Why no full audit? Why the delay in making this info public?]

In his recent article, “A Stablecoin Applies to Become a Stonk,” Doomberg says he thinks SEC chair Gary Gensler is unlikely to let Circle pull off its terrible SPAC. “Under [former SEC chair] Clayton’s watch, the SPAC boom soared to historic heights. But from the early signs, Gary Gensler is no Jay Clayton.”

Here’s something I missed earlier: On page 52 of Circle’s Q4 2020 financials, there is a vague mention of a dispute with a “financial advisor” who claims they are entitled to “9% of any value issued to the Company’s shareholders in connection with the proposed business combination.”

Circle hasn’t disclosed who this financial advisor is, although there is some speculation as to whether Circle tried to go public with a different SPAC company earlier, and that didn’t work out. 

Here’s the text:

“The Company is currently in a dispute with a financial advisor regarding advisory fees in connection with the potential consummation of a proposed business combination. The advisor believes it would be entitled to a fee of approximately nine percent (9%) of any value issued to the Company’s shareholders in connection with the proposed business combination based on the advisor’s interpretation of its engagement letter with the Company. The Company disputes this and maintains that the advisor would receive, at most, a reasonable fee reflecting the custom and practice among investment bankers in similar size and type of transactions. At this time, no business combination has been entered into, and there is no fee owing. However, if any such transaction is completed, and a fee becomes payable to the advisor, we cannot determine the ultimate outcome of this dispute.”

Binance CEO: This is fine. Everything is fine

Binance is fast becoming a train wreck. Regulators around the world have been issuing warnings about the exchange, fiat off-ramps keep shutting, and users are complaining they can’t get their funds out. I wrote about it here and here.

Meanwhile, amidst the smoke and fire, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao — aka “CZ” — continues to behave like everything is going swimmingly.

“A new chapter awaits us, as we embrace compliance and regulations,” he tweeted — after his Brazil director abruptly quit, and Italy, Lithuania, and Hong Kong issued notices about its questionable stock tokens.

CZ talks a big game when it comes to compliance, but that’s all it is — talk. In a June press release, the exchange bragged about helping to take down a Ukrainian crypto money laundering group.

If Binance was following proper KYC/AML procedures, it likely wouldn’t be a target for money laundering groups to begin with. 

Binance routinely reaches out to law-enforcement agencies to request thank-you notes after it cooperates with criminal probes as a way to show how law-abiding it is. The habit has become so disingenuous that the US Department of Justice straight out told federal agencies to stop signing the letters. (Bloomberg)

A bit of trivia — six years ago, CZ was the head of OKCoin’s Singapore branch, registered as a separate company during the infamous Roger Ver vs OKCoin dispute over the bitcoin.com domain. CZ was the go-between who transmitted — or fabricated — the version of the contract with a grossly forged digital signature. The saga was comedy gold on r/buttcoin in 2015.

Oh, and in case you’ve ever wondered about those “maintenance shutdowns” on leveraged exchanges, this Youtube video by Francis Kim, an investor and founder of 80bots, is a must see. “The biggest mistake I made that night was trusting Binance — that my open position would be safe with them.”

Tether printer still on pause

Tether hasn’t printed a darn thing in 50 days. They are stuck at 62.3 billion tethers. Actually, it looks like they even burned 400 million tethers since two weeks ago.

Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since April 14. Down from nearly $68,000, it’s now below $30,000. The concern is that the price of BTC will continue to drop if the Tether printer does not start up again soon.

Keep in mind, there are still a lot of tethers out there moving around between unknown wallets. And we have two other popular stablecoins — USDC and BUSD — to pick up some of the slack. 

In my last newsletter, I offered three theories on why Tether had stopped printing. Now, I am beginning to suspect some regulator may have sent them a cease-and-desist notice.  

There’s also Binance, one of Tether’s biggest customers. Binance is holding 17 billion tethers — about 30% of all the USDT out there. California-based Silvergate Bank terminated their relationship with the exchange in June. (Coindesk)

This means users can no longer transfer US dollars from their US bank to Binance, likely often used to fund purchases of USDT.

