Tether has released a brand new attestation (archive) (my copy) showing that they are fully backed! Well, it shows that for at least one entire minute Tether was fully backed.
Continue reading “Tether’s New Attestation: Thanks For Nothing”Category: Fraud
My Second Conversation with Cas Piancey on ‘Tether: A Stable Discussion’: Solvency and Backing
PART ONE CAN BE FOUND HERE
PART THREE CAN BE FOUND HERE
Cas Piancey, my writing partner and friend, and I are doing several episodes on the history and controversy surrounding Bitfinex and Tether.
This episode is mostly focused on the post hack history. We discuss banking, insolvency, and unbacked Tethers.
You can find the episode here: https://anchor.fm/cas-piancey/episodes/Tether-A-Stable-Discussion-Part-II-es1dgc/a-a4sa0qn
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My Conversation with Cas Piancey on ‘Tether: A Stable Discussion’
PART TWO CAN BE FOUND HERE
PART THREE CAN BE FOUND HERE
Cas Piancey, my writing partner and friend, and I are doing several episodes on the history and controversy surrounding Bitfinex and Tether.
This episode is mostly focused on the early history of Bitfinex and Tether, leading up to the second Bitfinex hack. Next episode we should hopefully get into some of the backing issues that the New York Attorney General helped expose.
You can find the episode here: https://anchor.fm/cas-piancey/episodes/Tether-A-Stable-Discussion-erhp88/a-a4qn2vm
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The Emotional Experience of Pursuing Frauds
I have been pursuing frauds for the last several years. I love it. However, it can be emotionally taxing to work on this kind of project.
Continue reading “The Emotional Experience of Pursuing Frauds”Sockpuppets, Bots, and Crypto: Oh My!
If you spend any significant amount of time on crypto twitter, especially as a contrarian or a skeptic, you will inevitably come across accounts that seem less than genuine. These bots, sock puppets, or intelligence deficient accounts are a nuisance, but their role in crypto is more complex than their limited speech will convey.
Continue reading “Sockpuppets, Bots, and Crypto: Oh My!”Guest Lecture at WHU – An Introduction to Bitfinex and Tether
UPDATE: I MAKE THE CLAIM THAT BITFINEX LIED ABOUT OWNING TETHER, THIS IS TRUE BUT I WANTED TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL CONTEXT HERE
Recently I was asked to do a guest lecture on Bitfinex and Tether. You can find it here: https://whu.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?tid=f0fca2e9-f79e-4f81-b659-acd30078104e
YouTube version:
My uploaded version:
You can find the slides here.
You can find the references here.
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A Timeline of Deeply Conflicted Tether Transactions
On November 1st 2018 Tether proudly proclaimed that they were once again banked, this time with Deltec Bank in the Bahamas (archive). This announcement included a letter (my copy) (archive) signed by someone associated with Deltec that stated that Tether had a ‘portfolio cash value’ of $1,831,322,828 on October 31st. This suggested to all that Tether had the value to back their tethers.
Continue reading “A Timeline of Deeply Conflicted Tether Transactions”Raphael Nicolle and the Founding of Bitfinex
Raphael Nicolle is the founder of Bitfinex. Before that he had an interesting path.
By day a helpdesk technician, during his free time Raphael became active under the account ‘unclescrooge‘ on BitcoinTalk. From this account he makes some interesting posts, including occasional climate change denialism, saying he would invest in illegal businesses, and at least one joke about underage prostitution to make bitcoin. First he got into pyramid schemes, schemes that were not legally registered, and then he got really into pyramid schemes, and then he started defending a pyramid scheme scammer (repeatedly), and then he lost all the bitcoins he gave that scammer.
Shortly after this, Raphael decides he will start his own OTC desk and his own lending program. People will lend him Bitcoin and he will guarantee them a 2% return per week. To make this money he said he would be performing arbitrage, which he described as ‘buy low and sell high’. (Astute readers will note that this at best an extraordinarily simplified definition of what arbitrage is.) This program appears to not have taken off, perhaps due to questions from other forum members about his advocacy for pyramid schemes in the past. The text of the post was later deleted.
After this Bitfinex launched! (Though Raphy could be found still trying to do what look like OTC trades.) Bitfinex was a brand new ‘Meta-Exchange’ that would allow people to trade at either Mt. Gox or at Bitstamp through the BitFinex interface. They also had their own exchange that was based on stolen Bitcoinica code. Bitcoinica was an exchange that was rife with security issues that had recently shut down. The unique feature for Bitfinex that made it attractive (besides the ability to aggregate liquidity across multiple exchanges) was the fact that they had margin and lending integrated into the platform. However, the fact that it was built on stolen code with a multitude of issues in the early months. However, eventually they started to even out. However, there were still some interesting posts including at one point Raphael even made sure to point out that his exchange was a bucket shop. (This was a fact that Vitalik Buterin had warned about in Bitcoin Magazine.)
Raphael gradually took a less and less public role in Bitfinex until (according to his LinkedIn) left his role as CTO the same month that the Bitfinex hot wallet was hacked. He is now interested in anti-aging and looking for an executive producer (he should get in touch with the chairman of Deltec).
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My Appearance on The Blockchain Debate podcast with Larry Cermak and Patrick McKenzie
You can find it here.
I had a ton of fun recording this podcast, however, due to time constraints I was not able to get to all my notes on whether or not Tether acts in good faith. I would like to summarize a few of the things I was not able to get to here:
- Bitfinex has used the bank accounts of friends and family of Bitfinex in order to service withdrawals.
