Synapse still can't find its money | Hacker News Reader

Synapse still can't find its money

bloomberg.com

35 pointsekpyrotic66 comments

"We don't know exactly which customer's money went into which bank(s)" gets a bit more spicy when you add the fact all the customers put in $265m and the real-banks only seem to have $180m of it, and AFAIK nobody has a clear explanation for the missing $85m. (~32%)

P.S.: I also find it amusing that they stored+hosted their financial ledger using MongoDB. Not that you can't commit massive financial mismanagement with any tool, but I was not a fan of the "NoSQL" evangelism of the 2010s.

> P.S.: I also find it amusing that they stored+hosted their financial ledger using MongoDB. Not that you can't commit massive financial mismanagement with any tool, but I was not a fan of the "NoSQL" evangelism of the 2010s.

Embezzlement is finally web scale! [1]

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

Oh, embezzlement was always web-scale: No constraints, no redundancy, no logging, preferably no transactions...

I wonder if use of MongoDB creates a legal liability. I’m not up to date on the architecture of MongoDB but I am under the impression that it couldn’t be reliably used for this kind of thing?

(The problem here is not nosql, I believe you can do reliable accounting with ScyllaDB and Cassandra as long as you design things correctly. Basically only ever allow append/add but never allow update/delete. I’m not sure if this is true of MongoDB.)

Where did you get the idea that “append only” needs to necessarily be implemented at the database layer?

No one said that.

The point is it’d be hard to loose data with Scylla as long as your only ever appending to the physical tables. I don’t know if MongoDB has this same attribute.

No idea, but why would that be necessary or sufficient to make it very unlikely to lose data?

Things can go wrong on many layers above and below the database, so the property you describe seems like an implementation detail of one particular approach, not something fundamentally necessary for sound bookkeeping.

I am not sure where the disconnect is. Having a database that can provide a permanent unalterable record of all transactions, even when running over a distributed network, seems reasonably important to me.

Are you saying it’s just as good to do this in the application layer? I respect that’s a possible option. Not sure I agree it’s a good option.

That's exactly what I'm getting at. You'll want one layer in charge of ensuring consistency and authentication of incoming write requests.

This can be, but definitely doesn't have to be, a typical relational database in conjunction with a core banking system.

Not necessary or sufficient, but with append only model you can at least trace back what has happened if/when something goes wrong

Sure, but you can have your append only layer be provided by a core banking system, and have your applications communicate with that using a higher-level protocol.

I don't see what would inherently disqualify Mongo from being the backing layer for that core banking system then.

If they were recording all the necessary information there in the first place, anyway. The level of detail to replay or audit is usually higher than whats needed for direct operation, especially if some things go out through remote systems/accounts and back.

and this is why I insist on still having paper bank statements

when the k8s+mongodb "non-legacy" tech stack implodes at least I have a physical document the bank produced that the court can understand

Or at the least, download PDF statements every month. I fear that if too many people don’t do that, eventually they’ll remove that feature due to low demand.

I would be ecstatic if my bank allowed me to generate (and revoke) a set of API credentials that were narrowly permitted to download transaction/statement data."

Alas, for many people the "workaround" is to put their credentials into a third-party service, and the fact that such things exist make me think I'm taking crazy-pills. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRL80YB0x3s

Ah time to repost the classic:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16833100/why-does-the-mo...

I followed the "Launch HN" of Yotta 4 years ago and deposited some money.

Evolve Bank says "we have determined that we are not holding your funds and you will not be receiving a payment from Evolve" (reconciliationbyevolve.com)

Yotta customer support says "According to the Synapse Trial Balance Report, your funds are with Evolve Bank & Trust".

It doesn't appear I'll ever be getting that money back. It's not enough that I'll hurt, but it'll make me think twice about trusting a non-bank fintech startup and their "FDIC insured" claims.

This is what Yotta's website looked like in 2020, where "FDIC insured" is the most prominent part of their pitch, and one of the homepage blocks is titled "You can’t lose": https://web.archive.org/web/20200630201639/https://www.withy...

