SEC sues Justin Sun, Coinbase, Celebrities; also Do Kwon arrested (recorded on March 23rd) – Crypto Critics' Corner

Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey discuss the lawsuit filed against Justin Sun alleging that Tron and BitTorrent token were illegal securities and that he engaged in market manipulation. We also discuss the celebrities implicated in the promotion of these tokens including: – Logan Paul – Lindsay Lohan – Lil Yachty – Ne-Yo – Akon – Soulja Boy – Austin Mahone – Kendra Lust This episode was recorded on March 23rd, 2023

Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss the lawsuit filed against Justin Sun alleging that tron and BitTorrent token were illegal securities and that he engaged in market manipulation.

We also discuss the celebrities implicated in the promotion of these tokens including:

• Logan Paul
• Lindsay Lohan
• Lil Yachty
• Ne-Yo
• Akon
• Soulja Boy
• Austin Mahone
• Kendra Lust

This episode was streamed live on March 23rd, 2023.

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Other episodes mentioned in this episode:

• Justin Sun related episodes:
  • Episode 109 – Satire in Cryptocurrency (feat. Laurence and Josh Cincinnati)
  • Episode 59 – The Many Faces and Citizenships of Justin Sun
  • Episode 34 – The Tether Papers (featuring David Canellis of Protos Media)
• Terra/Do Kwon related episodes:
  • Episode 71 – Terra, Luna, and Algorithmic Stablecoins
  • Episode 72 – We Never Want to Discuss Terra and Luna Again…and yet
  • Episode 94 – A Tale of Two Ponzis: Celsius and Luna, Alex Mashinsky and Do Kwon
• Coinbase related episode:
  • Episode 89 – Regulators Investigate Coinbase and Kraken
• Influencer shilling related episodes:
  • Episode 64 – Metaverse 2: Venture Capitalist Judgement (Feat. münecat)
  • Episode 9 – Shillfluencers (and the unspoken financial epidemic)

Other resources mentioned in this episode:

• Coverage of the SEC lawsuit against Justin Sun
• Coverage of Justin Sun possibly losing his diplomatic immunity
• Coverage of TrueUSD

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English Transcript:

foreign [Music]
welcome back everyone I am Cass pianci I'm joined as I'm a partner in crime Mr Bennett Tomlin how are you today I'm doing well there's a lot going on it's been a crazy few days it it really has um over here we had basically a hurricane level event in California so I missed a lot of this yesterday it's going to be fun to uh catch up with the rest of our audience um as we dive into this but uh yeah let's start out with my favorite uh Justin Sun we've talked about him so much on this podcast um big fan you know open invitation Justin please join us um he unfortunately was named along with a slew of other people who I'm going to let you get into but he was named along with the Tron Foundation BitTorrent foundation and rainberry Incorporated uh and a jury trial is demanded now they're going to be fighting the SEC uh and the suggestion is that there was Market manipulation and fraud so I I will I will read bits and pieces from it as we go along but I would love for you to just dive into the uh exact of this well as no one could have possibly foreseen the SEC thinks Tron in BitTorrent token might be unregistered Securities this was shocking news of course and like they laid out their case pretty convincingly for both of these tokens they pointed towards Communications from Justin in the respective foundations that talked about basically expectation of profit for the investors they showed Justin the BitTorrent foundation and the Tron Foundation investing all this effort into trying to get this token listed on other exchanges and talking about how the price would go up when this would happen they entered in a whole bunch of Justin's Tweets in the suit they had a whole bunch of Tron Foundation medium posts and they laid out that they think both of these things are unregistered securities now as you said that's not all there is to this case though because well there's a few interesting wrinkles to it there's the market manipulation you mentioned but there's also something that might affect a lot of other cryptocurrencies which is that in this case they make the claim that the airdrop of BitTorrent token to existing Tron token holders was an offer or sale of unregistered Securities even though these individuals weren't directly purchasing these tokens it was still an offer or sale and the other thing they called an offer sale which I thought might be even more interesting was both Tron and BitTorrent ran these different like social media contests and schemes where people would have this opportunity to effectively promote these tokens and get it entered into a chance to win some of them and that counted as an offer or sale of unregistered Securities as well and so just like based on the way they Define Security in this case and the things that counted as an offer or sale of unregistered Securities they are taking a very broad view of potential tokens that could end up being Securities at least that was my first takeaway before we get into the market manipulation and before we get into Jake Paul and the other celebrities just the like initial breath they were taking was quite interesting to me well I'm curious to hear your thoughts do you think they have uh an argument to be made that that these are indeed not Securities like I I'm I'm curious like if there is um a method to the madness here or if you think that Justin's son and and uh and soldier boy are you know being Justin's son and Soldier Boy we I think both you and I are probably on the record at this point suggesting that Tron was an unregistered security and that's not even mentioning any of like the exchange tokens or stuff that Justin is involved in now or the true stable coins he had or has some ambiguous relationship with not even talking about those we had for years suggested that Tron might be a security and so yeah no I'm not surprised it's coming and yeah they'll try to make the same argument they'll probably both try to argue it's not a security so it doesn't matter and even if it is a security we weren't really in the U.S so you don't have jurisdiction over us but like fundamentally the sale of the Tron token looked a lot like a security sale and even going back to like when we had Preston burn on here a long time ago we talked about how even the ethereum Ico looked a lot like a security sale and I think like after hinman's comments and stuff for the SEC it is unlikely that any of the people involved in the original ethereum sale get in trouble for it but like that model is not a safe model and the fact that it was replicated repeatedly does not make it safe yeah it's fascinating also like I don't know it's been so such a long time coming to see Soldier Boy and uh you know these other these other individuals who were tweeting and putting out videos and Shilling to their hearts content for years uh finally get a little bit of attention I don't think they I mean if we want to if we want to talk about big fish versus minnows like yeah I think that um Soulja Boy is a minnow Justin's son is a that's a pretty serious whale yeah that's a whale um but they're not gonna like even if they win this is a civil case I we need to reiterate that this is a civil case it's not a criminal case um we don't know if there's a criminal case against Justin sun right now it is crazy to reflect on him having lunch with Warren Buffett also I just reflected and realized he's supposed to go on Blue origin and be uh taking off and going to space I assume that that is not going to happen anymore that like a non-refundable ticket to space has been canceled because I don't think he can step foot in America anymore if I was his lawyer I would probably advise against it yeah um yeah and you mentioned the celebrities there so let's talk a little bit about those there were eight celebrities named in the SEC press release and in the orders in the complaint who were allegedly paid to no who were paid to promote Tron and BitTorrent token and they did it all over a couple of days those celebrities were Lindsay Lohan Jake Paul Kendra Lust an adult film star little yachty Neo acon Austin Mahone and soldier boy and they did all of their tweets just right in a couple day period which led to Justin's son tweeting Tron is the celebrity's crypto and then when a bunch of people responded to that tweet with at SCC enforcement Justin's son tweeted there have been rumors lately of third party celebrities being paid to promote Tron Tron Foundation is not involved in these activities nor is the foundation aware of the actors behind this which is wild because this SEC lawsuit says Justin's son was the one responsible for sending payments to to these celebrities the Tron Foundation picked the specific words they were supposed to tweet and they