Tag: Ripple

Crypto collapse: Sam Bankman-Fried goes to jail, SEC appeals Ripple ruling, Prime Trust bankrupt, the tangled tale of TrueUSD and Tron

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
  • Enjoying our posts? Keep them coming — send us money! Here’s Amy’s Patreon and here’s David’s. 
  • Another way you can help: tell just one other person about our work. Word of mouth is the best way to get information out about any creative work. If you like this, tell someone. Thank you.

“i cant wait until we get julain assange out of jail using Crypto. itll make all the pedophile money laundering worth it”

— dril

Go directly to jail

Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail has been revoked for witness tampering — specifically, that he shared ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s private diary with a New York Times reporter. This was the last straw for Judge Lewis Kaplan, who said the documents were “something that someone who has been in a relationship would be unlikely to share with anyone except to hurt and frighten the subject.”

Previously, Sam tried to get in touch via Signal with another witness, former FTX US lawyer Ryne Miller, about getting their stories straight — which nearly saw Sam’s bail revoked that time.

Our hero is currently at MDC Brooklyn — notoriously one of the worst jails in the federal system — but the government has asked that he be remanded at Putnam, where he’ll be allowed more computer access to prepare for his upcoming trial on October 2.

Inner City Press live-tweeted the entire hearing. Sam’s lawyer Mark Cohen immediately filed an appeal. [Twitter, archive; Doc 198, PDF; Notice of Appeal, PDF; Order; PDF] 

Prosecutors filed a superseding indictment against Sam on August 14. The new indictment contains seven of the thirteen original charges, removing anything that wasn’t explicitly in the Bahamas extradition agreement. Sam’s $100 million of political contributions are now listed as just another way he misspent customer money. The government also filed its motions in limine — pretrial motions on what evidence is admissible and so on. [Indictment, PDF; in limine, PDF; Doc 165, PDF]

Mathew Russell Lee of Inner City Press has been the man on the scene at the SDNY courthouse for Sam’s hearings. As well as live-tweeting hearings, he collects his writeups as Kindle books. His collection on Sam is just out, recounting the saga as he saw it happen from December 2022 to last week. [Amazon UK; Amazon US]

SEC appeals Ripple

The SEC has asked SDNY District Judge Analisa Torres to pause their case against Ripple so they can appeal her questionable decision on XRP sales to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals. The SEC’s grounds for appeal is that there’s now a genuine intra-district judicial dispute over the issue. [Doc 887, PDF]

On July 13, Torres ruled that XRP is a security when it’s sold to sophisticated investors, but it’s not a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges – which is precisely backward from the past ninety years of US securities jurisprudence.

In the same courthouse, District Judge Jed Rakoff, who is overseeing the SEC lawsuit against Terraform Labs and its cofounder Do Kwon, flatly rejected Torres’ decision and ruled that Terraform’s LUNA and MIR coins may have been securities when sold to retail investors.

John Reed Stark notes: “For SEC lawyers like myself, Judge Jed Rakoff is arguably considered the most respected and experienced securities law jurist not only in the SDNY but perhaps in the entire U.S. federal court system.” [Twitter, archive]

The SEC proposes to file its opening brief on August 18. Ripple would have until September 1 to respond, and the SEC’s reply would be due a week later on September 8. This is quite soon, but Coinbase and Binance are both using the Ripple decision to support their defenses against their own SEC suits.

Prime Trust goes Chapter 11. You had one job!

Crypto custodian Prime Trust filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware on August 14. Prime halted withdrawals in late June after Nevada regulators put the company into receivership as insolvent.

How did Prime fall insolvent? They lost the keys to a pile of the crypto they were supposed to be keeping safe. This happened in December 2021. You had one job, guys!

From December 2021 until March 2022, Nevada says that Prime used customer funds to buy additional crypto. But for a year and a half, Prime just lied and told everyone they still had their crypto.

Prime has between 25,000 and 50,000 creditors and liabilities of up to $500 million. The firm’s top fifty creditors have claims of $145 million — including the largest claim of $55 million. [Business Wire; Stretto] 

Knives out at TrueUSD

Archblock, formerly TrustLabs trading as TrustToken, created TUSD, a supposedly asset-backed $3 billion stablecoin. It then sold TrueUSD to Justin Sun’s Tron in late 2020 — but the connection to Tron has always been a bit murky, and TrustLabs has never been upfront about who the coin’s actual owner was.

TrustLabs said the new owner was Techteryx, “an Asia-based consortium” — though TrustLabs/Archblock still managed TUSD until July 2023. [Medium, 2020, archive; Twitter, archive]

Alameda Research was the largest redeemer of TUSD. FTX listed TUSD when they knew that TrustLabs was misrepresenting who owned it. 

TrueUSD’s main custodian was Prime Trust — and Prime was also its main fiat on-and-off ramp for the US banking system. Prime Trust was thus Justin Sun’s main link to US banking. At least until Signature, Prime’s main banking partner, collapsed in March.

We wrote previously about how the TUSD coin seems pretty clearly unbacked and was being used by someone in the vicinity of Binance to pump the price of bitcoin earlier this year.

Archblock is now doing a merger to move the company’s domicile from the US to Switzerland, for unclear reasons. [Blockhead]

Daniel Jaiyong (“Jai”) An, co-founder of TrustLabs/Archblock, is not happy with this merger and move. An is suing Archblock and its executives: Rafael Cosman, co-founder and board member; Alex De Lorraine, COO and former board member; and Tom Shields, former chairman of the board. 

The complaint was filed pro se on July 14 in Delaware, meaning An did not hire an attorney. He wrote the 58-page complaint himself — and it shows. [DLNews; complaint, PDF] 

An was in the midst of negotiating the sale of TrueUSD to Techteryx, whose contact was Justin Sun of Tron. In fact, An describes the sale as being to Tron.

So, yes — TrueUSD is run by Justin Sun, if you ever doubted it.

TrustLabs got $32 million from investors in a 2018 accredited investor ICO under SEC Regulation D for a token called TRU. Investors included Andreessen Horowitz, BlockTower Capital, Danhua Capital, Jump Capital,* ZhenFund, Distributed Global, Slow Ventures, GGV Capital, and Stanford-StartX.

*Update: Although An mentions Jump Capital in his complaint, Jump Crypto wrote us to say it wasn’t Jump Capital, but Jump Crypto, a division of Jump Trading Group, who made the investment. 

An says that by January 2020, it was clear that the plan in the TRU white paper would never pass SEC muster. He wanted to pay the investors back, as the SEC would surely require – but he says that his cofounder Cosman blocked this. The other shareholders voted An out in July 2020.

TrustLabs finally issued the TRU token in November 2020, repurposed as the native token of their TrueFi lending protocol. An alleges the other executives enriched themselves with TRU tokens — but not him.

An says the company threatened him with legal action if he informed investors what the company was doing. An then filed as a whistleblower with the SEC. He claims the company has retaliated against him for doing so.

Several paragraphs claim past criminal actions by Cosman.

An remains a shareholder in Archblock. He wants the merger blocked and $94.32 million in damages.

Data Finnovation notes that if An’s allegations are true, then FTX knew since 2020 that TrueUSD was owned by Tron — because Tron’s lawyer Can Sun was working on the deal and Can Sun later ended up working for FTX under Daniel Friedberg. Remember that FTX minted nearly all the tethers on Tron in the same time period. [Twitter, archive; Medium, 2022]

Worldcoin wants your eyeballs

Sam Altman is the founder and CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Worldcoin is Altman’s proof-of-eyeball cryptocurrency.

Altman promotes Worldcoin as a way to end poverty — and not just a way for him to collect huge amounts of biometric data. In exchange for giving up your iris scan, you’ll get 25 free Worldcoins (WLD). [CoinDesk] 

Worldcoin operators use “orbs” to scan eyeballs. The operators get paid in tethers. [MIT Technology Review, 2022]

Since the Worldcoin project launched on July 24, throngs of people in Kenya have been queuing up to get their eyeballs scanned — lured by free Worldcoin tokens. 

The problem is converting WLD into actual spendable money. The Worldcoin app has no direct withdrawal option — so the Kenyan users have to trade their WLD for USDT on Binance or put their trust in random over-the-counter buyers. So Worldcoin has become a honeypot for scammers: [Rest of World] 

“There’s no regulation in the space, and the people receiving the free tokens don’t have enough information. What do you expect?” Evrard Otieno, a Nairobi-based crypto trader and software developer, told Rest of World. “It’s just another opportunity for traders to make some money in the market.”