Turns out, we could lose.

Probably not worth it but if it's less than about $5k you may be able to sue in small claims court. It's unlikely the bank will even show up and in that case you would win by default. Collection might be a challenge though.

IANAL.

Who are they going to sue? Yotta? Synapse? Evolve?

Typically you just sue all three, which is called joinder. However this may be out of scope for small claims. Practically, banks and insurance companies seem to be immune to lawsuits, so I would put the odds of this working at very, very low, whereas if a ycombinator meal prep startup intentionally poisoned you I would expect a lawsuit to get through much more often: somewhere on the order of magnitude of half the time.

If it were me I would pick the one that I had the direct business relationship, or failing that the one that is solvent. But the strategy is specifically banking on the fact that small claims court is more favorable to individuals without legal training than other courts are, and the dollar amount isn't worth the company sending someone to fight over it.

All of them, and the founders, officers, and investors, personally?

I know it wasn't a traditional bank, but when they start talking about "winning" $10 million and "picking your numbers", it sounds sooo sketchy... I can't imagine putting money into something like that. (excuse me while I go buy more DOGE coin...)

About the Synapse situation

>As a result, the partner banks and fintechs were all reliant on Synapse to determine how much each customer was owed at all times.

I don’t understand how a partner bank would… want to do this?

As a bank knowing your numbers and who you owe seems like a fundamental function, why would you leave that to some middle man and some strange portal?

How do you know they don’t just suddenly say you owe more than you expect?

It sounds like a big risk for a bank….

IANABanker but I suspect it was appealing for the 4 "real" banks because they barely had any work to do. From their perspective they had one single corporate customer called "Synapse" with an account that had a nice huge balance, and life was easy.

Contrast that to if the same sum was divided across thousands of individual accounts. Each would involve a certain amount of regulatory reporting, identity proof, pestering people to pick a beneficiary, monthly statements, etc. In addition there would need to be some way for Synapse to do deposits/withdrawals on the owner's behalf, and more of the sum would be FDIC insured meaning more money would be going out to the FDIC in insurance premiums.

If I understand it correctly, the bank had an account in which Synapse put money. The bank knows how much money Synapse had in its account. This is all that the bank was responsible for. The people who were customers of Synapse's customers, were three levels removed from the bank.

I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant, this is just my understanding of the article.

I found an interview with the founder of Synapse and the setup was more complicated than that. It seems that client transactions were happening directly on the bank and the bank was notifying Synapse who were then updating their client balances.

If the bank screwed up this notification process then Synapse didn't necessarily know about it until the customers started complaining.

The notification process was some janky thing involving text files, cron and sftp and frequently failed. Sometimes it didn't work at all (which Synapse would spot) but sometimes it just omitted loads of transaction records.

And it gets worse from there with the bank allegedly pulling various shenanigans and Synapse being blissfully unaware.

I don't see how you can run a finance business when you have no oversight or control over what's happening.

https://lex.substack.com/p/podcast-what-really-happened-at-s...

> The notification process was some janky thing involving text files, cron and sftp and frequently failed. Sometimes it didn't work at all (which Synapse would spot) but sometimes it just omitted loads of transaction records.

What the hell…

I’d seriously question the bank that thought that was ok.

When I worked with big banks long ago that kind of thing would be shocking.

Really?

Definitely heard people in the banking area talk about how you just take money from other peoples accounts and if that person disputes it their bank then uploads a file over FTP and if a file never shows up then your bank should assume (but not know) the transfer is valid.

Too bad the link rotted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7636066

Doesn't ACH still use FTP?

Yes, and a lot of banks still use mainframes.

> It sounds like a big risk for a bank….

On the contrary, the banks aren't on the hook here! If they have a clear answer for "Yes, this customer's money is with you", then they pay. If not, they sit on the funds until some court orders them to do something with them.

The banks are winning big time here. It's their customers who eat the risk.

Ultimately the source of the loss is going to turn out to be some fraud at Synapse that caused their bankruptcy, but it seems like no one has details on that yet. But until then, the banks are sitting on unowned/untraceable free cash. They're loving this deal.