were told to make sure that these celebrities did not disclose they were being paid to do this yeah so Justin's son sure you had you had no idea that the Tron Foundation might be involved in paying celebrity sure sure let's believe that and like these and like yeah yeah so all these celebrities ended up getting paid to make these tweets six of the eight were smart enough to agree to an order with the SEC where they ended up paying collectively 400k to the SEC I think and agreed to stop promoting unregistered Securities we'll see if they follow through with that this is not Lindsay Lohan's first time and I'm kind of skeptical it'll be her last um but Austin Mahone and Soldier Boy decided apparently not to agree to that order and so they will also apparently be going to trial with the SEC to try to argue that their paid tweets promoting unregistered securities that didn't have the required FTC ad disclosure or the required SCC securities disclosure were actually okay we'll see how that goes I I want to mention that there's some interesting details in this um jury trial demand from the Securities Exchange Commission they say defendant Justin Sun age 32 is a Chinese National and crypto asset entrepreneur Sun attended College in China and received a postgraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania for what it's worth I've been trying to prove I I want proof of that and I have not been able to hear like see valid proof that he got a postgraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania it's very likely true but I'm just I'm curious to see it proven sun is currently the permanently the permanent resident of Granada to the World Trade Organization to be living in Singapore and or Hong Kong so do you want to talk about Granada first I do want to talk you want to talk about that do you want to talk about that I want to talk about that so for what it's worth uh there was a rumor online that Justin's son had lost his granadian citizenship and his ambassadorship or as they call it permanent representative to the World Trade Organization uh his title had been revoked this has not been proven yet but what I what I did was I called the Foreign Affairs office about five times I emailed them two or three times they have not responded uh I sent them the article that protos wrote uh about how it seems like he has lost that uh yeah lost that title they they have not responded to me so well but what they did say yes what they did say is that there has been a change in the change in the Diplomatic core of the Grenadian Foreign Affairs office so I don't know what that means but that's interesting and they also said they were going to issue a formal statement about their representation at the World Trade Organization which is not something you do I feel like if everything is going fine but maybe maybe they do I don't know who knows we continue to have Justin's son as our ambassador to the World Trade Organization as well well so I'm really tired of the fud coming from the SEC it's impacting his ability to Be an Effective Ambassador and we want them to stop that's what I expect the formal statement to be I don't know about you yeah well I want to talk about this because I think there's a couple levels here one I think they're the best time for them to have acknowledged if if indeed he is not that that represent representative anymore they should have acknowledged that probably before the SEC lawsuit came to light like it would have been better to to get a in front of that because now it would look like regardless if this was done a month ago this would look like this would look like oh uh so you guys are just gonna get get rid of him because of an SEC lawsuit uh so it'll look bad regardless right um there's a history here uh with the U.S bullying Granada in general bullying is like almost like we invaded the country so um America has invaded Granada before to to get them to do our bidding so the idea that we would suggest strongly that they stop allowing Justin's son to be their representative at the WTO makes sense to me but who knows um well yeah just the US in general in geopolitics is a bit of a bully that being one example but like our current standing position is that if the ICC ever tries to try an American we will invade Finland like that's literally our current stance as a nation is if you try to try any of us for war crimes we will invade you and commit more war crimes so like yeah it's very plausible that the United States government is like we expect there to be these new things coming towards Justin's son shortly we think you should make him no longer an ambassador otherwise random things might become far less convenient for you right exactly banking stuff might be significantly more difficult suddenly but okay so that's that's the first level of this that I want to discuss but the second part of the statement that they say is that he's believed to be living in Singapore in Singapore and or Hong Kong um so while this permanent representation to the World Trade Organization effectively allowed him to be to have diplomatic immunity Within Geneva when he was on a diplomatic Mission It generally doesn't provide him with much shielding from extradited to the United States Singapore makes a lot of sense for where he would be living to me um I wouldn't expect him to get extra extradited from Singapore the only criminal who I can think of who who wasn't extraded but handed himself in was Singapore was um Arthur Hayes of bitmex fame um so I generally think you're relatively safe there they basically I would assume they go hey you gotta go now if they have a problem with you so I I don't think they're gonna extradite him if he is in Singapore the Hong Kong part is a little bit I'm unsure of that like I don't think that Justin's son is welcome in Hong Kong I don't think he's welcome in China anymore I who knows we talked about this we talked about this way back in our episode just dedicated to Justin sent in the many faces and citizenships of Justin's son and it is like this particularly vexing question to figure out whether or not he's welcome at all in China right and like how like is we know he probably can't set foot in the United States or at least probably shouldn't that same thing may be true for China and so I would expect Singapore over Hong Kong as well for similar reasons anything is possible you know there's going to be people arguing that Hong Kong is not China which I mean like maybe he could step foot in Hong Kong and not get arrested versus Mainland it's I don't know I honestly don't know anything is again anything is possible but I have my doubts there's also like a pretty wild story I'm not going to vouch for this story but the story that's