Tag: Zhu Su

Crypto collapse: Mt Gox payouts, Tether hooks up the feds, SEC says no to Coinbase, crypto media mergers

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

It’s not over until withdrawals are temporarily paused due to unusual market activity.

— Jacob Silverman

Tightening Tether’s tethers

Tether’s been under some regulatory heat after the reports of how useful USDT is for financing terrorists and other sanctioned entities. Even Cynthia Lummis, the crypto-pumping senator from Wyoming, loudly declared that Tether had to be dealt with.

The US government isn’t entirely happy with Tether’s financial shenanigans. But they’re really unhappy about sanctions violations, especially with what’s going on now in the Middle East. 

So Tether has announced that it will now be freezing OFAC-sanctioned blockchain addresses — and it’s onboarded the US Secret Service and FBI onto Tether! [Tether, archive; letter, PDF, archive]

Tether doesn’t do anything voluntarily. We expect they were told that they would allow this or an extremely large hammer would come down upon them.

There’s more to Tether’s criminal use case than sanctions violation. The most jaw-dropping chapter in Zeke Faux’s excellent book Number Go Up (US, UK) is when he traced a direct message scammer to a human trafficking operation in Cambodia that favored tethers as its currency. South China Morning Post follows up on this with an in-depth report on how Cambodian organized crime uses tethers. [SCMP]

Credit rating firm S&P Global rated eight stablecoins for risk. Tether and Dai got the lowest marks. S&P notes in particular the lack of information on Tether’s reserves. [press release; S&P; Tether report, PDF]

At least some of the claimed Tether backing in treasuries is held in the US with Cantor Fitzgerald — exposing Tether to US touchability. This has been known since February 2023, and was proudly confirmed in December 2023 by Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick: “I hold their Treasuries, and they have a lot of Treasuries. I’m a big fan of Tethers.” [Ledger Insights; Forbes]

Cointelegraph had a fascinating story on a company called Exved using tethers for cross-border payments from Russia! Then they deleted it, for some reason. Exved was founded by Sergey Mendeleev, who also founded the OFAC-sanctioned crypto exchange Garantex, which was kicked out of Estonia. Exved is working with InDeFi Bank, another Mendeleev venture. We’re not so sure the new OFAC-compliant Tether will be 100% on board with this. [Cointelegraph, archive; Telegram, in Russian; Protos]

SEC answers Coinbase’s prayers: “No.”

In July 2022 — just after crypto crashed — Coinbase wrote to the SEC proposing new regulatory carveouts for crypto.

The SEC took its sweet time responding. Eventually, Coinbase sued in April 2023 with a writ of mandamus, demanding a bureaucratic response. The court told the SEC to get on with it, or at least supply a date by which it would answer.

Finally, the SEC has responded: “the Commission concludes that the requested rulemaking is currently unwarranted and denies the Petition.” The SEC thinks existing securities regulations cover crypto securities just fine, and there’s no reason for special rules for Coinbase. [SEC rejection, PDF; Coinbase letter to court, PDF; Gensler statement]

Coinbase general counsel Paul Grewal welcomed the opportunity to challenge Coinbase’s dumb and bad proposal being turned down. [Twitter, archive]

4 (continued)

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao will not be returning home to Dubai anytime soon. US District Judge Richard Jones ordered CZ to remain in the US until his sentencing on February 24. He can travel within the US, but he cannot leave. [Order, PDF] 

After being busted hard, Binance is still behaving weird. At the FT Crypto and Digital Assets Summit in London, the exchange’s new CEO Richard Teng refused to answer even basic questions, like where Binance is headquartered and whether it’s had an audit. “Why do you feel so entitled to those answers?” Teng said when pushed. “Is there a need for us to share all of this information publicly? No.” [FT]

CZ and Binance have been trying to dismiss the SEC charges against them. This is mostly loud table pounding, wherein Binance claims that what the SEC argued were securities are not really securities. [Doc 190, PDF, Doc 191, PDF]

France was the first country in Europe to grant Binance regulatory approval. State-endorsed blockchain courses for the unemployed and NFT diplomas helped push the country’s most vulnerable into crypto. Since the collapse of FTX and Binance’s $4.3 billion fine for money laundering, French President Emmanuel Macron’s relationship with CZ has fallen under scrutiny. [FT, archive]

London law firm Slateford helped to cover up Binance’s crimes and attempted to intimidate media outlet Disruption Banking from writing about Binance’s sloppy compliance hiring practices. (Disruption Banking told Slateford to get knotted and didn’t hear from them again.) [Disruption Banking]

Binance is finally removing all trading pairs against Great British pounds. [Binance, archive]

FTX: The IRS wants its money

FTX filed a reorganization plan in mid-December. The plan is 80 pages and the disclosure statement is 138 pages, but there’s a notable lack of detail on what happens next. None of the talk of starting a new exchange has made it into the current plan — this appears to just be a liquidation.