It’s not clear to me if the banks are in the clear yet.

The feds need to come crashing down on operations like this. Perhaps you should need to be an accredited investor before you can put your $280K nest egg into a poorly regulated not-bank offering 'prize linked savings' accounts.

The accounts were genuinely FDIC insured. Evolve is a real bank.

But a few months before the bankruptcy, Evolve pushed Synapse to move the money into non-FDIC insured brokerage accounts. As far as I can tell, this was:

- a way to move a hole in the balance sheet from an FDIC insured to an uninsured place

- completely illegal, insofar as the only user consent was a manual opt-out, and some users weren't even sent emails about the change.

Why would they do that? Are you implying that Evolve (and not Synapse) had a hole in their balance sheet? Is there any evidence of that?

Otherwise, FDIC insurance wouldn’t matter here, no?

> Evolve pushed Synapse to move the money into non-FDIC insured brokerage accounts

Where can I read more?

The “accredited investor” thing always seemed like a scam to me. Like if you have a lot of money we will trust that you know how to invest, otherwise we won’t let you.

If you have a million dollars and accrue a debt of $500,000 you are solvent. If you have $20,000 and accrue a debt of $500,000, you are bankrupt and your debtors take a big loss and everyone is sad.

(Also presumably if you have a bunch of money you did get it somehow…)

$20k with $500k debt is a whole lot of airbnb enterprenuers racking in serious dough.

debt is a great thing as long as you make money from that debt (you don’t pay taxes on the debt either) :)

I'm sure FDIC will come around at some point and bail out the average folks who got wiped here.

Just like they bailed out the totally average definitely not rich people/corporations who got wiped by SVB collapsing.

Right guys? Right?

The problem here is knowing customer balances. A lot of the money is still out there, but it is not properly associated with any individuals so it's infeasible (at present) to get them back their money. Which is different than what FDIC is there for, which is to insure against a bank being unable to cover deposits, but balances have been properly tracked.

If Synapse (and apparently their partner Evolve) had been moderately competent at the job they set out to do, this could have been resolved a while ago. Instead the founder of Synapse is already off to a new venture and doesn't care about the people he screwed over, though I'm sure he feels bad when asked about it. Keep failing up.

He openly laughs. Scumbag.

The other banks involved all agree that the remaining balances are with Evolve, and that there isn't money that's been moved somewhere else. If there was, Evolve might be willing to say where, which they've been unwilling to do so far–it's very "dog ate my homework."

Given that the depositors still have active DDA agreements with Evolve, even if they sent the money elsewhere, they still have a responsibility to provide it.

> Given that the depositors still have active DDA agreements with Evolve, even if they sent the money elsewhere, they still have a responsibility to provide it.

I didn't say otherwise. But Evolve doesn't know what money belongs to what individual customer, Synapse maintained that part of the ledger (poorly). So even though Evolve has the cash (it appears), they can't distribute it to you because they don't know how much is yours, and Synapse was such a cluster that they failed at their primary job.

Another reason why this probably wont happen is that the government bails out banks beyond the FDIC insurance when people lose faith in the ponzi scheme that is the us banking system.

Since the government can clearly point out that these companies were not banks they can just say, "look at these idiots who didn't put their money in a bank" and they have solidified confidence in the banking system EVEN MORE

I briefly saw this HN post on the front page, but when I came back to look for it, shortly after, couldn't find it in the first 25 pages of HN.

I did find two other stories:

> 154. Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis (cnbc.com) 246 points by hunter2_ 2 days ago | flag | hide | 237 comments

> 163. Synapse debacle cost some users their life savings (axios.com) 18 points by toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | flag | hide | 10 comments

I was likewise looking for it again to no avail. It showed up in search.

https://archive.today/VeE15

sufficiently profitable incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

Yeah, no way this wasn't just fraud.

> In June, the FDIC made it clear that its insurance fund doesn’t cover the failure of nonbanks like Synapse, and that in the event of such a firm’s failure, recovering funds through the courts wasn’t guaranteed.