Days after the Worldcoin launch, the Communications Authority of Kenya and the Office of the Data Protection Commission ordered Worldcoin to suspend operations while they reviewed the project’s privacy protections. [Twitter, archive]

Kenyan police then raided the Worldcoin Nairobi warehouse on August 5 and seized the orbs. [KahawaTungu]. 

Data watchdogs in Britain, France, and Germany are also investigating Worldcoin for similar reasons. [ICO; Reuters]

The WLD token launched at $3.58 but had crashed to a low of $1.76 by August 14. WLD trades only against USDT and mostly on Binance. [CoinDesk; CoinGecko] 

Worldcoin’s investors, who have collectively put in $125 million, include the usual suspects — Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. [Crunchbase]

Hex enduction hour

Hex is an ERC-20 token that doesn’t do anything. Hex was promoted widely, even internationally on billboards, by a fellow called Richard Heart (or Richard Schueler to the tax man).

Hex promised stupendous yield rates. You bought Hex with ETH, then you staked the Hex, then you got paid interest in Hex. The website called Hex the “first high-interest blockchain certificate of deposit” that “was built to be the highest appreciating asset that has ever existed in the history of man.”

To “stake” your Hex, you would send it to … the Ethereum genesis address, 0x0. That is, you would throw your Hex into a black hole from which it could never be recovered. The Hex smart contract would then pay you Hex tokens in the future, apparently.

The SEC has finally sued Heart over Hex, PulseChain (a fork of Ethereum), and PulseX (a fork of UniSwap). They allege that Heart raised over $1 billion from these three unregistered securities offerings beginning in 2019. [SEC press release; Complaint, PDF]

The SEC says that Heart misappropriated investor funds to buy luxury sports cars, Rolex watches, and a 555-carat diamond, known as “The Enigma,” which he purchased in February 2022 in a Sotheby’s auction. Sotheby’s accepted ETH for the purchase. Heart was famous for promoting Hex with photos of himself showing off his wealth.

Heart has an unfortunate past of selling email spam software in the 2000s. He even called himself the Spam King. Bennett Haselton of peacefire.org successfully sued Heart in 2002 under Washington anti-spam laws for sending junk emails with deceptive headers. [ZDNet, 2002, archive; Panama Guide, 2007, archive]

David went on Richard Heart’s livestream in early 2020. David talked about books a bit, then Richard went into his sales pitch for Hex. Richard is a very charming and likable fellow, but in that particular way that cautions you not to let a penny of your cash within a mile of him. [YouTube, 2020]

This bank failure is fine, nothing to see here

A fourth US bank fell over this year — Heartland Tri-State Bank of Elkhart in Kansas, a small bank with just $139 million in assets. David Herndon, the Kansas banking commissioner, closed Heartland on July 28 after it became insolvent because it was “apparently the victim of a huge scam.”

Herndon said he didn’t know what the scam was — but he said other banks in the state were not affected. Our psychic powers tell us he has an extremely good idea what happened. The FBI is on the case.

The FDIC had to pay $54 million out of its deposit insurance fund – more than Heartland’s entire $48 million loan portfolio. [FT, free with login]

An employee of the bank said all workers at the bank are still employed, but Shan Hanes, the president and CEO, is no longer there. The bank was handed over to Dream First Bank as a growing concern. 

Everyone has been careful to note that the bank fell due to a “huge scam” and definitely not the sort of thing that took out Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank. The “scam” was first mentioned in an August 4 story in American Banker. [Kansas Reflector; FDIC; American Banker]

Still only good news for bitcoin

The SEC is suing Binance. BAM (Binance US) wants to block further discovery and depositions, because they’ve given the SEC so much information toward the consent order they had to be beaten into. BAM demands only four depositions of BAM employees, no depositions of BAM’s CEO or CFO, and no matters outside the consent order. We suspect that Binance doesn’t have some of the perfectly reasonable stuff the SEC has asked for, such as non-existent financial accounts — so Binance is resorting to the Tether defense. John Reed Stark thinks the SEC will largely prevail. [Doc 95, PDF; Twitter, archive]

The SEC sued Bittrex in April for listing securities without registering as an exchange. Bittrex has now settled with the SEC. They will pay $14.4 million disgorgement, $4 million prejudgment interest, and a $5.6 million civil penalty. [Press release] 

CoinDesk is laying off 20 people from editorial — 45% of the editorial staff, or 16% of all staff – to prepare for its sale to the Peter Vessenes and Matt Roszak consortium. We’re pretty sure everyone at CoinDesk is furiously updating their resumes right now. [The Block; TechCrunch]

Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, several lobbyists and academics, and venture capital firms a16z and Paradigm have filed amicus briefs urging the SEC to drop its lawsuit against Coinbase. These mostly repeat Coinbase’s arguments. [Doc 48, PDF; Doc 50, PDF; Doc 53, PDF; Doc 55, PDF; Doc 59, PDF; Doc 60, PDF; Doc 62, PDF]

Kai Lentit of “Programmers Are Also Human” on YouTube goes to Web3 Berlin. “Where people without jobs ask people without companies for jobs.” [YouTube]

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: Terra judge repudiates Ripple finding, Razzlekhan cops a plea, Binance’s FDUSD stablecoin, CoinDesk sold, smart contracts still stupid

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“EXCLUSIVE: IT’S RUMORED THAT GARY GENSLER HAD A BLT FOR LUNCH TODAY. EXPERTS BELIVE THIS IS BULLISH FOR A POSSIBLE SPOT BITCOIN ETF APPROVAL”

— Sean Tuffy

IMPORTANT: Patreon sponsors, please check your pledges!

Patreon changed its billing for this month from California to Dublin. So a lot of banks rejected the transactions as possible fraud.

This would easily be reversible … except that Patreon’s systems automatically wiped all patron relationships where a transaction bounced! [Twitter thread, archive]

If you sponsor anyone on Patreon, not just us: please check your transactions for August, re-send them if they bounced, and rejoin as a patron if you need to. The “retry” link should be located in your billing history. Your creators will be most grateful!

We also have Ko-Fi links where you can send us casual tips — here’s Amy’s and here’s David’s.

Razzlekhan cops a plea

Bitcoin rapper Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein were arrested in February 2022 for hacking Bitfinex in 2016. They agreed to a plea deal a couple of weeks ago. [DOJ press release; Reuters]

The plea hearings were today, Thursday, August 3. Morgan pleaded guilty to money-laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The BBC says that “Morgan masqueraded as a rapper.” [BBC]

Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to money-laundering conspiracy. He also admitted to being the original perpetrator of the Bitfinex hack!

Lichtenstein stashed some of the hacked funds as buried gold coins. Arrr. [Bloomberg, archive; CNBC]

Curve: smart contracts, stupid humans

“Smart contracts” are small programs that run right there inside a blockchain. In enterprise computing, these would be called “database triggers” or “stored procedures.”

You never use triggers or stored procedures unless you absolutely have to, because they’re very easy to get wrong and a pain in the backside to debug. In the real world, you keep your financial data and the programs working on it separate.

So, of course, crypto uses programs embedded in the database for everything and touts the difficulty in working with them as a feature and not evidence of the idea’s incredible stupidity.

A smart contract full of crypto can reasonably be treated as a piñata, just waiting for you to whack it in the right spot and get the candy.

Today’s piñata is Curve Finance, a DeFi exchange used for trading stablecoins and other tokens. Curve was hacked on July 30 due to a bug in the Vyper language compiler. Smart contracts that were using Vyper versions 0.2.15, 0.2.16, and 0.3.0 were vulnerable. About $70 million in funds was drained from liquidity pools whose smart contracts used these versions. [Twitter, archive; Twitter, archive]

Vyper, which is inspired by Python, was supposed to have been an improvement over the hilariously awful Solidity — a.k.a. “JavaScript with a concussion” — that most Ethereum Virtual Machine smart contracts are written in. Unfortunately, the Vyper compiler had a bug that meant compiled code was exploitable. So you could mathematically prove your smart contract program was correct … and the compiled version could still be exploited. This could hit any Vyper smart contract using vulnerable versions. [Twitter, archive]

Some have suggested that the Vyper exploit and subsequent Curve hack were “state-sponsored” — which is quite possible, given that we already know that North Korea actively seeks to launder money using crypto.

If North Korea is caught cashing out from the Curve hack, then we suspect large DeFi protocols may get a call from OFAC soon for the same reasons that Tornado Cash did.