The plan treats crypto claims as their value in cash at the time of the bankruptcy filing on November 11, 2022, back when bitcoin was at $17,000 — less than half of what it is now.

Creditors will vote on the plan in 2024. The court must approve the plan before it is implemented. [Bloomberg, archive; Plan, PDF; Disclosure statement, PDF]

The IRS is demanding $24 billion in unpaid taxes from the corpse of FTX. John Jay Ray wants to know how the IRS came up with that ludicrous number — the exchange never earned anything near those amounts. The IRS originally wanted $44 billion, but brought the number down. Judge John Dorsey has told the IRS to show its working. [Doc 4588, PDF; Bloomberg, paywalled]

Three Arrows Capital

Three Arrows Capital was the overleveraged crypto hedge fund that blew up in 2022 and took out everyone else in crypto who hadn’t already been wrecked by Terra-Luna. After months of dodging culpability, co-founder Zhu Su was finally arrested in Singapore in September as he was trying to skip the country. 

Zhu was released from jail and appeared before the Singapore High Court on December 13, where he had to explain to lawyers for the liquidator Teneo what happened when 3AC went broke. The information will be shared with creditors. [Bloomberg, archive]

A British Virgin Islands court froze $1.1 billion in assets of Zhu and his co-founder Kyle Davies and Davies’ wife Kelly Chen. [The Block]

Teneo expects a 46% recovery rate for 3AC creditors on $2.7 billion in claims. [The Block]

Crypto media in the new Ice Age

Crypto news outlet Decrypt has merged with “decentralized media firm” Rug Radio. No, we’d never heard of them either. The two firms will form a new holding company chaired by Josh Quittner. Decrypt had spun out from Consensys in May 2022, just before everything crashed. It’s reportedly been profitable since then — though crypto sites always say that. [Axios; Axios, 2022] 

Forkast News in Hong Kong has merged with NFT data provider CryptoSlam and fired most of its staff. Forkast was founded in 2018 by former Bloomberg News anchor Angie Lau; it shut down editorial operations on November 30. [The Block] 

Crypto news outlets ran seriously low on cash in 2019 and 2020, just before the crypto bubble, and they’re struggling again. We expect more merges and buyouts of top-tier (such as that is in crypto) and mid-tier crypto outlets. We predict news quality will decline further.

Amy recalls the old-style crypto media gravy train and eating in five-star restaurants every night in Scotland and London while embedded with Cardano in 2017. Thanks, Charles! Nocoining doesn’t pay nearly as well, but these days crypto media doesn’t either. There’s probably a book in those Cardano stories that nobody would ever read.

Regulatory clarity

The Financial Stability Oversight Council, which monitors domestic and international regulatory proposals, wants more US legislation to control crypto. FSOC’s 2023 annual report warns of dangers from:

crypto-asset price volatility, the market’s high use of leverage, the level of interconnectedness within the industry, operational risks, and the risk of runs on crypto-asset platforms and stablecoins. Vulnerabilities may also arise from token ownership concentration, cybersecurity risks, and the proliferation of platforms acting outside of or out of compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

Yeah, that about covers it. FSOC recommends (again) that “Congress pass legislation to provide for the regulation of stablecoins and of the spot market for crypto-assets that are not securities.” [Press release; annual report, PDF]

IOSCO, the body of international securities regulators, released its final report on how to regulate DeFi, to go with its November recommendations on crypto markets in general. IOSCO’s nine recommendations for DeFi haven’t changed from the draft version — treat these like the instruments they appear to be, and pay attention to the man behind the curtain. These are recommendations for national regulators, not rules, but look at the DeFi task force — this was led by the US SEC. [IOSCO press release, PDF; IOSCO report, PDF]

London-based neobank Revolut is suspending UK crypto services — you can no longer buy crypto with the app — citing a new raft of FCA regulations, which go into force on January 8. [CityAM; CoinDesk]

Crypto exchange KuCoin has settled with New York. The NY Attorney General charged KuCoin in March for violating securities laws by offering security tokens — including tether — while not registering with NYAG. KuCoin has agreed to pay a $22 million fine — $5.3 million going to the NYAG and $16.77 million to refund New York customers. KuCoin will also leave the state. [Stipulation and consent order, PDF; Twitter, archive] 

Montenegro plans to extradite Terraform Labs cofounder Do Kwon to either the US or South Korea, where he is wanted on charges related to the collapse of Terra’s stablecoin. Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in March. Originally it looked like Montenegro was going to pass him off to the US, but the case has been handed back to the High Court for review. [Bloomberg, archive; Sudovi, in Montenegrin]

Anatoly Legkodymov of the Bitzlato crypto exchange, a favorite of the darknet markets, has pleaded guilty in the US to unlicensed money transmission. Legkodymov was arrested in Miami back in January. He has agreed to shut down the exchange. [Press release]

The SEC posted a new investor alert on crypto securities with a very lengthy section on claims of proof of reserves and how misleading these can be. [Investor.gov; Twitter, archive] 

Santa Tibanne

It’s been nearly ten years, but Mt. Gox creditors are reportedly starting to receive repayments — small amounts in Japanese yen via PayPal. [Cointelegraph; Twitter, archive] 

Some payouts are apparently bitcoin payouts — with the creditors not receiving a proportionate share of the remaining bitcoins, but instead the yen value of the bitcoins when Mt. Gox collapsed in February 2014. This means a 100% recovery for creditors! — but much less actual money.

