Tag: Ravid Yosef

Reggie Fowler, Bitfinex/Tether money mule, sentenced to 6 years in prison 

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
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Arizona businessman and sports investor Reggie Fowler spent decades talking himself out of sticky situations. But in a Manhattan courtroom on June 5, reality finally caught up to him.

US District Judge Andrew Carter sentenced Fowler, who is 64 years old, to 6 years and 3 months in prison for his role in hiding cryptocurrency transactions on behalf of shadow banking operation Crypto Capital and the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars. Fowler will surrender in Phoenix at 10 a.m. on June 30, giving him three weeks to get his affairs in order and rehome his dog.

Inner City Press attended the sentencing. [Twitter; Inner City Press; SDNY press release]

Fowler has agreed to pay $53 million in restitution to the defunct Alliance of American Football (AAF), an alternative football league that he defrauded as one of its investors. Inner City Press tells us that the judge also ordered Fowler to forfeit the full $740 million prosecutors had asked for, dismissing Fowler’s argument that this was so high as to violate the 8th Amendment. [Order of restitution, PDF; Order of forfeiture of property, PDF]

Fowler’s crypto frauds were the beginning of the more recent frauds in the crypto space, and the failures of the Silvergate and Signature banks, prosecutors said in court.

“I have harmed the people of the AAF and my family,” sobbed Fowler. “I am embarrassed and ashamed.” Poor fellow.

Just a little off the top

Crypto Capital was a Panama-incorporated money transmitter that served as a shadow bank for many US and Canadian crypto exchanges, including Bitfinex and the failed QuadrigaCX — because they had enormous trouble getting proper banks to talk to them.

Throughout 2018, Fowler was Crypto Capital’s US contact. He set up a network of bank accounts in the US and abroad so that Crypto Capital could process payments for its customers without worrying about all those tedious anti-money-laundering laws. 

Fowler lied to the banks, telling them that the accounts were for his real estate business. His scheme ran internationally and received over $740 million just in 2018. Most of this was Bitfinex customer money. A “Master US Workbook” listed more than 60 bank accounts around the world, which totaled over $345 million by January 2019. [Decrypt]

Fowler didn’t worry too much about separating Crypto Capital or Bitfinex money from his own funds. He and his co-conspirators set up a “10% Fund,” skimming from client deposits for themselves.

In the original indictment, and again at today’s sentencing, prosecutors detailed “additional criminal conduct” Fowler seemed to be involved in — though he wasn’t charged on these.

Fowler allegedly tried many times to get bank loans using fraudulent bond certificates, valued in the billions, as collateral. He tried to use funds from the Crypto Capital scheme as collateral for loans. He was caught with $14,000 in sheets of counterfeit $100 notes right there in his office.

Fowler was arrested in Chandler, Arizona, on April 19, 2019.

Prosecutors piled on more charges in a superseding indictment in February 2020 after they discovered Fowler had been using Crypto Capital money to fund the AAF. That funding fell through after the Department of Justice seized $68 million from Fowler’s bank accounts at HSBC in late 2018.

Fowler, who had fumbled an opportunity for a plea deal in January 2020, pleaded guilty to all five counts against him in April 2022, throwing himself at the mercy of the court. He has remained out of jail since his initial arrest on $5 million bail. 

A respectable businessman of flawless repute

Fowler’s lawyer Ed Sapone wrote a letter to the judge on April 10 asking for clemency for his client — that is, no jail time at all.

Sapone argued that Fowler had lived a hard life, growing up in the South without parental support, and had never broken the law before. At least not in any way that landed him behind bars. [Doc 124, PDF]

Never mind that Fowler was a fully-grown 59-year-old man at the time of his crimes with a long career as a (cough) sharp businessman behind him.

Sapone also neglected to mention that Fowler had been sued 36 times in the past, mainly for just not paying people — and had even stiffed his previous lawyers in this very case for $600,000. [ESPN, 2005] 

In a sentencing submission, prosecutors said that they didn’t appreciate that Fowler had blown $200,000 gambling in casinos since his guilty plea, rather than using those funds to pay back his victims. [Doc 125, PDF]

Prosecutors also noted that in December 2016, Fowler was stopped at the Canadian border with items associated with a “black money scam” — a scheme where a con artist claims to have stacks of US bills dyed black to avoid detection. The bills will come clean if you just purchase this expensive “special chemical.”