David wrote an entire book chapter on all the ways that smart contracts were stupid back in 2017. He foolishly thought that this would knock the idea firmly on the head.

CoinDesk on the block

The bankruptcy of Genesis left Genesis owner Digital Currency Group scrambling to sell off the silverware. DCG’s news site CoinDesk was rumored in January to be up for sale. CoinDesk is now being bought for $125 million by an investor group led by Matthew Roszak (Tally Capital) and Peter Vessenes (Capital6). [WSJ]

DCG bought the failing media outlet in 2016 for $500,000. It’s been shoveling money into CoinDesk ever since. DCG wants to keep the CoinDesk conference business, which is the only part of the site that makes any money.

Bitcoin old-timers will remember Vessenes from the Bitcoin Foundation of the early 2010s. He was the CEO of CoinLab, which was functionally a US agent for the Mt Gox exchange. CoinLab and Mt Gox sued each other repeatedly over alleged contractual breaches. After Mt Gox went bankrupt, CoinLab escalated its claims against the dead exchange from $75 million to an amazing and implausible $16 billion. [Bitcoin Magazine, 2013; Cointelegraph, 2019]

We don’t know what Vessenes wants with a media outlet that only loses money, even from a commercial propaganda perspective. We suppose he could alienate the site’s expensive hires of the past couple of years.

A Ripple in the war on Terra

Terraform Labs issued the TerraUSD and Luna coins, which triggered the crypto crash of May 2022, which popped the 2021 bubble.

We were surprised to hear that Terraform is not dead! It has a new CEO, Chris Amani, who was previously the firm’s COO and CFO. Amani’s hot plan is to revive the Terra blockchain. Amani says that Terraform won’t be launching a new stablecoin. Founder Do Kwon, who is in jail in Montenegro, is still Terraform’s majority shareholder. [WSJ]

The SEC’s case against Terraform proceeds. Terraform filed in May to dismiss the SEC’s complaint, using similar arguments as Coinbase and Ripple. Terraform recently filed that the bizarre July finding in the Ripple case supports dismissing the SEC complaint.

The SEC responded to Terraform and confirmed that it’s appealing the Ripple ruling because it’s nuts: “Ripple’s reasoning is impossible to reconcile with all of these fundamental securities laws principles … SEC staff is considering the various available avenues for further review and intends to recommend that the SEC seek such review.” So we can look forward to that appeal in Ripple. [Doc 29, PDF; Doc 47, PDF; Doc 49, PDF; case docket]

Judge Rakoff concurred with the SEC and got quite pointed about the very dumb and bad ruling in Ripple: [Doc 51, PDF]

Howey makes no such distinction between purchasers. And it makes good sense that it did not. That a purchaser bought the coins directly from the defendants or, instead, in a secondary re-sale transaction has no impact on whether a reasonable individual would objectively view the defendants’ actions and statements as evincing a promise of profits based on their efforts.

… Simply put, secondary-market purchasers had every bit as good a reason to believe that the defendants would take their capital contributions and use it to generate profits on their behalf.

We don’t expect the Ripple ruling to stand.

4

Crypto trading is illegal in China — technically, anyway. The Wall Street Journal says that Binance users coming in from China still trade $90 billion a month — it’s “Binance’s biggest market by far,” with over 900,000 users. [WSJ]

The importance of China is “openly discussed internally.” In fact, “the exchange’s investigations team works closely with Chinese law enforcement to detect potential criminal activity.”

Binance denies the reports, with the very specific wording: “The Binance.com website is blocked in China and is not accessible to China-based users.” Good thing nobody in China uses a VPN, hey. The WSJ says that Binance directs its Chinese users to “visit different websites with Chinese domain names before rerouting them to the global exchange.” [Cointelegraph]

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao responded “4” — meaning that it’s all FUD. [Twitter, archive]

Fore!

The US Department of Justice is considering charges against Binance, but worries about causing a run on the exchange — or so says Semafor, which says the DoJ is considering fines or a deferred prosecution agreement instead. We think that any Binance user who hasn’t already priced in yet more US government action against Binance, particularly an indictment, just doesn’t want to be told. [Semafor]

Binance is cutting employee benefits, citing a decline in its profits — which suggests its customers are running away screaming. The non-US employees laid off in June were offered severance of two months’ salary paid in BNB tokens. [WSJ]

If Binance has a drop in profits, it’s likely the large institutional traders — Binance’s “VIPs” — jumping ship while they can. Where can they be going? Is there a good casino left for the VIPs with an ample supply of suckers to milk? Or was Binance the end of the line?

CZ has filed a motion to dismiss the CFTC complaint against him. He holds that Binance just doesn’t do business in the US, so the CFTC doesn’t have jurisdiction. Also, the securities aren’t securities, apparently. [Doc 59, PDF] 

CZ wanted to just shut Binance US earlier this year because of the regulatory heat, two people told The Information. The BAM board voted, but the lone holdout was Binance US CEO Brian Shroder. CZ also considered selling Binance US to Gemini or a sovereign wealth fund. Binance told Cointelegraph that it was “not commenting” on this issue. [The Information, paywalled; Cointelegraph]

In June, the SEC Nigeria ruled that Binance Nigeria had to stop operating in the country. Binance claimed that “Binance Nigeria” had nothing to do with them. SEC Nigeria has now reiterated that they really do mean binance.com. Nigeria has also told all other crypto platforms to desist: “all platform providers, making such solicitations, are hereby directed to immediately stop soliciting Nigerian investors in any form whatsoever.” [SEC Nigeria]

Everybody gets a stablecoin!

On July 26, Binance listed a new coin, FDUSD — a “1:1 USD-backed stablecoin issued by First Digital Labs. Reserves of FDUSD are held by First Digital Trust Limited.” Its trading pairs are BNB, USDT, and BUSD — with zero fees. [Twitter, archive; Binance]

Binance has been going through the stablecoins lately. Binance’s own BUSD has shut down, Binance doesn’t seem to be on such solid terms with Tether, and it tried pumping out a few billion questionably backed TrueUSD after that coin’s main custodian, Prime Trust, had collapsed. First Digital — previously known as Legacy Trust — just happens to be the remaining custodian for TrueUSD.

FDUSD was launched on June 1. Data Finnovation wonders why millions of dollars of deposits to and minting of FDUSD started a week before its supposed launch. “If you believe these are strongly linked to real usd you deserve what you’re gonna get.” [press release; Twitter, archive]

Vincent Chok, CEO of First Digital, has a storied history in business. Before Chok’s move to Hong Kong, he was selling real estate in Canada with Platinum Equities in 2014 — a company that was sanctioned by the Alberta Securities Commission for fraud (though Chok wasn’t named). Chok’s previous company was Intreo Wealth Alliance in Calgary. [press release]

None more stable

Wyoming is trying to do a stablecoin again with their Stable Token Commission! The total budget for the initiative: $500,000. We wrote before about Caitlin Long’s crypto bank Custodia and what a disaster that was. Custodia also hoped to launch a national stablecoin backed by the Fed, but the Fed was having none of it. So good luck, guys. [Wyoming Truth]

Michel de Cryptadamus notices that Tether’s attestations show its actual cash on hand is getting quite low. On December 31, 2022, they claimed to have $5.31 billion in cash. On March 31, 2023, they claimed $481 million. On June 30, 2023, they claimed just $90 million. This is as the issuance of tethers keeps going up. But we’re sure it’s all fine. [Twitter, archive]

The New York Fed wrote about “Runs on Stablecoins” — concerning the Terra-Luna collapse of May 2022. David Rosenthal contextualizes the New York Fed paper: “Note in particular that traders don’t actually believe that USDT is safe, it is just that its size makes it convenient for traders to use USDT unless, like Wile E. Coyote, they look down at it as they did last May.” [NY Fed; blog post]

The White House has told Rep. Patrick McHenry’s stablecoin bill to go away, at least according to McHenry. [The Block] 

Coinbase: not so keen on regulatory clarity

Coinbase wants regulatory clarity. The SEC was happy to give it to them. Brian Armstrong of Coinbase told the Financial Times that prior to the SEC suing Coinbase in June, the commission told them to delist all cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. [FT, archive]

The SEC told CoinDesk that “SEC staff does not ask companies to delist crypto assets. In the course of an investigation, the staff may share its own view as to what conduct may raise questions for the Commission under the securities laws.” [CoinDesk]

Coinbase told CoinDesk that the FT report “lacks critical context” but was somehow unable to also say what the context was.

