Hacker News Reader

Comment by apo | Hacker News Reader

Here's the filing:

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet...

Skimming through this I've come to some conclusions:-

A reliable banking partner is prerequisite to run a fiat-crypto exchange. Loss of banking partner is fatal to an exchange, and should immediately trigger a wind-down. On the flip-side, the banking partner should in good faith, continue to process withdrawals until the wind-down is complete. Bitfinex's refusal to wind-down after the Wells Fargo decision is irresponsible. Wells Fargo's decision to immediately stop processing withdrawals without a grace period is bad faith.

Reliable banking relationships are difficult to maintain if you are not in the same jurisdiction with said bank. If you want to process USD, you have to be in the US. Multiple fiat-currency crypto exchanges are not sustainable due to this dynamic.

I see a sustainable status-quo as fiat-exchanges becoming single-jurisdiction, single fiat-base. Ironically, just like most banks.

> Multiple fiat-currency crypto exchanges are not sustainable due to this dynamic.

And yet, multiple-fiat-currency exchanges are, for some reason, sustainable.

Very few examples... Coinbase / Bitstamp / Kraken?

People don't realize just how much of a tightrope they are walking on [1]. Serving crypto requires a deliberate business pivot [2], and not many are keen. This IMO is the largest hurdle crypto is facing for adoption.

[1] https://diar.co/volume-2-issue-23/#2 [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312109/000119312518...

I'm talking about fiat exchanges that convert one fiat currency into another, and never touch crypto. They seem to figure out how to operate in multiple jurisdictions... But that's possibly due to the part where they comply with KYC and AML.

Bitfinex has been playing cat and mouse with banking for years. Even before Wells Fargo blocked their wires, they were in a nefarious banking situation. Bitfinex never wanted to take it slow and get themselves legal in the eyes of the US.

This approach would work if they were much smaller. If they just had $100M under management or something, they'd probably be able to operate in their sketchy way. They'd need somewhere safe to keep $50-60M, then they could take a diversified risk with third party processors to move money to clients.

But Bitfinex is just massive. They have billions under management. It's just not possible to hide these amounts of money when you are banned from the banking system. So yes, they should have shut down when Wells Fargo put the nail in the coffin. But like I said, by this point Bitfinex was already accustomed to opening new companies, new banks, hiding money and obfuscating its nature.

For them it probably wasn't even considered. They just kept trying to move huge amounts of money around, but from what I understand, there have been multiple instances where their money has been frozen, seized, or outright stolen by third parties.

This is riveting. I find myself wanting to give you pull quotes but honestly just scroll down, especially to the points where they quote chats that Bitfinex showed them under subpoena.

The only way it could get even more interesting (though probably unlikely) is if the same people behind Bitfinex and Tether (who are indeed the same people - Tether offered a Line of Credit to Tether, and the same two people signed the documents for both sides - wasn't that another of their lies, that they had no relation to each other??), are also behind Crypto Capital?

Wouldn't it be surprising if the same people weren't behind Crypto Capital? Like, if you were going to embezzle your own exchange with vaguely plausible deniability, how would you do it differently from exactly as done here?

I'm curious who these Merlin and Oz fellows are, does anyone know more about them?

That whole exchange is beyond belief.

> Please, pretty please, can I have my $800 million dollars?

> I haven’t heard back from u in so much weeks.

> U there?

(3 weeks later)

< Sorry, was afk... we are working on this hard. Will let u know soon.

It’s like an Upworker chat log, asking when the bug fix will be done. But for Eight Hundred Million Dollars.

This may be 100% unrelated/wrong:

Check out "OZ49 Corporation". It has some shared directors with some other Panama crypto companies, and a director name Oz:

https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/155664811

Here's a video that seems to be the same guy mentioned in the link you shared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXBwQMls0o

If this is the guy, there's quite a goddamn rabbit hole. He owns some companies registered in Panama with MEYR ABIZIZ (Authorized Movers https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/571706). A quick search turned up these reports of Authorized Movers being a scam: https://www.movingscam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21169

I'm no expert, and it's not clear if this is the right Oz Yosef, but it would be amazing if someone who knew what they were doing could untangle all of this.

I think there's 2+ Oz Yosefs. The one you linked to doesn't seem to have overlap with crypto/finance, just basic IT stuff.

Under the OZ49 Corporation's directors (as linked above), you see one of them, and IVAN MANUEL MOLINA LEE, a director of Crypto Capital Corp.

no its not. It is Ozzie Joseph

https://graphcommons.com/graphs/cf637f7f-8eef-43fa-94a3-f861...

Oz yosef

https://i.imgur.com/mSw7kNK.png

This graphcommons link is down (error 404). I had a peek at it yesterday when it was up and it seemed to contain interesting information I haven't seen elsewhere. Can you provide a reference for this data?

It's back up.

If you want to read more like this, here are some internal chats from a recently defunct Canadian exchange between the CEO and an employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/QuadrigaCX2/comments/b13t6l/gerrys_...

There are also references to Crypto Capital. QuadrigaCX is on their homepage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com