Credit: Hedgeco.net
Raphaelle Nicole, the CEO of Bitfinex invested in the past years in a number of ponzi schemes and also supported Trendon Shavers, who was found guilty recently for "a classic ponzi scheme" and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. In 2012, Raphaelle tried his own ponzi scheme:
“When I need more coins than I have to fill an order, I will ask everyone that previously “registered” with me to lend me some btc. After 7 days, I will return all of it, principal + 2% interests [per week]…. Now the questions you might have: What could you do to make so much profit? Let just say that I do “arbitrage”: I buy low and sell high.”
Until the great hack these days, nobody heard about the CEO or the board of directors at Bitfinex, when $70 million worth of Bitcoins have been stolen from the exchange.
Also, it seems that more of the high profiles are being deleted and you cannot find much information about. One example can be Giancarlo Devasini, a risk manager at Bitfinex lacking much information.
There are no known independent pictures of videos of the CEO and nobody knows where he is at this moment. He invested heavily in ponzi schemes, the most known being Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BST) run by Travis Shavers. Raphaelle Nicole states at some point:
“[Trendon Shavers] dumped a lot on the market, probably to take USD profit and to lower the price of bitcoin. Now he will slowly buy back some coins to repay his lendors [sic].”
After BTS closing, the Bitfinex CEO's responded to critics:
“Pirate’s turns growth in demand for bitcoins (ie USD flows to bitcoins) into bitcoins profit. That’s why he needs massive (at bitcoin scale) capital.”
The next declarations was everyone to apologize to Pirate40 (Travis Shavers):
“Now that Pirateat40 closed down his operations [sic] thanks to all the fud that was going on and growing on the forum, I expect everyone that spreads this fud, accused and insulted Pirate and the people that supported him to apologize.”
Now we have to wait and see how this situation will evolve, also what will happen with the socialist way of getting bitcoins from everyone to minimise the hack's blow.
Sources:
Do you know where Bitfinex is located? If they are located in the US, people could try getting money from the courts.
I don't know but the CEO has an italian name. He is either italian and based in Italy or American and based in US. The Bitfinex location could be anywhere
Bitfinex had headquarters in Hong Knog but the bussines is registered in British Virgin Island, good luck with the courts
I'm not passing judgement on Bitfinex until I see more direct evidence but let's not kid ourselvess, Crypto has an image problem.
I agree. Time will tell, but until then, this shit is affecting all crypto.