There are still 140,000 bitcoins from Mt. Gox waiting to be released. If payouts are made in bitcoins and not just yen, we expect that claimants will want to cash out as soon as possible. This could have adverse effects on the bitcoin price.

Trouble down t’ pit

In the Celsius Network bankruptcy, Judge Martin Glenn has approved the plan to start a “MiningCo” bitcoin miner with some of the bankruptcy estate. He says that “the MiningCo Transaction falls squarely within the terms of the confirmed Plan and does not constitute a modification.” [Doc 4171, PDF]

Bitcoin miners are racing to buy up more mining equipment before bitcoin issuance halves in April or May 2024. Here’s to the miners sending each other broke as fast as possible [FT, archive] 

Riot Platforms subsidiary Whinstone sent its private security to Rhodium Enterprise’s plant in Rockdale, Texas, to remove Rhodium employees and shut down their 125MW bitcoin mining facility. The two mining companies have been brawling over an energy agreement they had made before prices went up. [Bitcoin Magazine]

More good news for bitcoin

The UK is setting up a crypto hub! ’Cos that’s definitely what the UK needs, and not a working economy or something. [CoinDesk]

Liquid is a bitcoin sidechain set up by Blockstream at the end of 2018. It was intended for crypto exchange settlement, to work around the blockchain being unusably slow. It sees very little use — “On a typical day, there are more tweets about Liquid than there are transactions on its network.” [Protos] 

A16z, Coinbase, and the Winklevoss twins say they’ve raised $78 million as part of a new push to influence the 2024 elections. [Politico] 

Little-known fact: coiners can donate to the PAC in tethers. All they have to do is send them via an opaque Nevada trust structure to hide the origins of the funds. And this is perfectly legal! [FPPC, PDF, p. 85, “nonmonetary items”]

Ahead of the SEC’s deadline to rule on a bitcoin ETF, Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency, has quietly stepped down from the board of DCG subsidiary and ETF applicant Grayscale and is no longer chairman, according to a recent SEC filing. Silbert will be replaced by Mark Shifke, the current DCG senior vice president of operations. US regulators are suing DCG over the Gemini Earn program co-run by its subsidiary Genesis. [Form 8-K]

Ordinals are an exciting new way to create NFTs on bitcoin! ’Cos who doesn’t want that? The bitcoin blockchain immediately clogged when it was actually used for stuff. Now TON, the blockchain that is totally not Telegram’s, no, no no, has ordinals — and it’s getting clogged too. [The Block]

Image: Mark Karpeles with aggrieved bitcoin trader outside Mt. Gox in Tokyo in 2014.

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: Genesis bankrupt, CoinDesk for sale, Bankman-Fried attacks FTX lawyers, Bitzlato busted

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

I think we made some tremendous progress in the six months before I left.

— Jeffrey Skilling, Enron

Media stardom

Amy’s first piece for Foreign Policy is out now! “The Crypto Dominoes Are Still Falling: The bankruptcy of Genesis shows the need for regulators to have teeth.” She advises that regulators be given the power to act much more quickly against obvious nonsense. [Foreign Policy, paywalled]

Genesis goes down — DCG is fine, fine

The lending arm of Genesis finally filed for chapter 11 in the Southern District of New York on January 19. This has been expected for months, as they froze withdrawals in November. [Amended Petition, PDF; docket on Kroll; press release; Bloomberg; Michael Lito declaration, PDF]

The corporate entities that filed were Global Holdco and its lending subsidiaries Genesis Global Capital and Genesis Asia Pacific, which managed Genesis lending for Three Arrows Capital. Genesis’ derivatives, spot trading, broker-dealer, and custody businesses were not part of the bankruptcy.

Genesis owes its top 50 creditors — mostly unnamed on the petition — over $3.4 billion. Gemini Earn clients are collectively owed $765.9 million. Other big claims include a $78 million loan payable from Donut (a “high-yield” DeFi platform — “high yield” is a euphemism for “Ponzi”) and a VanEck fund with a $53.1 million loan payable. [Reuters]

But fear not! Genesis has a plan to exit the bankruptcy by May 19. It will try to sell its assets at auction within three months. [Chapter 11 Plan, PDF]

The settlement proposal is written in a confusing and opaque manner — but DCG controls the bankrupt entities utterly. DCG is trying to declare its left hand solvent and its right hand bankrupt, and stick the creditors with the losses.