It seems they should be able to sue Evolve (the bank), given that they money is there, and there's proof that the money's there.

IE, the risk of 3x damages should be enough to scare the bank into paying out.

Paying _who_ out?

Yotta is who the people gave their money to. Yotta then used Synapse (which went bankrupt) to actually deposit the money into not-per-user accounts at 4 different banks. As-in, if you had an account with Yotta your money would be co-mingled with thousands+ other individuals into a singular Evolve account.

Evolve has no proof that your money is within the account Synapse held with them. As-in your money could be at one of the 3 other banks.

Yotta is the one being irresponsible for not keeping track of how Synapse split the funds. (Although arguable Evolve shouldn't keep co-mingled funds since that sounds like a KYC violation).

This is why not only does your broker not hold your stocks for you, they also tell the holding company who owns them.

Yotta is speed running the financial system's previous failures.

> Yotta is speed running the financial system's previous failures.

The theme of the 21st century so far seems to have been “speed running the 20th.”

> This is why not only does your broker not hold your stocks for you, they also tell the holding company who owns them.

Are you sure about that?

I believe modern common practice in the US and many other countries is for the stock to be held by the depository in the brokerage name (which is referred to as "street name" ownership), and only the brokerage to have customer-level records.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/185.asp

> That doesn't mean the investor doesn't own the securities it bought. It's just a formality. As part of the process, the broker will assign all ownership rights to the investor by registering the client as the beneficial owner.

There was a quip about this in one of the moneystuff or bitsaboutmoney but not too sure which one.

You definitely do own them in a legal sense, but in a bookkeeping sense, there is a very real difference between the depository and your broker maintaining ownership records.

Legal ownership is what makes your claims worth anything in a court of law, and protects them against those of other creditors, but without proper bookkeeping, you have no evidence a court could even consider.

>> In June, the FDIC made it clear that its insurance fund doesn’t cover the failure of nonbanks like Synapse, and that in the event of such a firm’s failure, recovering funds through the courts wasn’t guaranteed.

Sounds like this would apply to other non-banks like Mercury.

Yes. Mercury, which is not a bank and has never publicly claimed that it plans to become a bank, is reportedly trying to recover $30 million in missing customer funds from Synapse: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2023/12/20/with-syna...

I've held a (trivial) business account at Mercury since before Synapse collapsed. Mercury has never attempted to notify me about missing customer funds, potential customer losses, or the lawsuit stemming from the collapse of their banking partner.

> still can't find

For those who missed the previous story and discussion 3 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42219407

I'm looking to immediately withdraw all of my funds from wealthfront and put them into fidelity.

fyi Fidelity is also not a bank. They might be older, but they're just as much not a bank as Betterment or Wealthfront. Wealthfront gives you a statement from Green Dot, which is actually a bank. Charles Schwab and Chase are actual banks as well. Robinhood should not be trusted with more than beer money.

All banks suck. But there's a lot to be said for longevity and experience. Also the number of program banks that actually work with Fidelity is pretty long: https://accountopening.fidelity.com/ftgw/aong/aongapp/fdicBa...

yeah, but structurally speaking, fidelity isn't a bank and so while they didn't use synapse, my money with them is subject to the same risks. If one of the banks in that list goes under, fdic kicks in, but if fidelity's computers gets Mr robot'd and they don't know how money i have where, I'm still in the lurch.

Sounds like Synapse was a great money laundering schemme.

My conclusion is that all aggregators are bad. Economies of scale are bad.AI is bad. Anything that devalues humans is bad.

Everything has just become bad.

Reminds me of our blooming awareness of environmental pollution in the 70s.

Except instead of it being obvious, this 'financial pollution' is insidious, invisible.

Until small pockets of people are crippled. And that is why it persists-because enough people are spared this time and the inertia of the majority prevents action. Next month it will be another corruption exposed. Silicon valley bank, enron, Lehman, Salomon ....It just keeps going.

"We closed our eyes while throwing money into a pit. Now we can't find it!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com