Faisal Khan, a banking and payments consultant, thinks that USDT demand probably came from leveraged traders (aka degenerate gamblers) who needed more chips for the Binance casino. (Startups and Econ)

The FT did a profile on Giancarlo Devasini, the 57-year-old CFO of Bitfinex and Tether. A former plastic surgeon, at one point, Devasini got into trouble for “unwittingly” loading unlicensed Microsoft software onto computers he was selling. He goes by the handle “Merlin.”

In communication logs from April 2018 to early 2019 shared with the New York attorney general, Merlin pleaded with “Oz” at Crypto Capital to return funds. Bitfinex had lost access to hundreds of millions of dollars of customer money entrusted to the shadow bank. The exchange had to eventually dip into Tether’s reserves to fund user withdrawals.

“Please understand, all this could be extremely dangerous for everybody, the entire crypto community. BTC could tank to below $1K if we don’t act quickly,” said Merlin. (Court document)

So, to all those who think Tether has nothing to do with the price of bitcoin, Devasini would argue differently. 

Other newsworthy stuff

BlockFi just got hit with a cease and desist from the New Jersey attorney general. The high-yield crypto lender has to stop accepting new clients in NJ as of July 22. (Order)

BlockFi has been funding its lending through the sale of BlockFi Interest Accounts, or BIAs. You put your crypto in and get BIAs in return that earn interest. The NJ AG claims these interest earning accounts are unregistered securities.*

High-yields come with high risks. Still, BlockFi CEO Zack Prince says customer funds are safe. The question is, how safe will your funds be now that BlockFi is not getting as much new money coming in?

Dogecoin dropped below $0.2, so Elon Musk stepped in to do his part. He changed his Twitter profile pic to doge eyes, which helped lift the price back up to $0.19. (Decrypt)

Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer returned to Twitter briefly to post a scathing thread on why he left crypto. According to him, crypto is an “inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity.” He is 110% correct, of course. (Twitter)

Remember Virgil Griffith, the former Ethereum developer who went to the DPRK against all better judgment to speak at a conference? Virgil doesn’t really listen when people tell him not to do something. He got himself into trouble again, this time for trying to access his crypto — a violation of his bail conditions. (Court filing)  

Reggie Fowler — the person linked to $371 million in missing Bitfinex and Tether funds — has ditched plans for renegotiating a plea deal that he got very, very close to in January 2020. He’s headed to trial with his new defense team early next year. Hopefully, his new lawyer demanded payment in advance. (My blog post)

Trading volumes at the largest crypto exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and Bitstamp, fell more than 40% in June, according to CryptoCompare. The cause? Bitcoin’s dropping price and China’s renewed crackdown on crypto. (CNBC)

As an article in WSJ points out, China arrested more than 1,100 people suspected of using crypto to launder dirty money in the month of June. That’s enough to put a damper on any exchange volume.

David Golumbia, a professor of digital studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of Politics of Bitcoin, has a new podcast out where he talks about the right-wing politics of crypto. (Tech Won’t Save Us)

The Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau has banned an organization called China Blockchain Application Research Center. The founder is OKEx founder Star Xu, and its members include Huobi founder Lilin, Bibox founder and other giant whales of Chinese crypto. (Wu blockchain)

Hong Kong authorities have arrested four men allegedly tied to a money-laundering racket that used tethers to move $155 million through shell companies. (South China Morning Post, paywalled.)

Image: A one colón note. The colón was the currency of El Salvador between 1892 and 2001, until it was replaced by the US dollar. It is still legal tender, however.

*(July 20, 2021 — Updated to clarify that the NJ AG claims that BlockFi’s BIAs — interest earning accounts — are illegal securities. It doesn’t matter what type of crypto you buy those BIAs with, be it bitcoin, ether, or assets tied to Chainlink or UniSwap. It’s the BIAs. Also added link to the order.)

Related stories:
Binance: Italy, Lithuania, Hong Kong, all issue warnings; Brazil director quits
The curious case of Tether: a complete timeline of events
Tether’s first breakdown of reserves consists of two silly pie charts
NYAG/Tether, Bitfinex settlement reveals commingling of funds, years of shenanigans
Michael Peterson, El Salvador, and Bitcoin Beach

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: Tether’s offshore Deltec Bank, the Bit Short, NYAG’s document deadline, Tether truthers compare skeptics to QAnon

Finally, another newsletter! I am trying to find a way to write a crypto newsletter that doesn’t take all day to write. This is a (failed) attempt at that. Going forward, this sporadic newsletter will assume you know a thing or two about the crypto space. (If not, read the articles I link to!)