Page 50 of the chapter 11 plan (page 54 of the PDF) sets out the street corner shell game. Claims are shuffled between the bankrupt Genesis entities and the non-bankrupt DCG entities such that heads DCG wins, and tails the creditors lose. Any Gemini Earn creditor who accepts this settlement relinquishes all claims against DCG, Gemini, and the Winklevoss twins personally.

We think DCG screwed up by covering for Genesis in July 2022, when it took on the claim to 3AC and issued Genesis a $1.1 billion promissory note in return. It’s clear that nobody at Genesis could refuse the offer — that this was entirely in the control of DCG. Also, the 3AC loan was secured in part by shares of GBTC, as issued by DCG’s Grayscale. Genesis should have declared bankruptcy then.

In addition to the $1.1 billion note, DCG owes Genesis another $575 million, in cash and cryptos. The Genesis bankruptcy is all about shielding DCG from liability.

“This SHOULD be criminal,” Nicholas Weaver said. “You sell a billion dollars worth of unregistered investments (it is called ‘securities fraud’), they go sour, your victims should be able to go after you. But this is all designed to basically be a perfect crime: a billion dollar theft, in plain sight, and with legal protection.” He advises the unsecured creditors’ committee to reject the offer. [Mastodon]

Gemini Earn claims against Genesis are part of the bankruptcy. It’s unlikely the customers will get all their money back in chapter 11. The question is: will Gemini make Earn depositors whole, or will the Winklevosses argue that Earn depositors are creditors of Genesis?

Cameron Winklevoss is still fighting to get Genesis to pay up. He threatened to sue DCG over the bankruptcy: “Unless Barry and DCG come to their senses and make a fair offer to creditors, we will be filing a lawsuit against Barry and DCG imminently.” [Twitter]

As we noted previously, the SEC case against Gemini Earn makes Gemini and Genesis jointly and severally liable to pay back customers in full, should the SEC win or the defendants settle. And Gemini has the funds and isn’t bankrupt. So Cameron really wants DCG to pay.

Who wants to buy CoinDesk?

DCG’s crypto news site CoinDesk is exploring a partial or full sale. CEO Kevin Worth says that CoinDesk has received multiple unsolicited offers of over $200 million. We raised an eyebrow at this claim, but hey. We doubt the offers were in actual cash dollars, though. [WSJ] 

CoinDesk claims it received $50 million in revenue in 2022. It’s unclear where from. Its main income source was events — which are not so huge in the crypto winter. There are a few ads on the site. Staff expansions in the past year, particularly at CoinDesk TV, won’t have been cheap.

CoinDesk has been propped up by DCG since 2016 when Barry Silbert bought the site for $500,000. We understand that CoinDesk was about to go broke when Silbert dived in and rescued it. CoinDesk was still a small crypto blog then, but Silbert took it into the big time just in time for the 2017 bubble.

CoinDesk’s job is to be a PR machine for Silbert’s empire — often quite explicitly. [CoinDesk memo, archive] The only reason to buy CoinDesk would be to make it your PR machine.

3AC and CoinFLEX — a remarkable team

Three Arrows Capital founders Zhu Su and Kyle Davies are looking to raise $25 million for a new crypto claims exchange. That is, an exchange for claims against bankrupt crypto companies. 3AC are, of course, experts in going bankrupt in a really big way.

Zhu and Davies were going to name their new thing GTX — a take on FTX because G comes after F. They claimed this was just a temporary name after everyone made fun of them.

The pair are working alongside CoinFLEX founders Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam. CoinFLEX filed for restructuring in the Seychelles in June after it suffered $84 million in losses from a large individual customer — Roger Ver. 

GTX will run on CoinFLEX’s software and a legal team will oversee the onboarding of claims for all the recent crypto bankruptcies —including Celsius, Voyager, FTX, and Mt. Gox. Creditors who transfer their claims to GTX will receive credit in a token called USDG. [The Block]  

In its pitch deck, GTX estimated there was a $20 billion market for crypto claims, based on the notional value of those claims. “We can dominate the crypto claims market within 2-3 months of go-live.” [WSJ, paywalled; FT, paywalled; pitch deck, archive, PDF]

The pitch deck ends with a splash detailing 3AC and CoinFLEX’s extensive crypto market successes. This fails to mention that both companies went broke — and that 3AC went broke so hard they took out much of crypto all by themselves.

GTX gets full points for audacity, and here’s to Zhu and Davies going to jail.