This is pretty rich given that it was literally Armstrong who told this to the FT, presumably hoping to gin up the crypto crowd — which he certainly did.

Coinbase concurred that the SEC did not, in fact, formally tell the exchange to delist everything except bitcoin.

We strongly suspect the actual conversation was Coinbase asking “Well how can we absolutely avoid breaking any laws then, smart guy?” and then the SEC fellow suggesting the very safest possible option.

Good news for bitcoin

Kyle Davies from Three Arrows Capital (3AC) has gone sovereign citizen. Davies holds that renouncing his US citizenship in October 2020 means that he can’t be held in contempt of court for not responding to 3AC liquidators Teneo in their US action. Davies’ lawyers also claimed that he hadn’t been properly served, as if he could claim not to know about the proceeding while arguing it in court. [Doc 106, PDF; Doc 107, PDF; case docket]

The SEC suggests that crypto “attestations” that aren’t audits might be a worry … for the accountants. Subheadings in the SEC’s statement on “The Potential Pitfalls of Purported Crypto ‘Assurance’ Work” include “The Accounting Firm’s Potential Liability for Antifraud Violations.” The footnotes mention that “liability for fraud may extend to “attorneys, engineers, and other professionals or experts.” This means that the SEC will look at what the developers were doing. [SEC]

Swift is running a pilot program that lets you make instant payments across different currency zones! So what backend do you need to use for instant remittances across currency zones? It turns out the answer is: a database. [FinExtra]

Kuwait has banned cryptocurrency for payments or investments. The National Committee for Combating Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing says it’s doing this to implement FATF requirements. Crypto mining is also banned. Securities under the Central Bank of Kuwait or Capital Markets Authority regulation are exempt. [Arabian Business; Al Jarida, in Arabic] 

FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s real-time retail settlement system, has gone live, dragging US retail banking kicking and screaming into the 2000s. This puts a Fed CBDC into the trash can, as the White House had already noted. The hard part is getting thousands of banks to sign up. But the Fed has its ways of asking for things. [Federal Reserve]

Media stardom

David told the Moscow Times — who are not fans of Mr. Putin and who are currently banned in Russia — that a CBDC ruble wouldn’t do anything new to help evade sanctions that Russia can’t already do with rubles: “The problem is that nobody wants rubles.” [Moscow Times]

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: Alex Mashinsky of Celsius arrested, Ripple’s bizarre XRP win, Gemini sues Genesis, Gisele Bündchen knew nothing!

The latest episode of the crypto collapse is out. This edition is on David’s blog. [David Gerard]

In this episode, we cover:

  • The Mashinsky Method: mycrimes.epub
  • Good, if bizarre, news for XRP
  • Binance hates Binance
  • Coinbase, the battle continues
  • A spot of regulatory clarity
  • Gisele Bündchen: Crypto? What’s a crypto?

Image: Alex Mashinsky shows up for his arraignment after an early morning arrest.

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: NY gives Tether the boot, Tether leaks, Coinbase financials, MoneyGram dumps Ripple

February is coming to an end. I’m waiting to get vaccinated, so I can travel without worry again. Maybe I’ll go to some crypto conferences later this year? I still have fond memories of Coindesk’s Consensus in May 2018—when you could hear the rumble of lambos coming through midtown Manhattan—and sitting in a coatroom with scant Wifi and a broken water cooler. (It was a big coatroom, but a coatroom nonetheless, and that’s where non-Coindesk journalists were put.)

If you appreciate my writing, consider supporting my work by subscribing to my Patreon at the $5, $20, or $50 level. At times, I’ve even had folks donate $100. I don’t publish these articles in mainstream media, so my patrons are important!

So, what’s new? Tether now has close to 35 billion tethers in circulation—the last print was on Feb. 21 and nothing since. Also, the price of bitcoin is $46,300. That’s down 18% from last week. I’m not sure we will ever see bitcoin reach $57,000 again. The nonsense could ebb and flow for a while, but I do think the end is nigh for Tether.

NY shuns Bitfinex/Tether

Last week I said likely nothing earthmoving would happen in the NY attorney general’s probe of Bitfinex and Tether this month, other than maybe a status update, according to what Bitfinex said in its January letter to the court. I was wrong.

In an unexpected turn of events, Tether and Bitfinex reached a settlement with the NY AG.

According to the terms of the settlement, the sister companies agreed to a penalty of $18.5 million—without admitting guilt. They are also banned from doing business in New York, and they have agreed to an impossible level of transparency.

I wrote two stories on this—an overall story covering the details of the agreement and deeper observations. You should read both and also the settlement agreement, which is very readable. 

The bitcoiners are jumping for joy over the settlement because they interpret this to mean that Tether is liberated and we’re back to business as usual. This could not be further from the truth.  

The NY AG has given Tether enough rope to hang itself—with Tether agreeing to publish quarterly updates on what’s backing tethers. I mean, how crazy is this: Bitfinex and Tether are also supposed to reveal who their payment processors are. These payment processors are called shadow banks for a reason.

But the real punishment is not the fine imposed on Tether. The real punishment is that Tether and Bitfinex are banned from doing business in New York—the beating heart of finance and banking in the U.S.

They are prohibited from serving any person or entity in the state—defined as “any person known or believed to reside in or regularly conduct trading activity from New York,” and any business “that is incorporated in, has its headquarters in, regularly conducts trading activity in, or is directed or controlled from, New York.”

If the CFTC and the DoJ follow up—and you can bet they will—then Tether could soon be banned from the entire U.S.—a penalty much more significant than an $18.5 million fine.

In the meantime, the Tether printer has mysteriously paused. The settlement agreement was signed on Feb. 18, and the last Tether print was on Feb. 21 for 800 million USDT.

Why has Tether stopped printing? It may be that providing the transparency reports is proving more onerous than they expected. If they pop out another billion tethers, they have to show what is behind those—cash, a loan, crypto, or whatnot. 

But this is a problem. Tethers are the main source of liquidity on unbanked exchanges where the price of BTC is largely determined. If Tether stops printing tethers—or otherwise ceases to function—the price of bitcoin could take a serious dive.

Tether Leaks

Recently, a Twitter profile called @deltecleaks emerged and posted what looked like evidence of a database dump from Deltec, the Bahamian bank that Bitfinex and Tether have been using since 2018. That Twitter account was quickly suspended.

Then @LeaksTether appeared and posted several presumably leaked emails—conversations between Deltec and Tether execs.

These leaks are unverified. I am not completely convinced they are real, but I am also not convinced they are fake either.

Some of the alleged emails look interesting. Trolly wrote up a thread on one—in an email (archive) from Tether to Deltec, dated May 28, 2020, Tether asks for help in “presenting their reserves in the best possible light.” Their reserves, according to the email, are crypto and stakes in other crypto companies. Trolly calls this email a “crucial piece of the puzzle.”

Around the same time that the email was sent, crypto exchange Binance—one of Tether’s biggest customers—switched from BTC to USDT as collateral for leveraged trading. In return, Trolly believes Tether got a stake in Binance.

This could explain why USDT’s 1:1 peg never falters. Tether is in cahoots with the exchanges, who are in charge of maintaining the peg, Trolly believes.

In another allegedly leaked email, Tether talked about allowing the exchanges to “ignore the peg and move the price upwards.” If this is real, it means Tether is getting ever desperate to find ways to make money out of thin air.

Oddly, Deltec has removed the bios from their About Us page. (This is silly, because we have the archive.) And Tether has released its official word on the leaks, calling the leaks “bogus” and implying it is an extortion attempt.

Tether adds that “those seeking to harm Tether are getting increasingly desperate.” This is typical of Tether and Bitfinex. They blame “Tether FUDers” for all their problems—as opposed to being upfront and honest about their dealings.

David Gerard wrote a blog post, going into detail on the alleged leaks.

Coinbase releases financials

Coinbase is going public via a direct listing on Nasdaq under the symbol COIN. The San Francisco-based company published its  S-1 filing on Thursday, after confidentially submitting the filing to the SEC in December.

The filing lays out Coinbase’s finances, including a profitable 2020 driven by a huge surge in the price of bitcoin. Coinbase brought in $1.2 billion in revenue in FY2020 for a profit of $322 million—the first time it has turned an annual profit.

In 2019, Coinbase incurred a net loss of $30 million.  

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO, also did well last year, taking home $60 million in salary, stock options and “all other compensation.” He also received $1.78 million to cover “costs related to personal security measures.”

There is no doubt that the skyrocketing price of bitcoin—boosted by 17 billion tethers issued in 2020 alone—helped Coinbase’s profits. But there are many unknowns ahead.