First some housekeeping—I’ve been working to update my blog and move it over from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. My main challenge is finding a WordPress theme that I like, preferably one that is free. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.

Also, the crap butterfly keyboard on my Macbook Pro is failing me, so I’ve ordered a Mac Air with the M1 chip, which will arrive in a few weeks. I’m hoping it makes my life easier.

If you want to support my work, a reminder that I have a Patreon account. Think of it as buying me a cup of coffee, a bottle of wine, or a case of wine once a month, depending on what level you subscribe to.  

Now, on to the news, starting with Tether.

Tether conversations reveal things

I wrote two blog posts recently—these are both transcripts with annotations. If you are interested in Tether and Bitfinex, I recommend you read both, as they contain a lot of good information.  

The first is an interview with Tether frontmen Stuart Hoegner and Paolo Ardoino hosted by bitcoin maxi Peter McCormack. The point of the interview was clearly to attack the “Tether FUD.”

Remember, it’s very important that Tether keep up the illusion that real money is behind tethers and all is well in Tetherland. If the charade crumbles, so does Tether’s dollar-peg and along with it, the bitcoin market.

To that end, Hoegner is claiming that the now $24 billion worth of tethers in circulation are fully backed. What a switch. He told us in April 2019—22 billion tethers ago—they were 74% backed. The question is what are they backed with? He won’t tell us. (Deltec is their off-shore bank in the Bahamas, by the way.) 

Peter: You mentioned Deltec. Are you shareholders in the bank? 
Stuart: We don’t talk about the investments that we have on the Tether side.
Peter: Okay, so are tethers fully backed?
Stuart: Look. The short answer is yes. Every tether is 100% backed by our reserves. And those reserves include traditional currency and cash equivalents, and may include other assets and receivables from loans made by tether to third parties. 

The second transcript I wrote up hasn’t gotten as many views but it is also interesting. It’s a debate between The Block’s Larry Cermak and blogger Bennett Tomlin. They argue whether Tether is acting in good faith. Cermak thinks they are. He believes tethers are fully backed—and wants you to believe that, too.

One question we have to ask is why Cermak, who was a staunch Tether skeptic in the past, has suddenly pulled a 180 and joined the campaign to prop up Tether? Assuming good faith, it appears he has fallen for the same con one Bloomberg reporter did two years ago.

Questions around Tether’s Deltec Bank

Another curiosity that sprung up from Paolo and Stu’s interview: Who is Deltec’s banking partner? If Tether keeps its reserves at Deltec and its largest customers have accounts there too, one would think Deltec needs a U.S. bank partner to store USD. In other words, a nostro account in a foreign bank. 

This should not be a secret. When Bitfinex was banking with Noble Bank in Puerto Rico, Noble openly stated on its website that it doesn’t actually hold the money. Instead, it used BNY Mellon as its custodian.

Presumably, Deltec has a custodian, too. This might explain why the Bahamian Central bank is not reporting inflows that match what Tether claims to have in its reserves. (The central bank publishes a quarterly statistical digest that looks at the total assets that all the country’s banks are holding.)

Of course, another explanation as to why the country’s central bank isn’t showing a large inflow of funds could be that Tether doesn’t have the reserves it says it does—or else, maybe, a good portion are in BTC?

In a year-in-review video, Deltec’s CIO Hugo Rogers dropped a bomb. He said, with the straightest face you can imagine, that the bank has a “large position” in bitcoin.

“We bought bitcoin for our clients at about $9,300 so that worked very well through 2020 and we expect it to continue working well in 2021 as the printing presses continue to run hot.” (He is referring to the U.S. printing press, but we know Tether has been running hot, too.)

Hoegner denied that any of those funds were Tether’s, according to The Block.