going around is the Justin sun was essentially smuggled out of mainland China and that his passport was never stamped to exit the country which is why he's not being allowed back in that that's again these are rumors these are absolutely rumors there's we do not know if any of this is true we've all we're only able to vouch for what we've heard and from what we'd like had people in Granada say to us Etc right like there's no we have no confirmation of any of this but it is very interesting to see this in a legal document I guess um and yeah a long time coming a long time absolutely um and before we move on from Justin's son one it feels great to see him get some amount of comeuppance after all these years like this is a guy who has repeatedly sold coins with plagiarized or [ __ ] blank white papers this has been one of the worst actors in crypto for years and so like something even just the acknowledgment that his tokens look like Securities feels like some kind of progress here but we should talk about the market manipulation because it's it's exactly what you would expect which is to say that Justin used the Tron Foundation the this is allegedly of course the Tron Foundation the BitTorrent foundation and rainberry Incorporated which was part of BitTorrent when he purchased it to wash trade Tron with the goal of creating the appearance of higher volume that actually existed to make it seem like more people were interested in it than they were and specifically to keep the price afloat is what the SEC alleges so it wasn't just volume manipulation they were trying to manipulate the price and there's even a few more interesting details about this in the lawsuit allegedly they stole one of the employees information to open up an account in their name and with their like identification and stuff without their knowledge in order to do this scheme and they even described one message that was given from one member of the Tron Foundation to the people actually participating in this wash treating scheme where they said Remember the boss reminded us of the need to increase trade volume oh oh and the kicker the Tron they were using for this trading for this wash trading was Justin's sons that he lent to them specifically for this purpose and that's really I think kind of the layer through all of these specific allegations is that Justin's son the SEC alleges was involved in directing every single step they're not just going after like the foundations themselves and like using Justin's unaffiliated they alleged like each step that Justin's son specifically directed these things Justin Sun specifically sent these wires Justin's son specifically lent these Tron he has implicated every single step of the way Tron uh up 11 on this news for what it's worth [ __ ] [ __ ] that [ __ ] that's like why the [ __ ] would do that why why would it be up [ __ ] me I love it I absolutely love it um actually let me give a quick check on um I'm gonna go ahead and check BTT as well let me go ahead and just check BTT token I forget weren't token exists for long periods of time and then it'll come back into my mind and I'm like holy [ __ ] another Justin Sun scheme where he made up a token that had no real purpose and it still exists it's like it's it's exhausting that Jordan is for what it's worth BitTorrent is down I think uh where is BitTorrent listed is it only just in Sun exchanges uh let's check markets uniswap of course um that makes sense number one Finance is oh binance wobby is the number one volume of course uh of course but then buying it still listen Finance solicit yeah um but that just means that Justin sun is trading it over on binance it doesn't it's not like CZ is even probably helping him anymore um okay well that was fun um so that's our Justin Sun update I think that pretty much covers it right yeah I mean we could get more into details on some of it but Justin's son manipulated markets paid celebrities told them not to disclose they were paid and created a bunch of unregistered Securities things we basically knew two days ago but it's good to have the SEC confirm them for us you know we knew like three years ago but yeah I hear I hear you um what I'm saying is like lawsuit didn't change our knowledge except on some of these details um okay so let's let's talk about uh the coinbase wells notice now let's move on to that um I tell me if I'm wrong wasn't there a rumor a while ago that coinbase had gotten a Wells notice and Paul Grewal their their general counsel replied that they had definitely not received a Wells notice yeah so let's just dive right into the thick of it then right after Kraken settled with the SEC there was a rumor going over all right pause pause uh what is a Wells notice can you can you define that Wells notice is the last thing the SCC sends you before they sue you it's like they're saying we are at this point intending to bring this lawsuit we are notifying of it you have it so you can begin your defense and if you have any last things you want to tell us now is your opportunity that's the wells notice and you're right after Kraken settled with the SEC over their staking product Bloomberg I think it was reported that coinbase had received a similar Wells notice related to their staking product you're right that I think Paul came out and denied that at the time but apparently they've found the wells notice in the interim um and yes so the coinbase apparently got a Wells notice from the SEC that they say told them that there were issues with their crime brokerage some of the tokens they were trading and one of their staking products and this is something I wanted to tease out a little bit because coinbase is being a little bit Coy with it one of the products named in this Wells notice is apparently their coinbase earn product which they're trying to say is just a staking product but it's not several of the coins in the coinbase earned product aren't staked but lent out on compound first of all and second of all coinbase has two staking products they have coinbase Cloud which offers a non-custodial staking product and coinbase earn which very similarly to Kraken Aggregates customer deposits and uses coinbase efforts to go and return the staking reward coinbase earn got named in the wells notice apparently coinbase is cloud non-custodial staking service did not so the coinbase is trying to claim that the SEC is out to get staking that's been their lead up over the last few weeks right but the SEC apparently isn't interested in at least one of coinbase's taking products they're only interested in the custodial one and even that custodial one that coinbase is trying to create this narrative is just about protocol staking isn't they're lending on compound