Hard work and perseverance

Fowler’s story reads like an episode of American Greed — where money seduces and power corrupts.

Before his path crossed that of Crypto Capital, Fowler’s main business was Spiral Inc. — a holding company for about a hundred different businesses, including ice rinks, car washes, and a foam food tray manufacturer company. Most of the businesses were located between Arizona and Colorado.   

Fowler was also a pilot and owned two jets — a Cessna Citation CJ2 and a CJ3, which he flew for business and loaned out.

He touched many lives including friends in the sports world and those who depended on him for their livelihood. Because Amy wrote about Fowler regularly, people who knew him contacted her. Sources described Fowler as well-read, charming, and a “fantastic salesperson, overbearing and confident.” He was not a gambler, at least not before his indictment, said a source. He never drank and worked out at the gym religiously.

What Fowler was not good at, however, was shedding businesses that were dogs — like his “Shammy Man” carwashes in Arizona, which he co-owned with a partner who served time in federal prison — or putting money into the ones that were doing well.

His firm Styro-Tech in Denver was making money hand over fist, but Fowler couldn’t seem to invest in better equipment and he was always hiring illegal immigrants cheap. “He could never pay anybody what they were worth,” said one source. “I don’t know how many times he got caught hiring illegals.”

Football obsessed

Fowler was a football player in his youth and remained an obsessive fan. His obsession with the game played no small part in his downfall.

He kept a Cincinnati Bengals helmet in his office and gave people the impression that he had played professionally for the Bengals — though he had only attended training camp.

In 2005, Fowler tried to purchase the Minnesota Vikings from Red McCombs in a $600 million deal. “He was 100 percent committed to getting it done,” McCombs said. “He was very straightforward. He said, ‘I am going to buy your football team.’” Fowler would have been the NFL’s first Black owner. [LA Times, 2005]

But the deal led to financial scrutiny, and the Star Tribune uncovered several outright lies in Fowler’s resume, so Fowler pursued a limited partnership instead. The cash he put up for the 3% ownership in the Vikings got him into financial trouble. [Minnesota Public Radio, 2005]

Things went from bad to worse, and Fowler went deeper into debt. He refinanced Spiral in 2006, landing him $65 million in debt. The credit crisis followed in 2008, and Spiral never recovered. By 2013, the company was in receivership, and Fowler lost control of all his businesses. By October 2014, Fowler no longer had a stake in the Vikings. [Resolute, 2022; Star Tribune, 2014]

At some point over the following years, a debt-saddled Fowler crossed paths with the people at Crypto Capital — Oz Yosef and his sister Ravid. The Yosefs were both later indicted for their part in Fowler’s fraud, but remain at large.

Crypto had an interesting year in 2017. Bitfinex, the largest crypto exchange at the time, lost its ties to the traditional banking system when its Taiwanese banks were cut off from correspondent banking by Wells Fargo. Short of real dollars, and trying to recover from a $72 million hack in 2016, Bitfinex and its sister company, stablecoin issuer Tether, began pumping out tethers at a pace unlike anything before — frequently with no dollars backing them at all. (Just like the salty nocoiners told you at the time.)

Fueled by these unbacked fake dollars pouring into the crypto markets, the price of bitcoin climbed to new highs. A year later, Fowler found himself in control of bank accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through them. And then football called to him again. 

AAF: the Fyre Festival of football

Alternative football leagues have a long history of dismal failure. In 2017, TV producer Charles Ebersol came up with an idea for a springtime football league that would be a feeder for the National Football League.

Somehow “millions” of fans would have an interest in watching football after the Super Bowl. The Alliance of American Football would even come with a killer app that promised to change sports gambling as we know it.

Ebersol and AAF co-founder Bill Polian, an NFL executive, attracted some seed capital. In June 2018, Willie Lanier, a former Super Bowl champion, introduced Ebersol to Fowler. Fowler offered to be a lead investor, committing $170 million — a $50 million line of equity and a $120 million line of credit. Prosecutors wrote in their letter to the court:

During a June 2018 meeting with AAF executives, including AAF co-founder Charlie Ebersol, Fowler showed the AAF corporate team printouts of bank account information purporting to show that Fowler had hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts. Fowler would not let anyone take the printouts after the meeting. Fowler told Ebersol that Fowler’s wealth, which he said was largely in cash, came from real estate holdings and an aviation business that built drones in Germany for U.S. Government contracts. During an October 2018 meeting, one of Ebersol’s associates took a picture of a bank account printout that Fowler presented. That printout showed roughly $60 million in an HSBC account. 