FTX: Judge says Sullivan & Cromwell can stay

Amy and Molly White live-tweeted the FTX hearing on Friday, January 20. It was about FTX’s applications to retain various bankruptcy professionals, mainly Sullivan & Cromwell. [Twitter; Twitter, Agenda, PDF]

Judge John Dorsey ruled FTX could continue using Sullivan & Cromwell, despite claims the law firm was too conflicted. [Order, PDF; Motion, PDF]

The US Trustee and the UCC had originally objected to S&C on the grounds the firm failed to make relevant disclosures regarding its prior dealings with FTX. But leading up to the hearing, the parties worked things out, and now the UST and UCC are on board. The only remaining objections came from FTX creditor Warren Winter, with a joinder from FTX creditor Richard Brummond. [Objection, PDF; Joinder, PDF]

In support of Winter’s objection, former FTX (and Ultimate Poker!) lawyer Daniel Friedberg filed a hilariously terrible declaration. Friedberg describes how shocked he was to learn that $8 billion of FTX customer money was missing. After reviewing his “ethical obligations” — a bodily organ hitherto unknown to Mr. Friedberg — he resigned. He tries to imply that S&C took FTX into bankruptcy so they could loot the corpse, helped from the inside by S&C’s former law partner, Ryne Miller. [Declaration, PDF]

Because Friedman filed his declaration late, White followed with an emergency motion to adjourn the hearing, so the court would have more time to chew on it. [Motion, PDF]

S&C’s James Bromely said Sam Bankman-Fried was behind all of this troublemaking. Friedberg’s declaration came hot on the heels of social media posts by SBF attacking the law firm. SBF is living in his parent’s home with an ankle bracelet and Friedberg has been questioned by the FBI. The pair were part of the inner circle that brought down FTX, said Bromely:

“If you are Mr. Bankman Fried or Mr. Friedberg, there is a concern about what is going on and what could happen to them. They can’t throw stones at the US attorney’s office. But they can throw stones at the Debtor’s counsel who are providing information to the prosecutors and the regulators, which is exactly what is happening.” 

As far as Friedberg goes, Bromely added: “He’s got a checkered past. It takes a lot of guts for him to put something in writing that says, ‘I was the chief compliance officer at FTX.’”  

Judge Dorsey dismissed everything in the Friedberg declaration saying, “It’s full of hearsay, innuendo, speculation, and rumor… certainly not something I would allow to be introduced into evidence in any event.”

FTX CEO John Jay Ray III said in his declaration S&C are not the villains. The villains are being pursued by criminal authorities. [Ray declaration, PDF]

We concur that S&C may be conflicted. But they’re competent to do the job, they’ve already spent 70 days on the case, which new counsel would have to do over, and it’s not like someone else would be cheaper.

The Trustee also wants to appoint an examiner in the case. The examiner motion will be heard on February 6. 

FTX: mycrimes.blog

A new mycrimes.blog just dropped, with more drafts from Sam’s forthcoming book* If Caroline and CZ and John Ray and Sullivan & Cromwell Did It. SBF claims that FTX US was solvent when he passed it off to the lawyers, Sullivan & Cromwell. John Jay Ray III responds: “This is the problem, he thinks everything is one big honey pot.” [Substack; WSJ]  

FTX secretly channeled a $50 million loan to Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, in a deal struck with Deltec chair Jean Chalopin. “Deltec is emerging as a central figure in the scrum of lawyers, banks and unwitting associates FTX pulled into its orbit.” Our regular readers will recognize Deltec as the known banker for Tether, who have occasionally claimed to hold more dollars for Tether than are documented in the entire Bahamas banking system. [Forbes, paywall]

It was obvious to executives and software developers at FTX that financial arrangements between FTX and Alameda were somewhat odd as early as 2020. FTX employees have been leaking documents to the New York Times. [NYT]

CFTC commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero gave a speech on FTX’s failure and the nature of public trust in crypto firms. She goes in hard, particularly after the professional gatekeepers: “lawyers, accountants, auditors, compliance professionals and other gatekeepers for crypto firms failed customers in their essential duties.” Venture capitalists and pension funds too. She wants Congress to give the CFTC more power over crypto exchanges. [CFTC]

Romero also went after FTX’s venture capital backers on Bloomberg TV: “What kind of due diligence did they conduct? Why did they turn a blind eye to what should have been really flashing red lights?” [Bloomberg]

* c’mon, you know he will

Bitzlato: Ladies and gentlemen, we got ’em

Everyone heard about the huge Fed announcement of an international cryptocurrency bust and went … who the hell is Bitzlato? Some tiny Hong Kong exchange run by some Russian living in Shenzhen? [Press release; order, PDF; affidavit, PDF]

Bitzlato, formerly called ChangeBot, was a small exchange with a peer-to-peer service, similar to LocalBitcoins. Its user base was Russian crooks doing crooked things with fake accounts. Users with valid Know-Your-Customer info would create “drop” accounts which they would then sell to crooks. So Bitzlato could say it had KYC, even if it didn’t do anything.