- The firm who provided Tether’s last attestation is no longer operational, and Freeh, one of the lawyer behind it UPDATE:
is no longer a lawyeris no longer practicing law, but may still be licensed. - Tether advertised no KYC swaps between Bitcoin and Tether.
- Tether held tens of millions of dollars in the bank account of their General Counsel.
- The founder of Bitfinex was promoting ponzis right up until he announced Bitfinex.
- The founder of Bitfinex once described his own exchange as a bucket shop.
There are many more, but I just wanted to give you a taste of some of the stuff we ran out of time to get to.
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A List of Funds/Companies who Fundraised Through Havelock Investments
NOTE: THIS MAY BE UPDATED OR CHANGED AS I DEVELOP A BETTER PICTURE OF OWNERSHIP OF THESE COMPANIES, UPDATES WILL BE LABELED AS SUCH.
Havelock Investments was an early platform in the cryptocurrency space that allowed for a variety of companies to fundraise.
Havelock Investments was purchased by the Panama Fund, S.A. in 2013. The CEO was Daniel Tsai. (archive)
ASICMINER – Asicminer was described as a leader in the bitcoin mining space. Creating mining equipment and running their own mining farm. You can find details about it here. (Archive)
HAVELOCK INVESTMENTS MINING FUND – Havelock Investments Mining Fund was Havelock’s fund investing in Bitcoin mining.
KORB AND CO. INVESTMENTS MINING FUND – This is another fund that was meant for purchasing Bitcoin mining rigs. You can find the most recent copy of their website here.
SATOSHI DICE – Satoshi Dice was a game started by Eric Voorhees (archive). Satoshi Dice was a gambling service where you could send a Bitcoin transaction to a specified address and could potentially receive significantly more in response. Eric Voorhees was charged with offering unregistered securities for these sales of ownership in SatoshiDICE and FeedZeBirds. (archive)
VIRTEX – CAVirtEx was an early Canadian Bitcoin Exchange. Stuart Hoegner (archive), the General Counsel for Bitfinex and Tether, was the lead attorney when Coinsetter acquired CAVirtEx.
CRYPTO CAPITAL CORP – Crypto Capital Corp is a payment processor, infamously used by Bitfinex, and with the principals under US indictment. Crypto Capital claimed that a significant portion of their assets are being held in Poland, Bitfinex’s lawyers claim to not believe this.
LABCOIN – Labcoin was a company that claimed to be working on Bitcoin ASIC mining technology.
SANDSTORM – Sandstorm was an ‘investment fund’ which claimed to use the Bitcoins invested in it to make more money. It appears to have likely been an unsustainable high yield investment. You can find public copies of their ‘financials’ here. (archive)
THE MINISTRY OF GAMES – This was a company that ostensibly was focused on game development and publishing.
XBOND – XBond was issued by ThickAsThieves and was intended to be a perpetual fixed yield bond paid by the Bitcoin holdings of ThickAsThieves. (archive)
CASINOBITCO.IN – CasinoBitco.in [public files can be found here (
1. Prospectus (archive)
2. PR Release (archive)
3. Bitcoin Gaming Market Analysis (archive)
4. 2nd Press Release (archive))] was a Bitcoin casino that later rebranded to Monster Byte.
[1. Q3 2017 Financials (archive)
2. Q4 2017 Financials (archive)
3. Q1 2018 Financials (archive)
4. Q2 2018 Financials (archive)
5. Q3 2018 Financials (archive)] They now do white label cryptocurrency casinos. They are linked to Nessie (formerly at nessie.io (archive), now redirecting to crypto.eu) and MoneyPot (archive from when MonsterByte owned it) (domain now sold). I think it is valuable to remember that Stuart Hoegner (archive), the General Counsel for Bitfinex and Tether, is a “lead attorney to major bitcoin and altcoin poker brands”. It is unknown whether or not BitcoinRush/CasinoBitco.in/Monster Byte is among them.
COGNITIVE MINING – The listing on Havelock is not available. It appears to have been a way to invest in Bitcoin mining based on their archived site.
DEALCO.IN – The listing on Havelock is not available. The page (archive) currently directs to what seems to be LocalBitcoins but includes a feature where you talk to the person first.
NEO & BEE – The listing on Havelock is not available. You can see it on the right panel on various archives of Havelock. It appears to have ended due to misappropriation of funds. (archive)
MINTSPARE – The listing on Havelock is not available. Mintspare (archive) seems to be a way for people to trade in electronics for Bitcoin.
PetaMine CryptX – The listing on Havelock is not available. This appears to be another mining fund. They eventually shut down. (archive)
RENTAL STARTER – This was an investment into a real estate fund that was investing in Ohio but was operated by Full Power Asia Investment LTD.
SEEDCOIN FUND – This listing on Havelock is not available. Seedcoin (archive) was a crypto incubator out of Hong Kong. GoCoin the Brock Pierce cofounded company was incubated here.
BIG TREND CAPITAL INVESTMENT – The listing on Havelock is not available. It is unclear what they did.
ALCHEMINER – Alcheminer was a company that created ASIC mining hardware.
SEVENTH CONTINENT – Seventh Continent was trying to create a bitcoin denominated marketplace. Their website is still live here. (archive) They were in part funded by the Lifeboat Foundation’s Bitcoin Endowment. Stuart Hoegner (archive), the General Counsel for Tether and Bitfinex was a member of the Lifeboat Foundation. (Archive of a cache of his bio on the page)
A-ADS.COM – This company was a bitcoin online advertising network that claimed to not gather private information. They seem to still be open. (archive)
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