If the price of BTC continues to drop, if Tether gets taken out by the DoJ, or if the SEC cracks down on some of the coins Coinbase lists—many of which appear like they may not pass the Howey test—Coinbase profits could take a hit.

No doubt, Coinbase is timing its listing carefully. The exchange has received more than $500 million in funding, with backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and Greylock Partners. And the VCs will want to dump their Coinbase shares on retail suckers before the bitcoin market collapses.

MoneyGram dumps Ripple

MoneyGram was supposed to have been a big success story for Ripple. Now, it’s just another sign of Ripple’s failures.

Ripple agreed to invest up to $50 million in the money transfers business. In return, MoneyGram was shilling Ripple by saying it would use the startup’s XRP currency and platform in its back office for moving funds across borders.

MoneyGram was essential because it gave XRP a supposed use case, so Ripple execs could argue their business was legit and not simply a way for them to line their own personal pockets with $600 million.

Last year, MoneyGram received $38 million from Ripple, representing about 15% of its adjusted earnings. But after the SEC announced it was suing Ripple, charging that XRP was an unlawful securities offering, MoneyGram stepped back, saying it faced logistical challenges in using the platform—as well as legal risks.

Now MoneyGram is putting its Ripple partnership on hold. That means MoneyGram, which saw declining revenues from 2015 to 2018, is losing a key income stream. (WSJ, MoneyGram PR)

Other newsy bits

After stiffing his previous defense team, Reginald Fowler still appears to have no defense team. He was given until Feb. 25 to line up a new law firm, but so far, no attorney has filed a notice of appearance with the court. (Court filing)

A rumor is afoot that the SEC is investigating Elon Musk for his dogecoin tweets that helped pump the market. Musk says a probe would be “awesome.” More lulz for Musk. (Teslarati)

Fedwire, the system that allows banks to send money back and forth, went down for several hours on Wednesday. Bitcoiners thought this was marvelous, because bitcoin is decentralized, see? How quickly they forget bitcoin is valued in USD. (CNBC)

Grayscale’s GBTC premium went negative for the first time in years. (It was close to 40% at one point in December.) When the premium is down, the arbitrage opportunity for institutions in buying bitcoin dries up—and that means less real money flowing into the system. (Hedge funder Harris Kupperman wrote a blog post last year explaining how the arb works.) (Decrypt)

FT poked fun of Anthony Pompliano, cofounder of Morgan Creek. Pomp is forever shilling bitcoin but his tweets have been inconsistent. At one time he called Tether “the biggest racket ever.” Now he has changed his tune. Apparently, he’ll say whatever to make “number go up.” (FT)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is warning people about bitcoin. She doesn’t think it’s used widely as a payment system. “To the extent it is used, I fear it’s often for illicit finance. It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering.” (CNBC)

Jack Dorsey’s Square purchased another 3,318 bitcoins for $170 million. This adds to Square’s October purchase of 4,709 bitcoins. The company has already lost $10 million on its latest investment. (Coindesk, Square press release)

The Securities and Exchange Board of India tells company owners: before you IPO, sell your crypto. (Economic Times India)

Kraken is reportedly in talks to raise new capital. (Coindesk)

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: Tether surpasses $26B, Elon Musk pumps BTC, Gregory Pepin’s magic trick

It’s been three years since the last bitcoin bubble. And as I write this newsletter, I can’t help but feel this is getting so tiring. Where are the regulators? Why did they not step in long ago to put an end to so much nonsense in the crypto space? Things just seem to keep getting crazier.

Tether has now surpassed 26 billion tethers—after minting 1.3 billion last week alone. How does an outfit get away with creating $1.3 billion worth of a stablecoin without being subjected to an audit? Without a cease and desist? It’s been more than two years since the NY attorney general started investigating them.

Bitcoin slipped below $30,000 on Wednesday, but then climbed to $37,800 on Friday after Elon Musk added #bitcoin to his Twitter bio, apparently just for the lulz. The move sparked $387 million worth of short liquidations on Binance, Bitfinex, BitMEX, ByBit, Deribit, FTX, HuobiDM and OKEx.

Today Bitcoin is back down to $32,800.

In general, it’s been a week of madness in the markets. Reddit group WallStreetBets has been pushing up lousy stocks like GME and AMC to squeeze the shorts and wreak havoc on certain hedge funds. And to take the joke even further, they even pushed up the price of dogecoin 800% in a 24-hour period. Unsurprisingly, the DOGE pump was fueled mainly by tethers.

Still sore about that Bit Short story?

Are tethers backed? Nobody will give you a straight answer and certainly not Stuart Hoegner, Tether’s general counsel, who spends all day retweeting tweets and trying to convince folks that tethers are worth real money.

He is apparently still upset about the anonymous “Bit Short” article, which I mentioned in my previous newsletter. He keeps saying it’s all FUD, and now claims it’s not only hurting Tether, but all of bitcoin. Of course, the reason the story is gaining popularity is because it is largely true.

“But beyond its false claims about @Tether_to, this post really amounts to an attack on the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. Bitcoin has a market cap of above US$600B, and the growing number of major institutions investing in bitcoin is a tribute,” he said in a Twitter thread.

Hoegner keeps complaining. (Also, we already know market cap is nonsense when it comes to bitcoin and the reason institutions have been jumping in is mainly because they see an attractive arb opportunity via GBTC.) But the one thing Tether won’t do is come clean and audit its reserves, which would put the whole matter to bed once and for all. Do those reserves consist of cash that Tether got from real clients? Or is Tether simply buying bitcoin with tethers and selling them for USD on OTC desks and banked exchanges?

Instead of giving out real answers, Stuart and Paolo and their friends at Deltec keep trying to obfuscate, distort, and push the blame on “disbelievers” and “salty nocoiners.”

Gregory Pepin’s disappearing act

Tether is a perpetual PR disaster machine. After delivering a disastrous interview with Laura Shin, where he tries to convince listeners Tether is legitimate, but comes off sounding like a used car salesperson, Gregory Pepin, the deputy chief executive officer at Deltec (where Tether does its off-shore banking), suddenly disappeared from Deltec’s website. But after Twitter noticed and started making jokes, he suddenly reappeared again.

Clearly, Deltec was monitoring Twitter and thought, well, maybe removing Pepin from the website wasn’t such a good idea after all? So they put him back. But his brief disappearance brought up questions: Were Pepin’s colleagues upset with him? Did he even consult with his colleagues before he went on the podcast? Surely they would have worked out a plan for what he would say and all come to an agreement on it. Did he forget to follow the plan? 

For the last time, Tether is NOT regulated

Tether keeps telling everyone that it’s regulated. Well, it’s not. No government agency is overseeing Tether and making sure they behave properly, which is why Tether and its sister company Bitfinex have been for years doing whatever they want. They make up the rules of the game as they go along, and put forth whatever nonsense narrative they feel like, simply because they can.

JP Kroning wrote a piece in Coindesk, where he points out that Tether is not regulated. Tether has made numerous claims that it is regulated because it is registered with FinCEN. But “registered” and “regulated” are two different things. “Tether isn’t regulated by FinCEN,” Kroning writes. A registration is not a seal of regulatory approval, and it shouldn’t be advertised as such. “Yet, this is what Deltec and Tether executives seem to be doing on Twitter and in podcasts.”

Ripple responds to SEC; the XRP pump

As I wrote in a recent post, Ripple responded to SEC charges that XRP is a security. They are using the same lame defense that Kik used to try and convince the SEC that kin wasn’t a security. It’s a strategy that is likely to fail miserably, and Ripple will most likely end up settling. It’s just a matter of when.

In the meantime, a group on Telegram called Buy and Hold XRP pumped the price of XRP to its highest number since December. The group’s membership hit Telegram’s 200,000 limit within hours, forcing everyone to head over to a new channel with a similar title. The granddaddy pump is scheduled to start on Feb. 1 at 8:30 EST. (Update: The organized pump turned out to be a miserable failure.)

Is XRP a security? All cryptocurrencies are investment contracts because they pass the Howey test. You can’t buy anything with XRP, BTC, ETH, or any of them. There is virtually no merchant adoption for crypto. For most people, a cryptocurrency is an investment of money in a common enterprise with an expectation of profit to be derived from the efforts of others. But the SEC has accepted the claim of bitcoin fanatics and cultists that Bitcoin is not a security, therefore, putting BTC outside of its jurisdiction.  