Bitzlato was not systemic to the crypto economy. But it was important to the Russia-based ransomware economy, and it was the exchange of choice for users of the Hydra darknet market that was busted in April 2022.

The Feds basically enacted Nicholas Weaver and Bruce Schneier’s 2021 plan to take out ransomware: hit the very few exchanges willing to touch such tainted coins. [Slate, 2021]

The fun part of the FBI affidavit is the tales of Bitzlato’s criminal customer service, page 10 onwards:

•‌ On or about December 27, 2017, a user with the username “Dude Weed” wrote to Bitzlato’s customer service portal, stating: “I have a bitcoin wallet in my account on the Hydra site. I also have a wallet here … How do I recharge a Hydra wallet”? The user also provided transaction details. Based on my training and experience, this query reflects the user’s desire to send funds from Bitzlato to Hydra. A Bitzlato representative responded: “Hello dude weed,” apologized for the delay in the transaction, and stated that “The transaction successfully went online.” The Bitzlato representative provided a link to an online blockchain explorer, reflecting a completed Bitcoin transaction whose total amount was then equivalent to approximately $14,600.

•‌ On December 17, 2020, a Bitzlato representative asked a user to provide his identity documents. The user protested, writing, “I don’t quite understand why you need a photo of this card? It’s not mine[.]” In further conversations, the user clarified that “everyone on the site trades with other people’s cards … they often discuss so-called ‘drops.’” The user commented that he had been told to create an account using credentials supplied by an online cryptocurrency training course that he had found on Instagram. The Bitzlato representative asked the user to provide his true identity documents and, rather than terminate that user, said the user could keep trading on Bitzlato.

Image: Cameron Winklevoss on Instagram

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: 3AC yacht ‘Much Wow’ back on the market, Celsius maybe-Ponzi, Voyager pays off the boys, Hodlnaut

“Crypto sceptics are a bit like the boy who cried wolf, except a villager gets eaten every damn time and the rest of them are still going ‘why did you cry wolf, FUDster?'”

— GunterWatanabe

Toot toot, I’m a boat

Everyone trusted Zhu Su and Kyle Davies at Three Arrows Capital (3AC). They knew what they were doing, right?

Only now, the pair have disappeared — and their fabulous yacht is back on the market. “The unclaimed yacht looms as a slightly ridiculous avatar of the hubris, greed, and recklessness of the firm’s 35-year-old co-founders.” [Intelligencer] 

Here’s the 3AC yacht in all its glory: the Much Wow. Yes, Zhu was into Dogecoin too. [Much Wow; Boat International, archive]

3AC talked like competent hedge fund guys — which straight away made them look a zillion times smarter than the rest of the crypto bros. But they weren’t good at this at all. They had no clue on how to hedge their bets. The 2021 crypto bubble saved 3AC’s backside — they could keep looking like geniuses a little longer.

3AC used a “spray and pay” strategy: invest in a whole pile of trashy minor altcoins, and hope for a return.

On May 26, 2022 — by which time 3AC had likely already abandoned their Singapore office and skipped the country — Davies tweeted that “it doesn’t matter specifically what a VC invests in, more fiat in the system is good for the industry.” This is correct, if you view crypto as a single unified scam casino. [Twitter]

Articles about the wider crypto collapse talk about 3AC a lot. This gives the impression that 3AC is fundamentally to blame.

3AC deserves a lot of the blame because they were greedy and stupid. But everyone else was also greedy and stupid. 

Terraform’s Anchor protocol paid 20% interest rates — the highest available. 3AC offered the next-highest interest rates available, by putting the money into UST/luna and skimming some off the top.

So everyone else put their money into Anchor and 3AC. Many of these were feeder funds, who skimmed a bit off the top themselves.

You can picture the crypto investment market as an inverted pyramid, where the point is UST/luna — a Ponzi box full of hot air. 3AC was the box above that. Everyone else is in a funnel down to those two. The bottom two Ponzi boxes collapsed, and the whole inverted pyramid came tumbling down with them.

Terraform was running the load-bearing Ponzi box; we put most of the blame on Do Kwon. But we also blame Terraform’s enablers — the rest of the crypto investment firms.

There’s a lot to blame 3AC for — the way that Zhu and Davies just kept going “this is fine” even as they knew it was going to hell. They were greedy fools.

But anyone who put their money into 3AC was also a greedy fool.

Voyage to the bottom of the sea

Voyager Digital’s official unsecured creditors’ committee (UCC) held a town hall on August 11. The meeting was led by UCC counsel Darren Azman and Chuck Gibbs at McDermott Will & Emery. Amy wrote up some notes. [YouTube; presentation]

Azman says: if you want to buy Voyager, hurry! The deadline to submit bids is August 26. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX has already submitted a bid. It may have been a low-ball bid, but SBF’s Alameda Research is a borrower from, lender to, and shareholder of Voyager. We expect FTX will want Voyager the most — if anyone really wants it at all. 

