5 Sep
15:10

Corruption, Crypto and Cartels Part IV

For the finale, let us show you where the Part I – III have been leading.  Though this is not the end of the “rabbit holes” we have been following, it is the point where we felt comfortable to really form a solid hypothesis of what is going on based on all of the data we have found.   Bank frauds As of April 30th, 2019, two individuals were charged with bank fraud in connections to cryptocurrency exchanges. Court documents released by the Justice Department reported that the alleged money services businesses operated between February and October 2018. It is interesting to note that this is within the same time frame as when Bitfinex saw $850mil disappear. Prosecutors say during this time, the two “opened and used numerous bank accounts at financial institutions that were insured by the [FDIC]”. [1] Two of the bank accounts named in the court document are allegedly held under the name Global Trading Solutions LLC, one apiece from HSBC Bank USA and HSBC Securities USA/Pershing LLC. GlobalContinue reading »

29 Aug
11:16

Corruption, Crypto and Cartels, Part III

This is where the pieces come together. Have you noticed how often Bitfinex has been referenced in this story? It doesn’t feel like a coincidence.   Tether (USDT) Aside from the multiple incidences of hacks and lost funds, Bitfinex also still have to answer for their sister company’s controversies, Tether. It is no secret that Bitfinex and Tether have received subpoenas from U.S regulators. [1] Speculations that Bitfinex has been “operating a fractional reserve and is covering over its reserve deficit in complicity with Bitfinex” has existed since early 2017. These allegations are nothing new. [2] And remember when Bitfinex and CryptoCapital supposedly severed official relations? Not even a few months later, Bitfinex is still associated with CryptoCapital, and the relationship has not improved for the better.  According to statements in April 26, 2018, Bitfinex sent $850 million of customer and corporate funds to CryptoCapital Corp., and along the way it was “lost”. Representatives of Bitfinex and Tether reported to the NY Attorney General’s office that CryptoCapital claims the funds wereContinue reading »

20 Aug
14:31

Corruption, Crypto and Cartels, Part II

Laundering money is one of the hardest things for cartels to do…so we are told.  As Part 2 unfolds,  we dig into the “potential” cartel involvement and start to paint the larger picture of how this is all intertwined together.   Cartel association On April 7th of 2018, reports originating from Poland sources informed readers that Polish prosecutors seized €400 mil from two companies, referred to as company M and company C, involving a long link of individuals and eventually leading to Bitfinex; and potential association to cartel involvements. [1] The story began when the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in the process of building a new embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Company M, owned by a Canadian of Panamanian descent, impersonated the building contractor and intercepted the $400mil payment. Through an investigation with Interpol, it was revealed that company M was associated with company C, owned by a Colombian with Panamanian citizenship, who was in turn associated with a large online exchange of cryptocurrencies. PolishContinue reading »

20 Aug
12:24

Introducing SynQ I/O

The team at SynQ has been dedicated to market analysis from not only the fundamental and technical side, but also the business intelligence side of the cryptocurrency universe. Welcome to SynQ I/O, the official rebirth of the now defunct CryptoSyndicate group. While CryptoSyndicate was a well-regarded report publication business, SynQ has allowed us to focus on knowledge sharing at scale, focusing on quality projects, and cryptocurrency forecasting created from consumer trend analysis and the attention economy.  To be honest, this is something we never planned on being our “full time jobs”, rather it was fun, new, interesting and what we enjoyed. As David Bowie once said, “Turn and face the strange”. With SynQ I/O, we are turning a way from a part-time busness to a full fledged company with more focus on content creation and sharing of our knowledge the entire crypto/blockchain markets.  SynQ I/O will be publishing more video content, including HARUSPEX episodes weekly to Facebook, YouTube, and Periscope. Daily market overviews to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, as well asContinue reading »

14 Aug
13:19

Corruption, Crypto and Cartels, Part I

For the next few weeks we will be releasing the first investigative piece from SynQ I/O. We will be detailing this story with all of what we know in multiple releases with public sources included.  Given the nature of this story, we will be adding our own opinions, conjecture, and potential implications along the way in separate releases so we can keep the facts and opinions clearly separated. Part I Nobody would be surprised if cryptocurrencies has been used for nefarious means, the same could be said for any measure of currency that exists. But what if you found out the industry has been systematically exploited to blatantly launder cartel cocaine money right underneath our noses (pun intended)? After all, the Devil’s greatest trick is convincing the populace he doesn’t exist. CryptoCapital – A Shady History Mathias Grønnebæk, an early ETH developer, was one of the earliest people who noticed that a number of crypto companies are connected to a remote company. CryptoCapital, a fiat banking platform, is responsible asContinue reading »