The Bit Short

An anonymous blogger published a Medium post on Tether titled “The Bit Short: Inside Crypto’s Doomsday Machine.” It’s full of great quotes and insights, like this one, describing how Tether’s core moneymaking engine may possibly work:

  1. Bob, a crypto investor, puts $100 of real US dollars into Coinbase.
  2. Bob then uses those dollars to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin on Coinbase.
  3. Bob transfers his $100 in Bitcoin to an unbanked exchange, like Bybit.
  4. Bob begins trading crypto on Bybit, using leverage, and receiving promotional giveaways — all of which are Tether-denominated.
  5. Tether Ltd. buys Bob’s Bitcoins from him on the exchange, almost certainly through a deniable proxy trading account. Bob gets paid in Tethers.
  6. Tether Ltd. takes Bob’s Bitcoins and moves them onto a banked exchange like Coinbase.
  7. Finally, Tether Ltd. sells Bob’s Bitcoins on Coinbase for dollars, and exits the crypto markets.

And this great quote here:

“Forget the activity on the offshore exchanges for a moment, and just think of a simple mental picture. Imagine you could stand at a metaphorical booth, where Coinbase’s exchange connects with the US financial system. If you could do that, you’d see two lines of people at the booth. One line would be crypto investors, putting dollars in—and the other line would be crooks, taking dollars out.”

If you can visualize the image above with Coinbase, you can start to understand why FinCEN is so anxious to push through its proposed “unhosted” wallets rule.

Tether’s document deadline has passed

Jan. 15 was the deadline for Bitfinex/Tether to submit a trove of documents to the NYAG, which has been investigating them for Martin Act violations. A lot of folks were hoping to see a court filing drop on Friday with the NYAG taking a position on the documents that it has received. The injunction, which limits Bitfinex from dipping into Tether’s reserves, also ended Friday, according to the NYAG’s letter from Dec. 8.

(Update: This is a bit confusing. I am not completely sure if the injunction ended on Jan. 15, according to the NYAG’s December letter, or it is implicitly extended until the next court order, per the original order.)

The NYAG hasn’t filed any new court documents yet, but we are waiting anxiously. Tether says they’ve so far sent 2.5 million docs to the NYAG—I believe that’s called a document dump.

In the meantime, Tether has mysteriously stopped printing tethers. The last big print was 400 million tethers on Jan. 12, and prior to that, 400 million on Jan. 9, according to @whale_alert.

Understanding GBTC

There has been some confusion on Twitter as to how Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) works. Grayscale doesn’t buy bitcoin directly. Grayscale customers send Grayscale their bitcoin—or cash to buy bitcoin with—and Grayscale issues shares in return. But why do the shares consistently trade at a premium to net asset value?

This November 2020 article by investor Harris Kupperman explains it well. “Think of GBTC as Pac-Man. The coins go in, but do not go out,” he said, going on to describe how GBTC functions as a “reflexive Ponzi scheme.”

Coinlab cuts a deal with Mt Gox creditors

Coinlab, a former U.S. company that has a $16 billion claim against Mt. Gox, has proposed a deal with Mt. Gox creditors over their claims. If creditors choose to go forward with the deal, they can agree to get back 90% of their BTC ahead of the settlement, according to Bloomberg.

Kim Nilsson of WizSec says Coinlab was never acting in good faith. “CoinLab was insisting on continuing to hold up the process for everyone while they litigate to try to steal everyone’s money, and had to be essentially bribed so as not to obstruct this arrangement.” (WizSec blog)

Other notable news

FinCEN has extended the deadline for comments on its proposed crypto wallet rule. Starting from Jan. 15, you now have 15 days to comment on reporting requirements, and 45 days to comment on proposed rules for reporting counterparty information and record-keeping requirements. (Coindesk, FinCEN notice)

Good-bye and good riddance. Brian Brooks has stepped down as acting commissioner of the OCC. (Coindesk.) The former Coinbase exec recently posted an editorial in the Financial Times shilling DeFi. (FT, paywalled)

The European Central Bank calls for regulating Bitcoin’s “funny business.” (Reuters)

Gary Gensler is reportedly President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to lead the SEC. Gensler is a crypto savvy guy, who taught a course on blockchain at MIT Sloan. Crypto folks can expect greater oversight from him. Hopefully, he will bring the hammer down an all those 2017 ICOs. (Bloomberg)

Tether apologists are now comparing (archive) Tether skeptics to unhinged QAnon conspiracy theorists—an example of what lengths they will go to discredit reasonable questions about Tether’s reserves. Remember, the burden is on Tether to prove they have the assets they say they do.