That HSBC account would be one of the accounts that was frozen by the Department of Justice in that very month.

Ebersol claims in an affidavit that he did his due diligence on Fowler — though clearly he did not. All Eberson would have had to do was look up all the multiple lawsuits against Fowler. Peter Thiel also invested in AAF through his Founders Fund.

The league kicked off in February 2019 — with eight teams and more than 400 players — but after eight weeks of play, the dream unraveled when Fowler missed a $28 million payment  because all his money had been frozen. [Affidavit, PDF; CNBC, 2018]

The AAF disintegrated into the football version of the Fyre Festival. They missed payroll in the first week one, blaming it on a computer glitch. Players had been booted out of their hotels and had to pay cash for their flights back home.

Another investor, Tom Dundon, took over the league, but he soon gave up throwing money into the pit as well. The AAF declared bankruptcy on April 17, 2019 — and multiple lawsuits against its founders ensued. [Twitter, archive; Twitter, archive; Sports Illustrated]

End of the linebacker

What can we learn from Reggie Fowler? Mostly that pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered.

Fowler spent decades doing sharp business that didn’t quite get him in trouble with the law. Then he got in a bind and let his hubris do the thinking for him. Like so many in crypto, he found out that this works until it doesn’t.

By the time he gets out of jail, Fowler will be 70. In the four years between his arrest and today’s sentencing, he spent his time just going to work every day. We predict he’ll get out of jail and just get back into running businesses until the day he drops. Hopefully less flagrantly illegal ones.

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

NYAG/Tether, Bitfinex settlement reveals commingling of funds, years of shenanigans

I wrote a quick article this morning about the New York attorney general settlement, wherein Bitfinex and Tether agreed to pay $18.5 million in penalties, stop servicing New York customers, and submit quarterly transparency reports. 

But there are more details to highlight. Namely, the settlement agreement reveals the games Bitfinex and Tether have played over the years—games they will keep on playing until someone puts an end to their shenanigans. 

It also reveals how the firms have long misled the public about Tether’s reserves. From 2014 until late February 2019, Tether advertised that tethers were fully backed 1:1 by cash in some bank accounts somewhere—but that was not true. 

Tether now has 34 billion tethers in circulation—a number that is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

Here are my random thoughts and notes from the 17-page agreement.

Phil Potter

In the agreement, the office of the NY attorney general writes: “During the time period relevant to the OAG’s investigation, and as late as early-to-mid 2018, one of Bitfinex and Tether’s senior executives lived in, and conducted his work from, New York.”   

I’m assuming this is Phil Potter, Bitfinex and Tether’s chief strategy officer, and one of its three top execs. Potter allegedly stepped away from the company in mid-2018, about the time the NY attorney general started its investigation. Though the public did not learn of the investigation until April 2019.

The fact that Bitfinex and Tether had one executive and large customers in the state—and no BitLicense—opened the door to the NY attorney general’s probe. Per the terms of the settlement, Bitfinex and Tether can no longer do any business in the state, which means New York crypto firms can no longer use tethers. 

Previously, although Bitfinex and Tether claim to have barred New York residents (retail investors) in January 2017, they still served eligible contract participants, meaning individuals or trading firms with assets in the millions.

Commingled funds

Tether and Bitfinex lost their banking in March 2017 when they were cut off by Wells Fargo, a correspondent bank. Subsequently, their banks in Taiwan also dumped them.  

Two months later, when Tether had 108 million tethers in circulation, Bitfinex opened an account at Noble Bank in Puerto Rico. (Noble Bank, by the way, was co-founded by Brock Pierce, the child star who also created Tether.)

Tether, however, did not open an account at Noble—or at any bank—until September 2017, according to the office of the NY attorney general’s findings.

Instead, Tether deposited the “vast majority” of its cash into a trust account held by its general counsel, Stuart Hoegner, at the Bank of Montreal in Canada. The account never held more than $61.5 million dollars.

The rest of Tether’s money was mixed in with Bitfinex customer money at Bitfinex accounts at Noble Bank. Between June 1 and September 2017—Bitfinex held hundreds of millions of dollars in Tether’s funds in its accounts, the prosecutor said.