13 Aug
13:29

Cryptocurrency’s Adoption Dilemma

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are 20 months beyond the greatest bull-run in crypto-history, with all time highs recorded and reported for nearly every single existing alt-coin and Bitcoin available at the time. Fast forward to April, 2019; Brazil starts to buy Bitcoin en masse, on the heels of Venezuela opting for Litecoin just a few months earlier, as South American currencies experience waves of inflation on the global stage, driving no-coiners to the market at scale for a brief period of time. Cryptocurrency, seen as a safe haven against the politics of government-run fiat currency problems, is one of the best, if not the best, use cases for immutable digital-currency. Bitcoin and Litecoin saw monumental bounce backs from the market downturn of 2018. Bitcoin is up nearly 400% in 2019, Litecoin hitting triple digits for the first time in what seemed like forever, and people all around the crypto-sphere start chanting “altseason, altseason… bull market”, but where’s the new money? Where’s the consumer adoption? Outside of the BRL and Venezuela in theContinue reading »

7 Aug
12:00

Why Alt Season Ain’t Happening

There has been a considerable amount of chatter in the cryptosphere in regards to the return of “Alt Season”. Undeniably, there has been a noticeable increase of consumer interest and sentiment for cryptocurrencies. However, we are of the opinion that this Alt Season isn’t going to happen the way everyone thinks it is. There are two main reasons for our negative outlook on Alt Season: Technological Development and Adoption Macro Economic Influences In this report, we will explain what Alt Season is, why people think Alt Season happens, and why it likely will not happen the way people expect in 2019 and beyond. What is Alt Season? It is generally agreed upon that “Alt Season” is defined as the period in which the majority of alt coins rise in BTC and USD value quickly, and outperform BTC in terms of price action. We have seen this phenomenon many times throughout the history of cryptocurrency trading, but very few understand the driving force behind it. There has been one main AltContinue reading »

6 Dec
00:40

Pirate Chain (ARRR)

Komodo was undoubtedly one of the most underrated cryptocurrencies of 2018, even though fundamentally it was one of the soundest projects. The security, privacy advantages and impressive 10k tx/s offered by the KMD platform went largely unnoticed by the market. However, Komodo wasn’t entirely ignored. Within the community and discussions present on the KMD platform were a handful of capable individuals that eventually conceptualized a new and better cryptocurrency, ARRR. Fundamental ARRR, or also known as Pirate, is an independent blockchain built as an asset chain to the KMD platform. Designed as a combination of ZEC and XMR, Pirate looks to improve the privacy and security features of XMR whilst fixing the fungibility problem of ZEC through the enforcement of forced shield-transactions. The issue is that transactions from shielded balances to transparent balances are often the cause of decreased fungibility, as it is possible to identify coin mixing patterns. Concerns are also had about coins being “tainted” by affiliations to past transactions. The solution is to completely prevent this fromContinue reading »

1 Feb
00:38

Sapien

In A Nutshell Amid the controversy surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election emerged a new phenomena propagated by social media and its reach: fake news. Prior to this, it was referred to as ‘click bait,’ used to draw in mindless content consumers in exchange for a small PPC (pay-per-click) charge. Through clever deception by centralized authorities, social media channels were used to inject bias via false reporting. By targeting small groups of supporters, “fake news” was organically spread – “shared,” in social media parlance – hiding its dark origins and demonstrating the power of information, be it valid or invalid. Enter Sapien: “A highly customizable, democratized social news platform capable of rewarding millions of content creators and curators without any centralized intermediaries.” From the average user’s perspective, Sapien aims to reward content creators and gives them the decision to filter advertisements or remove them entirely. At the same time, Sapien will also use machine learning to identify potential fake news. In addition to this, Sapien will not be collecting anyContinue reading »

30 Jan
00:29

R-Chain – Multi-Threading Blockchain

As cryptographic technology advances, it’s natural for generational gaps to exist. Bitcoin is considered a 1st-gen cryptocurrency, Ethereum a 2nd-gen crypto. There will exist a group of modern cryptocurrencies that will be considered the 3rd generation – Cardano, Komodo, and EOS are three we covered in our Premium Syndicate Report for January. To show you the type of fundamentals break down these reports carry, we’ve extracted RChain from the Premium Report to release to our blog for free. We’re giving you insight into how we process the Fundamental and Market analysis in our Premium Reports and open the doors on the exciting RChain project to all. RChain will undoubtedly be a very solid competitor in the league of 3rd-generation tokens. With the addition of all these powerhouses, projects such as Ethereum will have to work hard to maintain market relevance long-term. Overview RChain is an open-sourced project with the goal of building a decentralized and censorship-resistant economic blockchain platform to be used as a public computing infrastructure. Powered by smart contracts, similarContinue reading »