for what it for what it's worth I want to point this out coinbase down 15 14 15 today so um coinbase not a [ __ ] coin in the sense that it it isn't only traded by Justin's son with himself so you actually have a market reaction to bad news which is it goes down significantly um but yes okay so this is bad news it it sounds like Brian Armstrong and Paul Grewal and team are going to be fighting it is that am I getting that right that's what they said they were doing before they announced this Wells notice and so I have to figure that still the plan the plan couldn't have changed in seven days right I I yeah that's not a fair question to you you're not Paul agreeable um I'm just it's it is uh anything is possible now you know I I have no idea on what's Happening anymore um I feel like it's not about Market Free Fall anymore but since FTX since the collapse of FTX it's just been like watching to see where the dominoes fall next you know

probably what I think this all means let's let's put some things together let's connect some Dots here Justin Sun one Tron is a very large cryptocurrency like we got it kind of this tension a little bit like when we were talking with Lawrence and Josh and when we were talking um and in some of those conversations like that we got it there are people around the world who do use Tron for things they do exist right but like

I think the federal government no longer believes crypto deserves patience for a long time crypto was treated as kind of this experiment where its relative harms were moderate and so it was okay for it to be kind of this playground this sandbox where people had this opportunity to scam each other and do all this other BS because the federal government didn't want to come in and be the ones who destroyed Innovation who stopped something new from potentially developing that's changed I think if you look at the economic report to the president they really are anti-crypto in several parts of it laying out that it doesn't work as money it's a bad investment it does has all these harms to the environment yada yada yada and now we see the SEC going after Tron one of the largest coins was my point going after coinbase one of the largest exchanges and we saw this change in the demeanor towards the bank service in cryptocurrency whether you want to go with the choke point 2.0 narrative that's been going around or just look at it as a reassessment of the relative risk of cryptocurrency for criminality however you want to think about it it seems to have occurred and so across all these different things banking Securities Commodities and all these other areas the federal government no longer is waiting to see what happens with crypto they we seem to have reached the point where they have decided it is time to enforce against larger crypto actors one of the largest exchanges in the U.S one of the largest tokens and to really start pressuring the banks to consider whether or not this business is worth it yeah and I think I mean coinbase has settled with the SEC before the cftc or the SEC I don't remember which or both probably both um but this is not the first time they've had to deal with this um so I just want to caveat this with it doesn't necessarily mean like coinbase is screwed or no right like we're just we're just identifying that there has been a Wells notice uh which they already acknowledged and that if they're gonna fight it it's gonna be lengthy and awful I would still expect it to be a settlement like yeah yeah but like part of the reason that's kind of interesting is the is coinbase's version of events is they've been going into the SEC over these last months or years or whatever to try to figure out if there's some path towards registration and what that looks like and coinbase contends that those conversations never LED towards any kind of path towards registration we talked way back in our ETF episode with James safart and everything like that I think what the SEC wants is full surveillance into every single cryptocurrency exchange even for the assets that they're not necessarily calling Securities yet and they want them to live up to the standards of like regular Securities exchanges and again going back to the economic report to the president they talk about breaking out all the different functions like between brokerage and exchange and all these different things rather than those being combined together I think the SEC really wants these businesses to look meaningfully different than they do right now yeah I mean yeah regulatory uh regulatory enforcement is definitely happening right now uh there there's no doubt about it anymore uh people desperately were secretly were suggesting um that they wanted Clarity regulatory Clarity and I think this might not be the clarity they wanted but you were getting clarity now and I don't necessarily I also take I take a bit of issue with the way they're doing it now it does feel like although I have no idea what's happening behind the scenes no one does right maybe the SEC is reaching out to these companies and these individuals like repeatedly and trying to work with I have no idea um well on the note of regulatory Clarity which you brought up there back when John Reed Stark was in we talked about how in some sense there has been a lot of clarity right like the Dow report way back in like the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018 or whenever the SEC actually finished that thing basically said all these Ico models and stuff are securities and different Communications since then have outlined some of the other stuff like the airdrops and other consideration can be sale of Securities as well it was just never taken that seriously and like we saw referenced in the Justin Sun lawsuit the Dow report and some of the earlier SEC Communications about airdrops and stuff and like used as part of this argument that Justin obviously should have known that this Behavior was breaking the sec's recommendations because they had previously issued these reports and these communications and stuff like that and as this person in this industry he was clearly going to be aware of them or was negligent in not knowing them and in the same sense the SEC has basically said not in so many words but that they want these exchanges to come in and basically act like Securities exchanges and be registered as Securities exchanges and none of them really want to do that because that's a far less profitable and beneficial model for them and so they act as though there hasn't been Clarity even on issues on which the SEC has relatively clearly communicated like the Dow report is I think a really compelling piece of like crypto history to read because it shows the sec's thinking on a whole bunch of these different token systems and when and when they aren't Securities but it's like very rarely cited by these figureheads in the crypto industry