Commingling of funds is a terrible idea—legally and logistically. (Failed crypto exchange QuadrigaCX also commingled funds. And its now-allegedly-deceased CEO used customer money like his own personal slush fund.) 

Mystery NY trading firm

Because Tether had no bank account between March and September 2017, it could not directly take money for tethers. At the same time, according to the NY attorney general, “neither the Tether website or Bitfinex allowed for the direct purchase or exchange of tethers in exchange for any other virtual currency, including the two most popular virtual currencies, bitcoin and ether.”

Between June and September 2017, “Bitfinex’s Noble Bank account received USD deposits from only two institutional trading firms, one of which was located in New York. Neither of those firms purchased tethers directly from Bitfinex or Tether during this time period.”

This part of the NY attorney general’s findings puzzles. Why were these trading firms sending money to Bitfinex if they were not getting tethers in exchange? What were they getting instead? And who was the New York firm?

Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital is based in New York. And we know it was onboarding as a Bitfinex customer in October 2018, based on court documents that point to letters Galaxy sent to Bitfinex. But it is not clear if Galaxy was a customer of Bitfinex or Tether in 2017. (In April 2019, Novogratz claimed Galaxy had “zero exposure” to Bitfinex and Tether.)

Staging the Friedman audit

According to the office of the NY attorney general, until September 15, 2017, the only U.S. dollars held by Tether backing 442 million tethers in circulation was $61 million at the Bank of Montreal. 

Whatever other money Tether had was held in Bitfinex accounts.

In the summer of 2017, rumors were afoot that tethers were not fully backed. To quash those rumors, Tether and Bitfinex arranged for accounting firm Friedman LLP to perform an attestation on September 15, 2017.

They had to move quickly to set things up though.

On that morning, Tether opened an account at Noble Bank. And Bitfinex transferred $382 million from Bitfinex’s account at Noble Bank into Tether’s account at Noble Bank. Friedman conducted its verification of Tether’s assets that evening.

“No one reviewing Tether’s representations would have reasonably understood that the $382,064,782 listed as cash reserves for tethers had only been placed in Tether’s account as of the very morning that Friedman verified the bank balance,” the NY attorney general wrote. The attestation included the money at the Bank of Montreal as well. 

Friedman’s relationship with Bitfinex ended a few months later. 

It’s never a good sign when your auditor quits. Worse, there was no official announcement—Friedman simply deleted all mention of Bitfinex from its website, including past press releases.

Massive loss of funds

In 2017 and 2018, Bitfinex began to increasingly rely on Crypto Capital to handle its customer deposits and withdrawals. Oz Yosef, was Bitfinex’s contact at the Panamanian payment processor.

By 2018, Crypto Capital held over $1 billion of Bitfinex funds. That’s when the real trouble started.

In April 2018, the government of Poland froze a Crypto Capital bank account holding $340 million. Adding to that, Oz told Bitfinex that a Crypto Capital account in Portugal containing $150 million of Bitfinex client funds also had been frozen. 

These events threw Bitfinex into a liquidity crisis. And in the summer of 2018, Bitfinex began dipping into Tether’s cash reserves to fund customer withdrawals. Bitfinex told customers that rumors of its insolvency were false, but behind the scenes, the crypto exchange was pleading with Oz to release the money. 

(Later we learn that another $350 million in missing Crypto Capital funds were linked to 60 accounts held by Arizona businessman Reginald Fowler, who was indicted in April 2019 for bank fraud. Some of these accounts were frozen in 2018. Oz’s sister, Ravid Yosef, was also indicted for her role in assisting Fowler set up those accounts. She is still at large.)

(And in October 2019, Crypto Capital President Molina Lee was arrested by Polish authorities in connection with laundering money for Columbian drug cartels via Bitfinex.)

Deltec Bank & Trust

In October 2018, Bitfinex and Tether ended their relationship with Noble bank. Soon after, they announced they were banking with Deltec in the Bahamas. 

In a letter dated Nov. 1, 2018, Deltec said Tether’s account held $1.8 billion, enough to back the tethers in circulation at the time. The letter was signed but had no name under the signature. The signature itself was illegible.

The following day, Tether began moving hundreds of millions of dollars out of its bank account at Deltec to Bitfinex’s bank account at Deltec. And as part of a “loan arrangement,” between the two closely related firms, Tether assumed Bitfinex’s losses on its own balance sheet. (We can’t be sure of the total loan amount, but an estimate is $750 million.) 