USDC, a U.S. regulated stablecoin issued by Circle, now has a circulating supply worth $5 billion—far outpacing that of any other U.S. regulated stablecoin.

Frances Coppola debates Nic Carter about bitcoin. (What Bitcoin Did podcast)

Bitcoin mining was partly to blame for the latest blackout in Iran. (Washington Post)

Ripple’s ex-CTO loses access to $200 million in bitcoin. “This whole idea of being your own bank—let me put it this way, do you make your own shoes?” said Stefan Thomas. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.” (New York Times)

Bitcoin may have helped finance the pro-Trump Capital riots (Decrypt)

Twitter has banned the account of former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne after he posted conspiracy theories relating to the Presidential election. Byrne is a longtime bitcoiner who led Overstock’s decision to originally accept bitcoin and invest in the space. (Decrypt)

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News: BTC moons, Reggie Fowler stiffs lawyers, OKEx withdrawals still frozen, Binance gets piles of USDT

Bitcoin broke $16,000 on Thursday. That’s up from $10,000 in early September. And yet, with all the media outlets rabidly covering the latest “Bitcoin bull run,” the only one mentioning the billions and billions of dollars worth of tether (USDT) entering the market was Cointelegraph. 

In particular, none of the mainstream press has bothered to mention tether in their writings about BTC’s recent price rise. This is worrisome because retail folks — the ones most vulnerable to risky investments — have little understanding of tether and the risk it imposes on Bitcoin’s price. 

Instead, most media pointed to the election, PayPal’s recent embrace of crypto and huge BTC investments by MicroStrategy and Square as the reasons for BTC’s moon. Mainstream adoption! Institutional money! The truth is, crypto markets are easy to manipulate. And when BTC goes up in value like this, the main benefit is so early investors can cash out. 

In other words, BTC gets passed on to the next bright-eyed, bushy-tailed dupe who hopes the price will continue skyward. History has shown, however, these bubbles are generally followed by a crash, and a lot of people getting hurt, which is exactly what happened in 2018.

Trolly McTrollface (not his real name, obvs) points out in a tweet thread that Tether went into hyperdrive in March to stop BTC from crashing. BTC had dropped to $5,000, losing half its value from two months prior. In fact, March is when BTC entered its current bull run phase.

Remember, if the price of BTC falls too low, the network’s miners — who are responsible for Bitcoin’s security — can’t make a profit, and that puts the entire network in danger.

Trolly believes the current price pump is a coordinated effort between Tether — which has now issued a jaw-dropping $18 billion worth of dollar-pegged tethers — and the exchanges.

Let’s talk about some of those exchanges.

OKEx withdrawals still frozen

Withdrawals from OKEx, one of the biggest crypto exchanges, have been frozen ever since the news came out that founder “Star” Xu was hauled away for questioning by Shanghai authorities more than a month ago.

Xu’s interrogation appears to be part of a broader crackdown on money laundering in China, though OKEx denies any AML violations. 

OKEx is registered in Malta, but retains offices in Shanghai and Beijing, where it facilitates peer-to-peer—or “over-the-counter”—trades. The exchange acts as an escrow to reduce counter-party risk in fiat-to-crypto trades, so you don’t have to worry about someone disappearing with your cash before they hand over the BTC you just bought from them.

As Wolfie Zhao explains for the Block, these OTC trades are the only fiat on/off ramp for Chinese crypto traders—and have been ever since September 2017 when the country banned crypto trading on exchanges.

Effectively, the government made it so the exchanges could no longer get access to banking in the country.

P2P allows two people to transact directly, thus bypassing the Chinese ban, as long as the trades are small in scale. All Chinese crypto-to-fiat is OTC, while crypto-to-crypto trades are still done via a matching order book. (A Chinese citizen simply needs to use a VPN to access Binance, for instance.)

Currently, the OTC desk is the only trading desk that remains open at OKEx All of its exchange trading activity has been ground to a halt. The exchange claims Xu has access to the private keys needed to access its funds, and until he is free, all that crypto sits locked in a virtual vault.