Coinbase going public via direct listing

Coinbase says it plans to go public via a direct listing. The U.S. crypto exchange confidentially filed its registration with the SEC in December. Now we know for sure they are not going the traditional IPO route.

In an IPO, a block of new shares are created and sold to institutional investors at a set price. The advantage of an IPO is it gives companies a way to both go public and bring in fresh capital at the same time. If a company doesn’t need fast cash, it can go with a direct listing, in which only existing shares are sold.

Direct listings have become popular of late because it gives companies a way to go public without the bank’s help. Palantir, Asana, Slack, and Spotify all went public without a traditional IPO. (Coinbase blog, Techcrunch)

The big question: What will Coinbase stock be worth once Tether is shut down and the price of BTC collapses?

If you like my work, please support my writing by subscribing to my Patreon account for as little as $5 a month. 

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Ripple shoots back at SEC claims, takes the Kik route

Crypto firm Ripple has filed its response to U.S. Security and Exchange Commission charges claiming that Ripple and two execs conducted a $1.3 billion illegal security offering. Ripple made the filing public on Friday. And its general counsel was tweeting about it. 

San Francisco-based Ripple, which launched its XRP token in 2012, looks to be taking the ineffective Kik route in effectively arguing, “Hey, people use our token like real money; therefore XRP doesn’t satisfy the Howey test for being a security. And also, we are decentralized, so…”

Canadian messenger app Kik initially said it would fight the SEC tooth and nail after the regulator claimed its kin token was a security. But after a lot of bluff and bluster, Kik ended up settling for $5 million in October.

Stephen Palley, a lawyer in the cryptocurrency space, calls Ripple’s response to the SEC “delusional.”

Ripple’s 93-page letter does sound like the long-winded rant of someone with a loose grip on reality. But keep in mind, you need a certain level of hubris to pull something like Ripple off. According to the SEC, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larson personally pocketed $600 million off the sale of XRP.

And it’s not like they didn’t know they might run into problems down the road. Lawyers warned Ripple early on that there was some risk XRP would be considered an investment contract, the SEC said.

‘Ill-conceived legal theory’

Ripple calls the SEC complaint “unprecedented and ill-conceived legal theory.” It goes on to state that XRP functions as a “medium of exchange,” therefore, the SEC has no authority to regulate it as a security.

Similar to Kik, Ripple will likely have a tough time convincing anyone its token works like money. What can you buy with it? XRP is mainly bought by traders in the hopes “number go up.”

Sometimes it goes up, and sometimes it goes down. In 2017, XRP hit an all-time high of $2.7. It currently trades at $0.27, down from $0.68 in November after several regulated exchanges, including Coinbase, suspended trading of XRP after the SEC filed charges in December.

Ripple also argues that in the eight years that XRP has existed, no securities regulator anywhere has claimed XRP is a security. So what?

That is not an effective defense, said Edmund Schuster, a professor of corporate law at the London School of Economics. He wrote on Twitter: “Regulators operate under resource constraints, so they tend to start paying attention once people lose enough money. In new areas, they take time to pick strong cases and then sequence [enforcement] action strategically.”

What about Ethereum?

Ripple also points to the case of Ethereum, which held an initial coin offering for its ether (ETH) token in 2015. ETH is the second most popular cryptocurrency next to Bitcoin. For a long time, XRP held third place, but recently it slipped to number five.

In its current form, ETH has not been deemed a security. In 2018, SEC official Bill Hinman famously stated that although ETH started out as a security, it is now “sufficiently decentralized,” like Bitcoin so that it no longer is one. (Hinman stepped down from the SEC last year.)

Ripple, on the other hand, started off completely centralized. When it initially created its 100 billion fixed supply of XRP, 80 billion went straight to Ripple and the other 20 billion to Ripple execs. To this day, Ripple still holds a vast quantity of XRP.

But Ripple apparently feels that any rule that applies to Ethereum should also apply to Ripple—and that XRP could also be deemed “sufficiently decentralized.” 

Along with the court filing, the company has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request with the SEC asking how the regulator determined ETH evolved from a-security to not-a-security. The FOIA is a law that requires the disclosure of previously unreleased information controlled by the U.S. government upon request.

“We’re simply asking for the rules to be 1. stated clearly 2. applied consistently,” Ripple general counsel Stuart Alderoty said in a Twitter thread.

Assuming they’re sure that the SEC won’t go after Ethereum, this isn’t that unusual, Schuster said. “Lawyers often say ‘but then X is also A’ when they know X≠A to bring the other side to distinguish and thereby narrow down the attack surface. Unlikely to be of value here IMO, but [I] may be wrong.”

You’ll hurt all our users

Ripple also argues in its letter that calling XRP a security will harm everyone who uses the token. (Probably most especially, Garlinghouse and Larson.)

“To require XRP’s registration as a security is to impair its main utility. That utility depends on XRP’s near-instantaneous and seamless settlement in low-cost transactions. Treating XRP as a security, by contrast, would subject thousands of exchanges, market-makers, and other actors in the gigantic virtual currency market to lengthy, complex and costly regulatory requirements never intended to govern virtual currencies.”

Lawyers for Ripple also claim that XRP is a “store of value,” not a share of Ripple’s profits. The “store of value” narrative stems from Bitcoin. In reality, you can’t call anything a store of value if it loses 60% of its value in two months.

At one point in its letter, Ripple asserts that holding massive amounts of XRP does not, in and of itself, qualify the token as a security.

“Many entities own large amounts of commodities and participate heavily in the commodities markets—Exxon holds large quantities of oil, De Beers owns large quantities of diamonds, Bitmain and other Chinese miners own a large percentage of outstanding bitcoin. Such large commodity owners inevitably have interests aligned with some purchasers of the underlying asset. But there is no credible argument that substantial holdings convert those commodities or currencies into securities, nor has any case so held.”

It’s important to point out that Exxon did not create oil out of thin air, nor did De Beers create diamonds out of thin air. XRP, on the other hand, is a number in a database, and Ripple made up 100 billion of them.

The rest of Ripple’s response consists of going through every one of the 400 paragraphs of the SEC’s complaint and offering a denial or some sort of rebuttal to every claim.

I don’t see how Ripple is going to get anywhere fighting the SEC. The case for XRP being a security is a strong one. And as the saying goes, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it likely is one.

The best Ripple can do at this point is buy time. But ultimately, it will probably wind up settling with the SEC to avoid going to trial, and for a lot more than Kik’s $5 million.   

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: Ripple paid Moneygram $11M, weird stuff going on with e-Payments, fraudster tries to buy Perth Glory, another bitcoin ETF bites the dust

As you know, I left my most recent full-time gig, so I’m solo again. I’m going to keep on writing, but I need to figure out how to make ends meet. I’ll be writing more for my blog, possibly writing some e-books, and relying on support from patrons. If this newsletter is worth buying me a latte every four weeks, consider becoming a monthly supporter.

Now, on to the news. Since I didn’t write a newsletter last week, a few of these items stretch beyond the last seven days.

Filming for Quadriga documentary

Screen Shot 2020-02-26 at 5.27.45 PM
Filming at a coffee shop in Vancouver Monday.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know I was in Vancouver all weekend filming for an upcoming Quadriga documentary for Canadian public broadcast station CBC. It was a whirlwind adventure, loads of fun, and I got to meet my idol and fellow nocoiner David Gerard for the first time. He is 6’4″, which helps explain why he is not easily intimidated by anyone. (My blog, David’s blog with more pics.)

On our second day of filming, the crew got shots of David and me at a coffee shop going through my Quadriga timeline in detail. Of course, the more we talked and went over things, the more unanswered questions we came up with.

Ripple has been paying Moneygram millions

Moneygram’s 8-K filing with the SEC must be a bit of an embarrassment for Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. It reveals Ripple paid $11.3 million to Moneygram over the last two quarters. That’s in addition to the $50 million Ripple has already invested in the firm. (Cointelegraph, Coindesk.)

This is apparently the ugly truth to how Ripple works. The company appears to pay its partners to use its On-Demand Liquidity (formerly xRapid) blockchain platform and XRP tokens and then say nice things about how well things are going. (FT Alphaville)

Of course, none of this is news to @Tr0llyTr0llFace, who wrote about how Ripple pays its partners in his blog a year ago. “Basically, Ripple is paying its clients to use its products, and then pays them again to talk about how they’re using its products,” he said. 