on that note I think a few people have requested that we talk about something else that happened today um there's one last thing we'll get to at the very end to that obviously I think both of us are pretty happy about but um the other big news there's a lot of news that dropped but the other big but the other big news thing was that Hindenburg research which has been at the helm of quite a few intense shorts um and productive shorts in terms of like money making um and the largest the largest uh fraud ever like I think they argue with uh and Donnie or whatever add Nani or whatever it's called um yeah so they released a report on block formerly um Jack dorsey's I don't know what you would like want to call it Cash Cash app kind of fintech yeah yeah fintech related company here um basically suggesting that they are like moving kyc AML free money doing fraud doing the fraud and doing the fraud doing the law breaking um yeah any comment on on the Hindenburg research report I have not read the full report yet so I'm a little bit reticent to comment I read through all the bullet points so I'm ahead of a lot of the people commenting on it on Twitter but that's still not the full report um I think that and we talked about this a little bit when Rohan gray was on to talk about the stable act a lot of these money transmitters exist to get around banking regulations right and like they even discussed that in the Hindenburg report that like in order to avoid the regulations on interchange fees for institutions above a certain size they route all their stuff through a much smaller institution and keep only like a tiny portion there at a time so they can charge the higher fees to help like inflate their revenue and stuff like that and so like that seems like the kind of trickery that we see all the time across many of these industries oh the rule says this the rule doesn't explicitly forbid me from doing this kind of thing right maybe I think I can get away with it and so like we see a lot of that type of behavior across the financial sector and so yeah it's very plausible to me that we we're gonna see something like that again with block I intend to read the full report and have even thought about like making a video on it but it's Hindenburg doesn't miss very often yeah gotta be troubling for um for uh Jack that day I put this out um

they're also down 15 today so also not a Justin Sun [ __ ] coin congratulations you react to news you are an actually traded asset that's great um markets markets are rational except when they're being washed treated by Justin exactly that's gonna get clipped and get me in trouble uh from who from who Justin's son I don't know markets are what are you gonna do arrest me rational there's other irrational markets and some of them aren't even manipulated some irrational markets aren't even manipulated I'm gonna do oh arrest me um okay yeah we can do a recipe in Montenegro speaking of which yeah let's get on to the final bullet point bullet point of the day which is just the best kind of news this is the news I think almost everyone can agree is just good news the Creator founder of the stablecoin Ponzi Luna Terra um has been arrested in which if you're not familiar it is in Europe it is located just above Albania which is just above Greece so it's it's on the Mediterranean and uh where is it well it's next to Serbia which is where he was last supposed to be um which means he utilized the fluid border of Serbia which we had I don't know if we spoke about it here but it was uh spoken about in protos um that if he was in Serbia it was because there are there are extremely fluid borders there um if you look at the map they are they're next to like one two three four five six seven countries seven eight countries like there's a lot of places you could possibly sneak into from Serbia so it's a nice location if you are on the run which he definitely wasn't he said he definitely was not on the Run um he fake Costa Rican passport which is like you know which everyone who's not on the Run has everyone has fake passports especially when they're not on their own everybody has one I think you got to cut the guys and they're also impossible for authorities to serve right like South Korea has been trying to find him for weeks now right and like saying they couldn't find it and like the other courts have been saying they can't find him but sure they're not on the Run that's about as good as no I'm just going fast across the water so I just love one that he was trying to pose as I like I assume this dude does not know any Spanish maybe he does maybe he knows Spanish and I'm getting this totally wrong but I assume he doesn't maybe he was probably practicing while he was in Serbia um but I assume this guy doesn't know Spanish very well and if he does his accent is probably horrendous that's my assumption and you're not going to be able to speak with a bunch of um Native Spanish speakers in Serbia so practicing is going to mean relatively tough um but okay so he's pretending to be Costa again um so he goes to an International Airport like do you think they don't check this stuff it's an international airport dude um I'm convinced he's not nearly as smart as everyone thinks he was uh or is so I I'm convinced this dude is is kind of stupid he goes to an International Airport tries to travel out of it with a fake Costa Rican passport instantly gets caught because of course he does and is now likely to get extradited back to South Korea which is where this whole story starts that's where this whole story starts we should also mention because I don't think we've mentioned on here because like there's been so many more important things than Daquan going on but he's also being sued by the SEC again this time over like terraform labs and Tara Luna that was already the mirror related one now there's another one he's getting double suit by the SEC now so besides being extradited to South Korea he will eventually have to deal with that you're trying to show off your yeah cheers