Azman and Gibbs say that Voyager is aiming to file a restructuring plan in October — and that creditors might get their money back as soon as November! What money there is, anyway.

This time frame would be welcome, but isn’t plausible — Mt. Gox (2014) and QuadrigaCX (2019) creditors are still waiting for their money years later.

Meanwhile, the boys gotta get paid. Voyager wants $1.9 million to pay bonuses to 38 employees as part of a “Key Employee Retention Plan.” (KERP). In a bankruptcy, KERP is a way to incentivize upper management to keep working throughout the bankruptcy — and not flee the sinking ship.

Voyager is also seeking to file under seal all pertinent information about KERP participants — their names, job titles, supervisors, salary, and proposed bonus. These folks are definitely not insiders, and Voyager can’t give you their names — but trust them.

When your ship is sinking, the last thing you want is people leaving with all your deep, dark secrets. Keep them happy — and quiet. 

The US Trustee objects to the sealing: “The payment of bonuses, let alone bonuses in such a significant sum to such a limited number of individuals under the circumstances that brought Voyager to this Court, should not be countenanced.” 

The UCC also objects — of Voyager’s 350 employees filed, only 12 have resigned so far. Nobody’s leaving. In fact, nobody’s been asked to leave.

Creditors are pissed that Voyager hasn’t bothered to reduce employee headcount at all, given the platform has been frozen since July 1. What are the employees doing, other than collecting paychecks? [motion, PDF; objection, PDF; objection, PDF; Coindesk]

Just days before Bernie Madoff was formally charged by the SEC, he wanted to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in early bonuses to employees. We’re sure he was just being nice to them too. [National Post, 2008]

Celsius: When you’re in a hole, keep mining

Celsius submitted their Budget and Coin Report, reflecting the funds they were holding as of July 29. (They filed for bankruptcy on July 13.) The company plans to file similar reporting on a monthly basis throughout their bankruptcy. [Notice of filing and coin report, PDF] 

The report shows just how much money Celsius wants to set on fire. Over a three-month period from August through October, Celsius is allocating $14 million to payroll, $57.3 million to mining, and $33 million to restructuring costs. By the end of October, they’ll be operating hugely in the red.

Those negative numbers were the elephant in the room during Celsius’ second-day hearing on August 16. Amy summarized this hearing previously. Here’s the slide deck that Celsius lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis presented. [presentation, PDF]

Celsius has this mad idea that they can crypto-mine their way out of bankruptcy. First, they plowed customers’ money into stunningly risky investments. [Twitter thread] Now they want to feed the remaining customer funds into their money-gobbling bitcoin mining operation.

Celsius sought approval from the court to sell their mined bitcoin — so they could use the proceeds to fund Capex for their Texas mining operation. 

The US Trustee’s attorney, Shara Cornell, objected on the grounds that Celsius wasn’t being transparent about what bitcoin it planned to sell, or how much the mining business was expected to generate.

Despite those objections, Judge Martin Glenn approved the motion — though he had reservations: “At bottom, this is a business judgment decision that may turn out to be very wrong, but we will see.”

We think he should have had stronger reservations. Celsius says its mining will be profitable in January, but the numbers don’t add up. 

Celsius expects to generate 10,118 BTC this year and 15,000 BTC next year. Last year, they only mined 3,114 BTC, according to filings. The company has paid for 120,000 rigs, of which 49,000 are in operation.

Even if Celsius mines and sells 1,000 BTC per month, that’s only $2 million when their hosting costs are $19 million per month, with only half the rigs operational. This business simply isn’t viable. It’s just an attempt by Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky to postpone his company’s liquidation.

Well, that was a huge arithmetic error. Sorry about that. We blame the intern. (i.e.,ourselves.)

A question of trust

Celsius also wanted to sell some de minimis assets. These turned out to be notes/bonds and equity in other crypto companies — but Celsius hadn’t bothered to mention that bit.

Cornell from the US Trustee said, “The motion makes it sound like the debtor is selling office furniture.” Judge Glenn said he had “no inkling the debtor was proposing to sell millions of dollars of equity or notes/investments in other crypto businesses.” He did not approve the motion.

US Trustee William Harrington has had enough of Mashinsky messing around. Days after the hearing, Harrington filed a motion requesting the court appoint an examiner to investigate what’s really going on inside Celsius and present their findings to the court. [motion, PDF] 

As grounds for hiring an examiner, the Trustee lists allegations of incompetence or gross mismanagement — including the offering of unregistered securities — significant transparency issues, and widespread mistrust in the debtors. 