Tether’s misrepresentation that tethers were fully backed continued to Feb. 2019 when it updated its terms of service to say that tethers are backed by “traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities.”

Bitfinex says it paid off the loan to Tether in January, and the firms now claim tethers are fully backed—but the question is, backed by what? Loans? Bitcoins? We’ll find out in 90 days when Tether and Bitfinex publish their first transparency report. Per the terms of the settlement agreement, the firms will need to publish these reports quarterly for two years.

Also, $18.5 million—the amount of the settlement—is no small number. We have no idea how much cash Tether and Bitfinex actually have on hand.

The bitcoin community is calling the settlement a win for Tether and Bitfinex. They say the fine is nothing but a slap on the wrist. In reality, it’s another way for Tether and Bitfinex to buy time. The NY attorney general has set its trap; now we wait.

Updated Feb. 24 to note that Novogratz claimed zero exposure to Bitfinex and Tether in 2019.

Also read: NYAG to crypto companies: ‘Play by the rules or we will shut you down’

If you benefit from my writing, and my research helps you do your job, please consider supporting my work by subscribing to my Patreon account for as little as $5 a month. 

Posted on by Amy Castor 2

Reginald Fowler, man tied to missing Bitfinex funds, out on $5M bail

Screen Shot 2019-05-02 at 1.33.58 PMReginald Fowler, the ex-NFL owner arrested in connection with operating a “shadow bank” that processed hundreds of millions of dollars of unregulated transactions on behalf of crypto exchanges, is out on $5 million bail.  

The U.S. Government previously argued that Fowler should be detained without bail. The government thought he was too much of a flight risk due to his overseas connections and access to bank accounts around the world. But for the time being, at least, Fowler is a free man, albeit, with restrictions.

Order and letter

The order setting conditions of release was filed with the District Court for the District of Arizona on May 9. A letter of motion, submitted by U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman and addressed to Judge Andrew Carter of the District Court of Southern New York, was entered on May 8.

Copies of the letter went to defense attorneys James McGovern and Michael Hefter, partners at Hogan Lovells in New York. Fowler’s arraignment is set for 4:30 p.m. on May 15 at the Southern District Court of New York. 

Fowler was arrested in Arizona on April 30. The bond is being posted in New York, because the District of Arizona does not include secured bonds in bail packages. 

According to conditions set forth in the bond, Fowler cannot travel outside of the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of New York, and Arizona. He also had to surrender his travel documents and his passport. 

The properties and the wealthy friends

Fowler’s $5 million personal recognizance bond is secured by two unnamed “financially responsible” co-signers and the following properties: 

  • 3965 Bayamon Street, Las Vegas, Nevada
  • 8337 Brittany Harbor Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada
  • 4670 Slippery Rock Drive, Fort Worth, Texas
  • 4417 Chaparral Creek Drive, Fort Worth, Texas
  • 8821 Friendswood Drive, Fort Worth, Texas

A quick look on Zillow indicates the properties are cheap investment houses, worth perhaps $1.5 million in total, if that. This would mean that the additional $3.5 million is secured by Fowler’s wealthy friends, whoever they are.

The LLC on the five properties is Eligibility LLC, 4939 Ray Road, #4-349 Chandler, Arizona 85226. The mailing address points to a UPS store, so it is basically a P.O. Box.

Global Trading Solutions LLC, a company linked to Fowler’s shadow banking operation, had the same mailing address for a time, but the address was later changed.

Indictment

On April 11, Fowler and Ravid Yosef, an Israeli woman who lived in Los Angeles and is still at large, were indicted on charges of bank fraud. Fowler was also charged with operating an unlicensed money services business. 

Fowler’s company—or one of his companies—was Global Trading Solutions LLC, which provided services for Global Trade Solutions AG, the Switzerland-based parent company of Crypto Capital Corp.

Cryptocurrency exchanges used Crypto Capital as an intermediary to wire cash to their customers. The firm is allegedly withholding $851 million on behalf of Bitfinex, a crypto exchange that is currently being sued by the New York Attorney General.  

# # #

Thanks to Nic Weaver for locating the court documents. He spends his beer money on PACER, so you don’t have to.