85 yield um anchor beer you know if they want to or you know just give us 125 yield on cast coin um yeah we'll let them fund the new cast coin anchor protocol yeah that's going to revolutionize the um stable coin industry cheers to do Quan though cheers um I you know I want to jump back because this is what I have been I'm a geography nerd obviously Caspian caspiansi um hope he got to visit while he was out there but anyway um I'm looking at a map a globe a globe globe I'm looking at Google Maps um and so this whole story starts in Seoul South Korea um I I like the idea that you were looking at a globe and it was just positioned slightly behind your camera right there no one else can see it but you can that's all I look at it's like you guys there's a globe there that's all I'm that's all I'm looking at um no yeah so this starts in Seoul South Korea then he moves down south to Singapore um which is again supposedly where Justin's son is probably not for long probably not for long if that is where he is um isn't there so isn't there a rumor son made his way to Dubai or something and then I was gonna say so then the rumor was that he had gone to Dubai which is the United Arab Emirates um which is in in Africa Africa Middle East or Middle East not Africa Middle East um I mean kind of just it depends on where you depends on you call the Middle East it's between Asia and Africa right um so anyway he goes to the UAE apparently he's not there for very long and immediately moves to Serbia and then makes his way to Montenegro now like that is insane like that is insane amount of traveling and traversing of the globe that he was doing to avoid law enforcement and authorities is kind of incredible and mind-boggling he went to an active like violent tense almost war war zone to avoid getting arrested we know he wasn't on the Run we have to assume this was a vacation trip with a lot of money billions of dollars that were his billions of dollars billions he said billions he said billions he said billions well they were no no but they were another million soon there'll be thousands and then there'll just be dozens I will say this I do think that I was as I was driving around earlier that that I I imagine being on the run I've done uh I did an article on medium a long time ago called uh death fraud and it was about it was about Gerald cotton the uh former founder of um the founder of quadriguez CX and this idea this idea of right this idea of um somebody trying to run away from authorities and people who want them dead or want money from them for the rest of their lives and that it just is a really difficult task we also had Evan Ratliff on who doing tried doing that for a month he did an article about it um which is fantastic you should all read it um and it's insanely difficult to be on the run now it just is if you especially if you have a million followers on Twitter and people know exactly what you look like um God I hope that there's a sweet mug shot maybe like bleached his hair and God I hope please please let him have like a big beard and bleached hair and stuff I would love it um but anyway like it's insanely difficult to try to run try to run and run away from authorities and stuff and I do imagine that now that he is