Ripple class-action to move forward

In other Ripple news, a federal judge in Oakland, Calif., has granted in part and denied in part Ripple’s motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit claiming the company violated U.S. securities laws. There’s a lot to unpack here, but overall it’s a win for the plaintiffs. In other words, the lawsuit will proceed even though it’s been trimmed back a bit. (Court order, CoinDesk, Bloomberg) 

Ripple had claimed in its November court filing that the suit could topple the $10 billion market for XRP. Well, yeah, one would think so, especially if XRP is deemed a security and gets shut down by the SEC. This class action may be laying the groundwork for that. 

Reggie Fowler gets hit with another charge

pexels-photo-2570139As if Reggie Flower did not have enough trouble on his hands. After forgoing a plea deal where three out of four charges against him would have been dropped, prosecutors have heaped on another charge — this one for wire fraud.

They allege that Fowler used ill-gotten gains from his shadow banking business, which he ran on behalf of Panamanian payment processor Crypto Capital, to fund a professional football league. The league isn’t named in the indictment, but a good guess says its the collapsed American Football League of which Fowler was a major investor. (My blog.)

The new charge should come as no surprise to those following the U.S. v. Fowler (1:19-cr-00254) case closely. In a court transcript filed in October 2019, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sebastian Swett told Judge Andrew Carter:

“We have told defense counsel that, notwithstanding the plea negotiations, we are still investigating this matter, and, should we not reach a resolution, we will likely supersede with additional charges.”

Fowler needs to go before the judge and enter his plea on the new charge before he can proceed to trial. Federal prosecutors are asking the judge to schedule arraignment for May 5, but it’s quite possible this is a typo and they meant March 5. (Court doc.)

Convicted fraudster won’t be buying Perth football team after all

LFE Founder Jim Aylward
LFE founder Jim Aylward on Twitter

The sale of Perth Glory Soccer Club to a London crypto entrepreneur fell through after it turned out that the man behind the company trying to buy Glory — businessman Jim Aylward — is convicted fraudster James Abbass Biniaz. (Imagine that, a person with a criminal past getting involved in crypto?)

Aylward had set up a group called London Football Exchange, a football stock exchange and fan marketplace powered by the LFE token. The grand scheme was for the company to buy soccer teams all over the world and integrate that business with the token.

Glory owner Tony Sage pulled out of the deal after traveling to London to go through a due diligence process with his lawyers and representatives of the London Football Exchange group. Sage had been promised $30 million by Aylward for 80% of the A-League club. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Here’s a recording of Aylward admitting the price of LFE is totally manipulated. “We control about 95% of the token holders,” he said.

Weird stuff happening with e-Payments

Something funny is going on with e-Payments, one of the biggest digital payments firms in the U.K. The London firm, which caters to the adult entertainment, affiliate marketing, and crypto industries, was ordered by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority to suspend its activities as of Feb. 11 due to loose anti-money-laundering controls. That’s left ePayments’ customers unable to access their funds. Robert Courtneidge, one of its e-Payments’ directors stepped down the following week. Nobody knows why, but it looks like he was previously involved with the OneCoin scam. (FT Alphaville)

(BTW, on my flight back from Vancouver, I listened to the Missing Crypto Queen BBC podcast, which is all about OneCoin, and it’s fantastic. Definitely worth a listen.)

SEC shoots down another bitcoin ETF; Hester Pierce chimes in

In a filing posted Wednesday, the SEC set aflame another bitcoin ETF proposal. The regulator claims Wilshire Phoenix and NYSE Arca had not proven bitcoin is sufficiently resistant to fraud and market manipulation. (Their idea was to mix bitcoin and short-term treasuries to balance out bitcoin’s volatility, but the agency still wasn’t keen.) The SEC has rejected all bitcoin ETFs put before it to date, so there’s no new news here.

Predictably, though, SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, aka “crypto mom,” filed her statement of dissent. She said the agency’s approach to bitcoin ETFs “evinces a stubborn stodginess in the face of innovation.” For some reason, Pierce seems to consistently confuse innovation with anarchy and giving bad actors free rein.

Speaking of which, she recently posted on Coindesk asking for suggestions to her ICO “safe harbor” plan. Attorney Preston Byrne responded, saying it would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious. He thinks the plan should be tossed in the bin.

Canada’s central bank venturing into e-currency

Canada’s central bank plans to lay the foundation for its own digital currency should the day arise where cash no longer rules. In a speech he gave in Montreal, Deputy Governor Tim Lane said there isn’t a compelling case to issue a central bank-backed digital currency right now, but the Bank of Canada is starting to formulate a plan in the event Canadian notes and coins go out of style. (Calgary Sun.)

Despite so many countries jumping into the game, central bank digital currencies are nothing new. They have been around since the 1990s, only nobody cared about them until Facebook’s Libra popped into the scene. Bank of Finland’s Alexi Grym recently did a podcast, where he talks about how the country launched its own Avanti project (a form of CBDC) in 1993. The idea sounded great in theory, but in practice, consumers didn’t like being charged to load the cards, especially since ATM withdrawals were free.

Drug dealer loses all his bitcoin

The problem with keeping track of the keys to your bitcoin is that it’s just too easy to lose them, as this U.K. drug dealer demonstrates. He jotted down the keys to his illicit $60 million BTC on a piece of paper. But then when he went to jail, his landlord gathered up all his belongings and took them to the dump. (Guardian.) This isn’t the first time millions of dollars worth of bitcoin have ended up in a trash heap.

FCoin insolvency bears hallmarks of funny business

Screen Shot 2020-02-26 at 9.39.31 PMFCoin, a crypto exchange based in Singapore, announced its insolvency on Feb. 17 after making the surprise discovery it was short 7,000 to 13,000 bitcoin—worth roughly $70 million to $130 million. The exchange blamed the shortage on a cacophony of errors following the launch of a controversial incentive program called “trans-fee mining.” There has been a lot of speculation that this was an outright scam. Now a new report by Anchain.ai shows BTC leaving the exchange’s cold wallets in droves right before FCoin shuttered and its founder Zhang Jian happily moved on to start a new business.

Quadriga was using Crypto Capital

The law firm representing QadrigaCX’s creditors believes the failed Canadian crypto exchange was funneling money through Crypto Capital. Financial documents that two former Quadriga users posted on Telegram show that to be true. (My blog)

Next question: Was Crypto Capital holding any Quadriga funds at the time the exchange went under? That’s going to be hard to track down given the exchange had no books.

Buffett still thinks crypto is a joke

Tron CEO Justin Sun paid $4.6 million to spend three hours with Warren Buffett and turn him into a crypto fan. He even gave the multi-billionaire some bitcoin. Turns out Buffett, promptly handed those BTC over to charity. He doesn’t want anything to do with bitcoin and still thinks crypto has zero value. “What you hope is someone else comes along and pays you more money for it, but then that person’s got the problem,” he told CNBC.

Steven Segal pays the price of being a shitcoin shill

Steven Segal thought he would bring in a little extra dough by shilling a shitcoin, but the effort backfired. The Hollywood actor has agreed to pay $314,000 to the SEC for failing to disclose payments he received for touting an ICO conducted by Bitcoiin2Gen (spelled with two “i”s) in 2018. He’ll pay a $157,000 disgorgement, plus a $157,000 fine on top.

The agency claims that Seagal failed to disclose he was promised $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of B2G tokens in exchange for his promotions. He even put out a cringe-worthy press release in 2018 titled “Zen Master Steven Seagal has become the brand ambassador for Bitcoiin2gen.” (SEC press release, Variety, CNBC)

Can someone check IOTA for a pulse?

How long does a blockchain need to be shut down for before it’s considered dead? How is it even possible to shut down something that is decentralized? Oh, wait, maybe it’s not.

IOTA has been offline for 14 days and counting ever since the IOTA Foundation turned off its coordinator node, which puts the final seal of approval on any IOTA currency transactions, to stop an attacker from slurping up funds from its wallet service.

The project has put together a tedious three-part series explaining the theft of its Trinity wallet, its seed migration plan and all the lessons it’s learned from the mishap. It’s all a bit mind-numbing, and you’ll feel a little dead after you read it, too.

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

News: Crypto Mom wants to give criminals a head start, IOTA’s meltdown, Lubin’s organism divides

As a reminder, I will be traveling to Vancouver on Feb. 22 to spend about a day and a half with David Gerard. We are being interviewed for a QuadrigaCX documentary. I know when we get there, we are going to wish we had more time to hang out and meet people in the area. Especially given how far Gerard has to travel (from London) and how beautiful Vancouver is. And with that, here is the news from the past week.