Under US bankruptcy laws, an examiner can be appointed in any bankruptcy case if someone requests it and the court finds the company’s debts exceed $5 million. We have no doubt Judge Glenn will approve the request.

The language in the motion suggests that Mashinsky can’t be trusted. (We concur.) Among other things, it points out that Celsius owes $20 million in back taxes. Unpaid taxes are senior debt. The IRS gets first dibs on the remaining assets before the unsecured creditors.

The Celsius UCC is “concerned” about the Trustee hiring an examiner because “It will run up millions in costs.” [Twitter] 

We know for sure that it’ll be costly — the examiner in Lehman Brothers’ 2008 bankruptcy cost $100 million, up from a projected cost of only $23 million. The examiner for Enron was $90 million. So our guess is the examiner will probably cost creditors $25 million, if not more. 

The seven-member UCC feels it can conduct its own investigation and doesn’t need an examiner. The problem there is that the UCC is selected from a list of the largest Celsius creditors. These people represent companies that have a vested interest in the crypto space succeeding. They are not in any way neutral.

The P-word

A “341 meeting” was held on August 19 — a creditors’ meeting, named after section 341 of the Bankruptcy Code, where the debtor answers questions about their financial status under oath.[LII]

At the 341 meeting, Celsius CFO Chris Ferraro admitted that Celsius was paying old investors rather more money in rewards than they were actually getting in yield.

“In hindsight, we did not generate enough yield to support the return,” says Ferraro. He confirms Celsius was paying “over 100%” at times — 120% to 130% of the actual yield. There’s no transcript, but Kadhim Shubber from the Financial Times and Thomas Braziel from 507 Capital live-tweeted the call. [Twitter; Twitter]

If Celsius was paying this excess yield from incoming investor money … then that’s literally a Ponzi scheme. (A lawsuit filed against Celsius on July 7, also claimed Celsius was operated as a Ponzi.)

Ferraro said, “I don’t think it was that connected” — but he didn’t answer where else the money could have been coming from. It was just “hyper-growth mode,” see. [Twitter; Twitter]

A question of competence

Mashinsky is a good salesman — but he’s not so great at any other part of the job. In January, Mashinsky ordered Celsius’ in-house investment team to sell bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A day later, Celsius had to repurchase it all at a loss. “He was ordering the traders to massively trade the book off of bad information,” said one of the traders. “He was slugging around huge chunks of bitcoin.” [FT, archive] 

Mashinsky is selling his $2.5 million home in Austin, Texas. He bought it only a year ago. [Twitter]

Canadian pension fund CDPQ has written off its CA $200 million investment in Celsius. “We arrived too soon in a sector which was in transition.” Whoever authorized the investment definitely wasn’t a foolish and greedy investor in a bubble, who didn’t look into the already-insolvent company at all. [La Presse, in French]

Elsewhere amongst the wreckage 

Last week, we talked about Coinbase’s horrific $1.2 billion Q2 loss. Frances Coppola took a deeper dive into the company’s 10-Q. She explains why Coinbase’s balance sheet has massively inflated. [Coppola Comment]

Genesis Trading CEO Michael Moro has quit, effective immediately — definitely a thing that happens all the time in healthy companies where things are going well. Moro “will continue to advise the company through the transition.” Genesis is also laying off 20% of its staff. The company had lent $2.36 billion to 3AC, and Genesis’ parent company DCG has made a claim against 3AC for $1.2 billion. [press release; The Block]

BlueBenx, a Brazilian crypto lending platform, has bitten the dust following a $32 million hack — or, its users think, a “hack.” Withdrawals have been halted, and employees have been laid off. [CoinTelegraph]

Hodlnaut has applied for creditor protection in Singapore. This is the equivalent of Chapter 11 in the US. They’re insolvent. [Hodlnaut announcement, archive; CoinDesk] 

In court filings, Hodlnaut formally admitted that they had lost money in the Terra-Luna crash via their Hong Kong entity. Hodlnaut had previously told customers they had no Anchor exposure. We knew they had, and wrote about it in our previous update. [Twitter; CryptoBriefing]

All deposits are part of the bankruptcy estate. If Hodlnaut is liquidated, even stablecoin depositors will only get a fraction of what they had on account at the company.

Hodlnaut is now facing a probe from the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Singapore Police Force — “pending proceedings,” though they didn’t give any other details. About 40 out of the 50 employees the company had have been laid off. [Straits Times] 

Posted on by Amy Castor 2

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

Crypto contagion

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

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

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

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

The liquidation of Three Arrows Capital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big plans for Voyager Digital (in bankruptcy)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celsius: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead!

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

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

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

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

Celsius has laid off 150 employees. [Ctech]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jason Stone and KeyFi quit in March 2021. 

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

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

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

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

CoinFLEX

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

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

How Lamb’s business really works: [Twitter]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other legitimate trading firms that are definitely stable going concerns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by Amy Castor 2