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: More Bitfinex drama, Crypto Capital, a dodgy football businessman and a relationship coach

There is so much going on now with Bitfinex. My eyes are burning and my head hurts from reading piles of court docs. Here is a rundown of all the latest—and then some.

The New York Attorney General (NYAG) is suing Bitfinex and Tether, saying tethers (USDT) are not fully backed—after $850 million funneled through third-party payment processor Crypto Capital has gone missing.  

Screen Shot 2019-05-04 at 2.10.08 PMIt’s still not clear where all that money went. Bitfinex says the funds were “seized and safeguarded” by government authorities in Portugal, Poland and the U.S. The NYAG says the money was lost. It wants Bitfinex to stop dipping into Tether’s reserves and to handover a mountain of documents.

In response to the NYAG’s ex parte order, Tether general counsel Stuart Hoegner filed an affidavit accompanied by a motion to vacate from outside counsel Zoe Phillips of Morgan Lewis. Hoegner admits $2.8 billion worth of tethers are only 74% backed, but claims “Tether is not at risk.” Morgan says New York has no jurisdiction over Tether or Bitfinex. Meanwhile, the NYAG has filed an opposition. It wants Bitfinex to stop messing around.

Football businessman Reggie Fowler and “co-conspirator” Ravid Yosef were charged with running a “shadow banking” service for crypto exchanges. This all loops back to Crypto Capital, which Bitfinex and Tether were using to solve their banking woes.    

In an odd twist, the cryptocurrency saga is crossing over into the sports world. Fowler was the original main investor in the Alliance of American Football (AAF), an attempt to create a new football league. The league filed for bankruptcy last month—after Fowler was unable to deliver, because the DoJ had frozen his bank accounts last fall.  

The US government thinks Fowler is a flight risk and wants him held without bail. The FBI has also found a “Master US Workbook,” detailing the operations of a massive “cryptocurrency scheme.” They found it with email subpoenas, which sounds like it was being kept on a Google Drive?

Yosef is still at large. She appears to have split her time between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles. This is her LinkedIn profile. She works as a relationship coach and looks to be the sister of Crypto Capital’s Oz Yosef (aka “Ozzie Joseph”), who was likely the “Oz” chatting with “Merlin” documented in NYAG’s suit against Bitfinex.  

All eyes are on Tether right now. Bloomberg reveals the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been investigating whether Tether actually had a stockpile of cash to support the currency. The DoJ is also looking into issues raised by the NYAG.

Meanwhile, bitcoin is selling for a $300 to $400 premium on Bitfinex — a sign that traders are willing to pay more for bitcoin, so they can dump their tethers and get their funds off the exchange. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing. Bitcoin sold at a premium on Mt. Gox and QuadrigaCX before those exchanges collapsed.

Bitfinex is still in the ring, but it needs cash. The exchange is now trying to cover its Tether shortfalls by raising money via—of all things—a token sale. It plans to raise $1 billion in an initial exchange offering (IEO) by selling its LEO token. CoinDesk wrote a story on it, and even linked to my Tether timeline.

Did a sex-trafficking site sparked the Crypto Capital investigation? Also, Decrypt’s Tim Copeland takes a look at the payment processor’s dark past.

Tether wants to move tethers from Omni to the Tron blockchain. Tron planned to offer a 20% incentive to Omni USDT holders to convert to Tron USDT on Huobi and OkEx exchanges. But given the “recent news” about Bitfinex and Tether, it is delaying the rewards program.  

Kara Haas has an article on AccountingWeb and a Twitter thread on the potential accounting implications of Tether’s definition of “reserves.”

Coinbase is bidding adieu to yet another executive. Earn.com founder Balaji Srinivasan, who served as the exchange’s CTO for a year, is leaving. It looks like his departure comes after he served the minimum agreed period with Coinbase. 

Elsewhere, BreakerMag is shutting down. The crypto publication had a lot of good stories in its short life, including this unforgettable one by Laurie Penny, who survived a bitcoin cruise to tell about it. David Gerard wrote an obituary for the magazine.

The Los Angeles Ballet is suing MovieCoin, accusing the film finance startup of trying to pay a $200,000 pledge in worthless tokens—you can’t run a ballet on shit coins.

Police in Germany and Finland have shut down two dark markets, Wall Street Market and Valhalla. And a mystery Git ransomware is wiping Git repository commits and replacing them with a ransom note demanding Bitcoin, as this Redditor details.

# # #

 

Posted on by Amy Castor 0