apprehended it has to be some sort of weight off his shoulders honestly he has to be like okay like I'm I'm done now you know I've thought about that Carolyn Ellison expresses that in some of the texts that have been released like about Alameda and stuff where I'm like November 11th she's like it's done we're out of cash we can't support ftt like but at least it's over like there was some amount of weight taken off off her shoulders David Z Morris who we've had on the show before and who is one of my favorite writers and content creators in the cryptocurrency ecosystem was tweeting today about how he's worried about do Quan's safety Montenegro has a not insignificant organized crime element which historically has had a um meaningful amount of influence over the governance and policing of Montenegro and even today in Montenegro the head of police was arrested on some corruption thing on the very same day they arrested DeQuan and so David was worried about the safety of dokwan and I think there's some amount of legitimacy just that we saw with one coin right no no we saw with one coin that like what's her face got killed in prison because she was connected to it no no confirmation on that yet no confirmation allegedly yeah I want to make sure that that's you're right no you're right that's a fair thing to say we don't know she could she could be alive and I don't want us passing around the idea that she's dead if she's like totally fine and like safe out there yeah no it could have been a cover or something but like the story right now is that she's there's a good chance she was taken out by her Mafia handlers a special essentially and I think it's very plausible Daquan might have um had some money from less Savory elements of society and he may not be in a particularly safe place right now he may never be extradated because of that I look I think there's always a good reason to worry about people um being being in prison now ever since Epstein I don't know we'll just say he died um I don't know what to call it since since Jeffrey Epstein died I think everyone wonders like well [ __ ] you really gotta pay attention and make sure that especially if someone you want to see them see Justice like you can't just let them get killed or or kill themselves or whatever like whatever like you want to actually render justice so it's a it's a true and fair concern I don't I don't think I don't think dokwon has much to worry about and and let me just say that I the reason I'm suggesting something like that is that we've seen like I think Alexander vinick was arrested in Greece which I would assume has a similar kind of I don't know it's the Balkans you know um so I like I I just think that there's all sorts of criminal elements all over that area right now in general in terms of these like trade routes and weird things happening and it's everywhere period but like there in particular and Alexander vinick was able to get extradited like I would assume dokwan is going to get extraded I am curious what the timeline is going to be though um um like SPF was an exception to a rule like oh absolutely you do not see somebody get extradited from one country to another in days a week at the most like that doesn't that just doesn't happen so but but again like we talked about earlier in geopolitics the US can be a little bit of a bully if you're a small Caribbean Nation he's not getting that United States he's not getting extradited to the US what SBF was sure I see what you're saying okay yeah yeah yes fair enough absolutely like good good point yeah I think it I think Alexander vinick was in prison for two or three years in Greece before he got extradited and then he got extradited to France so now he's in a friend a French prison and now the U.S is requesting extradition so he like he's this the whole process if he ever does get extradited to the US which I don't think he has been yet maybe I'm wrong but I don't think he has been yet uh and for what it's worth God I we're going back here but Alexander bennick supposedly drained the mount gox um wallets and was the founder of btce a money laundering defunct cryptocurrency exchange um but yeah but 2018 basically exactly so this has been this has been a long time coming that he's he's it'll be probably six or eight years before he makes his way to America if he ever does um and I I would imagine I would imagine that do Quan isn't going to immediately get extradited from any like I don't even know maybe maybe he's better off in Montenegro than South Korea to be quite honest with you I'm not sure I know he has good Connections in South Korea but like a lot of people want that dude dead there um and I mean that literally like there are people whose life savings went into that protocol and hate they despised that band so I don't know I have no idea like where he's safest um but I would be scared but relieved that I'm not on the Run anymore yeah and I get that and like you talked about that in death fraud I think we touched on it like you said with Evan Ratliff and stuff going on the run is really rough you're away from your friends your family all the things that were important to you before it is it's not an enjoyable state of being and if you can avoid being a fugitive in your life you probably should

yeah um hoping that we don't have to do another live stream for a while uh this could we try to only do this when there's crazy crazy stuff going on um and this has been a wild wacky week um and we're not even touching on any of the bank the bank stuff which I definitely have opinions about and definitely am unhappy with the way VCS have behaved and and also the way that the you know I don't know the way the Federal Reserve has behaved the way Regulators have very unhappy with all that but you know that's an episode in in and of itself yeah well at least casscoin anchor is still working get your yield man it's second seven thousand percent I don't know anything I say that's the yield that's how gascoigne works and if it doesn't look like enough people are interested we'll just steal some employee information set up an account in their name and start wash trading it cast coin is fine