Crypto Mom wants to give criminals a head start

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce (aka “Crypto Mom”) has unveiled her proposal to create a “safe harbor” for crypto startups, allowing them a three-year grace period after their ICO to achieve a level of decentralization sufficient to pass through the agency’s securities evaluations, specifically the Howey Test. (My story in Modern Consensus.)

Where to begin? Given that most, if not all ICOs are illegal securities offerings, this is like giving fraudsters free reign, so they can pump up their coins, cash in and leave the country. It’s like 2017 all over again. This whole notion of “sufficiently decentralized” is something that first came in mid-2018 when Bill Hinman, the SEC’s director, division of corporate finance, mentioned it in a talk he was giving about Ethereum. There is no clear way of defining “sufficiently decentralized.” It’s a murky concept to begin with. (See David Gerard’s story on Peirce. He goes into more depth and is not nearly so kind.)

Peirce is a Republican with libertarian leanings. Her term expires June 5. With a proposal like this and a nickname “Crypto Mom,” I can only assume she is buttering up for her next gig? Also, the odds of this rule passing are slim to none, especially given SEC Commissioner’s Jay Clayton’s strong criticism of ICOs in the past. 

IOTA’s meltdown

IOTA is in full meltdown mode. Apparently, IOTA founders Sergey Ivancheglo (aka Come-from-Beyond) and David Sønstebø were working on a ternary computing development project called Jinn. But it fell apart, and now the two can’t stop pointing fingers at each other. Ivancheglo says that he no longer works for foundation director David Sønstebø and is suing him for 25 million MIOTA (~ $8.5 million). Sønstebø wrote this really long Medium post, which I had trouble staying awake through. There is also a r/buttcoin Reddit post that spells out the full drama, if you’re in need of entertainment.

Given the maturity level demonstrated by this project in the past, I’m not surprised by any of this. The project has been a complete mess ever since they tried to roll their own crypto in 2017. I wrote about it for Forbes, and they attacked me with weird blog posts and other nonsense. Cofounder Dominik Schiener even threatened to slap me. And when confronted, he accused me of “leading the FUD race.” FT Alphaville actually covered this in a story titled “FUD, inglorious FUD” at the time. 

Researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis is calling on some journalist somewhere to do a deep dive on this sketchy project. “At a glance it’s really hard to not come to the conclusion that there is rampant criminal fraud afoot,” she said in a Twitter thread.

Ripple perpetual swaps

Bitmex has announced trading of XRP perpetual swaps. Bitmex co-founder Arthur Hayes apparently believes XRP is lowly enough to trade on his exchange. Boo-yaka-sha!

Speaking of Ripple, XRP lost almost half of its value last year. It’s a touchy topic for Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, because he has invested $23 million into the coin. He recently told a group of financial advisers in Orlando that XRP will “underperform immensely again this year.” He suggested it’s because Ripple owns a giant pool of the coins and keeps selling them off in a situation he likened to shares. (CoinDesk)  

The total amount of XRP in circulation is 100 billion tokens. While Ripple was “gifted” 80 billion, its holdings are down to 56 billion, most of which are in escrow. The company unlocks one billion XRP each month, sells a portion and puts the rest back in escrow. Does that sound like shares to you?

Mastercard dumps all over Libra

Mastercard was one of several payments companies (along with PayPal, eBay, Stripe, Visa, Mercado Pago) to pull out of the Libra Association in October. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mastercard’s CEO Ajay Banga revealed why.

First, Libra Association’s key members refused to commit to avoid running afoul of local KYC/AML rules. Banga would ask them to put things in writing, and they wouldn’t. Second, he didn’t understand what the game plan was for making money. “When you don’t understand how money gets made, it gets made in ways you don’t like.” Finally, the financial inclusion bit struck him as odd. “I’m like: ‘this doesn’t sound right,’” he said.

This gives us a bit of insight into the lack of thought and planning Facebook put into its Libra project before going public with it. You would think a huge enterprise like Facebook would get this stuff right, but apparently not.

ConsenSys splits in two

images (1)Joe Lubin’s organism (that’s what he used to call it, an “organism) looks to be running into more funding trouble, so it’s going to spin off its venture arm. The company will basically become two separate businesses, a software business and an investment business. In the process, it’s also  cutting another 14% of its staff. This is after cutting 13% of its staff in December. (My story in Modern Consensus.)

At one time, ConsenSys had 1,200 employees. In mid-2018, it reportedly had 900. About 117 were let go in December, and likely another 100 in this last round. This is a company that midwifed many of the ICOs that fueled the 2017-2018 crypto bubble. I can still recall going to ConsenSys’ Ethereum Summit on a sweltering day in May 2017 and watching some guy on stage strip down to his boxer shorts. Such was the exuberance at the time.

ConsenSys now lists only 65 companies in its investment portfolio. When Forbes wrote this scathing article in late 2018, the company had 200 startups. Lubin’s science experiment is starting to unravel.

Justin Sun finally breaks bread with Buffet

On Thursday, Tron CEO Justin Sun tweeted a receipt and pictures to show he finally dined with Warren Buffet. This, after paying $4.6 million in a charity auction last year to have lunch with the multi-billionaire. They were originally supposed to meet in San Francisco six months ago, but Sun postponed. This time they had dinner on Buffet’s home turf in Omaha, so Buffet clearly learned his lesson. Other guests were Litecoin’s Charlie Lee, Huobi CFO Chris Lee, eToro chief Yoni Assia, Binance Charity Foundation Head Helen Hai. The bill was for $515 and Buffet left a $100 tip. (Modern Consensus.)

Craig Wright’s abuse of privilege

Craig Wright, the self-professed creator of bitcoin, is driving the attorneys representing Ira Kleiman and the judge bananas. In a document filed with the court on Feb. 2, plaintiffs claimed that Wright has asserted privilege over 11,000 company documents. That is only part of the problem, they said. “The vague descriptions of what is being withheld makes any meaningful analysis on a document by document basis impossible.”

Wright has also apparently claimed that the” bonded courier” is an attorney and any communications with this person of mystery is privileged as well. (Modern Consensus.)

Altsbit gets hacked

Exchange hacks are extremely rare. We don’t hear about them too often, only once every few weeks or so. The latest victim is a small Italian exchange called Altsbit, which had its hot wallet vacuumed clean last week.

This was especially bad for Altsbit, because for some inexplicable reason, the exchange was keeping almost all of its funds in its hot wallet, which is a terrible idea. Most exchanges keep the majority of their funds in offline cold storage for security purposes.

According to reports, the hackers stole 1,066 Komodo (KMD) tokens and 283,375 Verus (VRSC) coins. The combined value of both stands at about $27,000. That’s small potatoes compared to other exchange hacks, where hundreds of millions worth of coins have gone missing. Almost all of Altsbit’s trading activity was coming from the ARRR/BTC pair. (ARRR is the native token of the Pirate Chain.) Altsbit said in a tweet on Feb. 5, it was investigating details of the hack and would get back to everyone soon, but so far nada. The exchange was founded in April 2018.

Bakkt gets into payments

Bakkt, the ICE-owned bitcoin options and futures exchange, isn’t making any money on bitcoin options, but that’s okay because it has another plan. It’s going into payments. The exchange is set to acquire loyalty program provider Bridge2 Solutions. The master plan is to integrate reward points, crypto, and in-game tokens into a single app, so consumers get an aggregate view of their digital assets. Eventually consumers will be able to spend those as cash via the Bakkt mobile app. But for that to happen, Bakkt will have to invest copious amounts of money into marketing to get merchants to adopt the new system of payment. (My story in Modern Consensus)

Other news

What’s happening with Jae Kwon? As Decrypt reported on Jan. 31, he stepped down as CEO of Cosmos to work on a project called Virgo with lofty aims. Cosmos pulled in $17 million in an ICO in 2017. Now Kwon is tweeting under three different monikers and the people within his company have come to find his behavior untenable. (Coindesk)

U.S. Marshalls is auctioning off $40 million of bitcoin (~4,041 BTC) on Feb. 18. (Coindesk.) If you want to put in a bid, you’ll have to deposit $200,000 in advance. Here is the registration form for anyone interested.  

Another study has come out showing that proof-of-stake is just as costly as proof-of-work. But instead of contributing to global warming, PoS requires stakers to put down tokens, lots and lots of them. It’s more evidence that blockchains aren’t economical.

If you have comments or feedback on this newsletter or a tip, drop me a line or DM me on Twitter at @ahcastor.

#  #  #

 

 

Posted on by Amy Castor 0