The man behind the curtain
When it came out that Bitfinex/Tether’s banking is with Crypto Capital, a light bulb went off in my head. You see, this is not the first time I had read of the project, as Decentralized Capital had made some waves about their e-money solution, and I had looked into the companies behind before, finding that it was anonymous companies based out of Panama behind it.
I don’t like anonymous companies that possibly hold upwards of a billion dollars.
So I had one of those mental itches you can’t help but scratch. I started digging.
For a while I was just looking through public records to try, and see if they made any errors in filing the real names at any point, but nothing came up (yet), obviously these people aren’t new at this.
Decentralized Capital claims Crypto Capital is their banking partner: https://web.archive.org/web/20171108021835/https://decentralizedcapital.com/#!/faq#12
Decentralized Capital: https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/155604257
Crypto Capital Corp: https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/749618 & https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/810263
Then I found a connection between Havelock Investments, and Crypto Capital. It seems that Havelock Investment’s platform was used to IPO CFIG (Crypto Financial), which was the original name of Crypto Capital. Interesting to note since a lot of securities fraud took place on that platform, but that is maybe outside of scope, at least for this discussion.
Here you can see that Crypto Capital and CFIG is one, and the same:
Here is the “Prospectus” for CFIG:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=CFIG
The Panama Fund is the company behind the acquisition of Havelock Investments:
https://www.havelockinvestments.com/aboutus.php
The Panama Fund: https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/610201
Then I started asking around in my network for people who had been in contact with either Havelock (The Panama Fund), or Crypto Capital, and found somebody who had spoken with the people at Crypto Capital, (I won’t name the person, or identifiable information, out of respect for their privacy), but among other things, the person told me that the user /u/Bitfan2013 on Reddit was the guy behind Crypto Capital, and lo and behold, the picture started to unfold.
One of the earliest posts announcing the project:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171127221637/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=199513.0;imode
And the post where Bitfan2013 originally put out feelers to see if people were interested:
“My family and I sit on the board of directors of 4 small — medium sized private banks. Over the past couple of months as the big hoopla over Bitcoin has garnered worldwide media attention, I decided to bring up the Bitcoin concept up for discussion. “
Then I found something strange. Not only did they IPO through Havelock, it also seems that this guy was involved in the acquisition of the originally Canadian entity:
His own words: “Source: Me, A person involved in the acquisition.”
And then something occurred to me. Reading through his posts I had read a post about how he had been contacted by Bitcoin people who wanted banking, and that is how he had been introduced to Bitcoin, but they couldn’t convince the rest of the board that it was a viable business model:
“Members of this company are currently board members in a Medium size bank in Panama. A few month ago, while Bitcoin was a daily occurrence on the international news, we were approached with the idea of opening a Bitcoin Exchange account for a potential customer. We examined the idea very carefully at the time, but were unable to see any potential long term profits for our bank in doing so.”
And then I remembered the person that sent me Bitfan2013’s name in the first place had mentioned as a passing fact that Eric Voorhees of Coinapult had been located in the office right across from Crypto Capital. Coincidence? I think not.
There are many open questions. I will keep digging as there is still plenty of data to sift through, if you find anything feel free to @MatGroennebaek on Twitter, or ask for follow to DM.
Who is Bitfan2013?
Which Panamanian banks are the small-medium sized banks he says his family members are on the boards of?
What is Coinapult, and Eric Voorhees involvement with Crypto Capital?