As a result, according to blockchain analytics firm Glassnode, there are currently 200,000 bitcoin stuck on OKEx. The exchange insists all funds are safe, and says, essentially, that everything will be fine as soon as Xu returns. But its customers remain anxious. Did I mention OKEx is a tether exchange?

Huobi, another exchange in peril?

Like OKEx, Huobi is another exchange that moved its main offices out of China following the country’s 2017 crackdown on crypto exchanges.

Huobi, now based in Singapore, continues to facilitate fiat-to-bitcoin and fiat-to-tether trades in China behind an OTC front. (Dovey Wan does a nice job explaining how this works in her August 2019 story for Coindesk.)

Since earlier this month, rumors have circulated that Robin Zhu, Huobi’s chief operating officer, was also dragged in for questioning by Chinese authorities. Huobi denies the rumors.

Meanwhile, since Nov. 2—the day Zhu was said to have gone missing —$300 million worth of BTC has flowed from Huobi to Binance, according to a report in Coindesk. (I still don’t have a good explanation as to why Huobi is doing this. If anyone can fill in the gaps, please DM me on Twitter.)

What’s up with Binance?

If you follow Whale Alert on Twitter, like I do, it’s hard to ignore the enormous influx of tether going into Binance multiple times a day.

Here’s an example: On Friday, in four separate transactions, Tether sent Binance a total of $101 million worth of tethers. The day prior to that, Tether sent Binance $118 million in tethers, and the exchange also received $90 million worth of tethers from an unknown wallet. And on Wednesday, Tether sent Binance $104 million in tethers.

That’s over $400 million worth of dubiously backed tethers—in three days.

Like Huobi and OKEx, Binance also has roots in China. And it has an OTC desk to facilitate fiat-to-crypto trades. Is it a coincidence that the top tether exchanges originate from China? And that China controls two-thirds of Bitcoin’s hash rate?

Reggie Fowler’s lawyers wanna quit

Reggie Fowler, the Arizona businessman in the midst of the Crypto Capital scandal, is running low on cash. His lawyers have decided they don’t do pro bono work, so now they want to drop him as a client.

Last month, Fowler’s legal team asked the court to change his bond conditions to free up credit. But apparently, that isn’t working. Unfortunately, all this is happening just when there was a possibility of negotiating another plea deal. (Read my blog posts here and here.) 

Quadriga Trustee releases report #7

EY, the trustee handling the bankruptcy for failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, released its 7th Report of the Monitor on Nov. 5.

According to the report, EY has received 17,053 claims totaling somewhere between CA$224 million and CA$290 million—depending on what exchange rate EY ends up using to convert the USD and crypto claims to Canadian dollars for disbursement.

EY has CA$39 million ready to distribute to affected Quadriga users, who submitted claims. But none of that money is going anywhere until the Canadian Revenue Agency finishes its audit of the exchange. (Ready my blog post for more details.)

Gensler goes to Washington

Gary Gensler has been picked to lead President-elect Joe Biden’s financial reform transition team. As Foreign Policy notes, Gensler, who was the head of the CFTC during the Obama years, is an aggressive regulator.

He is also well familiar with the world of crypto. He taught a course on blockchain at MIT Sloan. He suspects Ripple is a noncompliant security, and he told me in an interview for Decrypt that the SAFT construct—a once-popular idea for launching an initial coin offering—will not spare a token from securities laws. (He also thinks 99% of all ICOs are securities.)

Libra Shrugged author David Gerard said in a tweet that Gensler was excellent in the Libra hearing last July. Gensler also “helped clean up the 2008 financial crisis, he knows literally all the possible nonsense,” said Gerard.

Clearly, this is good news for bitcoin.

Nov. 15 — Before I said that OKEx offered the only fiat-to-crypto on/off ramp in China. That is inaccurate. P2P OTC exchanges *in general* are the only fiat on/off ramps for crypto traders in China and have been since Sept. 2017.

Nov. 16 — Previously, this story stated that Quadriga’s trustee has CA$30 million available to distribute to claimants. It’s been updated to correctly reflect that EY has CA$39 million (US$30 million) to distribute.

Posted on by Amy Castor 0