27th May 2023 > > Gemini.

tl;dr

The EU is already harvesting tax dollars for its enlightened approach to cryptos.

Market Snap (at time of writing)

Market Wrap

No change of note.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Gemini

Gemini, a centralised cryptocurrency exchange run by the Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame, has announced the choice of Dublin for its new European headquarters. On Twitter Cameron Winklevoss said:

“Awesome meeting this morning with @LeoVaradkar, the Prime Minister of Ireland. We talked about the profound promise of crypto and the importance of common sense regulation to realize that promise. We believe MiCA is that common sense regulation.”

Regular readers are not surprised to see concrete evidence that tax dollars will flow into the EU because of the certainty in the regulatory landscape around cryptos. This point was reinforced by Cameron:

“There are so many headwinds right now in the US it’s hard to get anything done there. And so in order to keep building our business and invest in hiring, we have to look elsewhere,”

That is not the only point of agreement between the twins and the CCC:

"Crypto is as transformative as the Internet, and we are committed to unlocking the opportunities it represents.”

Cryptos will be more transformative than the internet, but let’s not split hairs for now.

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Why Ireland you might ask.

As one of the two largest tax havens in the world (the other is Lichtenstein) Ireland has long been an attractive destination for international firms. A corporation tax rate of 12.5% compares favourably with Germany at 29.8% and France at 27.5%.

Jeremy “bring on a recession” Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, may wish to contemplate the obvious benefits of a lower rate of corporation tax just one month into his new regime of hiking it from 19% to 25%, deliberately adding to inflationary pressures, encouraging higher interest rates, and reducing investment in people, products, and plant.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Morgan DF Fintoch

It is an unfortunate by-product of cryptos, but every now and again we need to revisit the topic of feral scammers.

Morgan DF Fintoch promised 1% daily returns on funds invested in their platform, with additional payments for recruiting new investors.

Right there, I already know it’s a scam, a combination of a Ponzi scheme and an MLM (multi-level marketing) and I would assume everyone else would know that too. But if you are not as sceptical as me there were several other rather large red flags.

Though the scammers claimed to be backed by Morgan Stanley, this had been publicly denied by the investment banking firm in January 2023:

https://www.morganstanley.com/content/dam/msdotcom/global-offices/pdf/Indonesia/Indonesia_Fintoch_Important_Notice.pdf

In March this year, its purported CEO Bobby Joe Lambert was identified as US actor Mike Provenzano.

In May, MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) added Fintoch to its “Investor Alert List”:

https://www.mas.gov.sg/investor-alert-list?rows=All&page=1&q=fintoch

The company described itself in an odd way – “ … a Silicon Valley company from America”.

And, in common with many scams, grammatical errors abound:

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ZachXBT has reported on Twitter:

“It appears the team behind the ponzi @DFintoch has likely exit scammed with 31.6m USDT on BSC after the funds were bridged to multiple addresses on Tron/Ethereum and people reported being unable to withdraw”

$31.6mm?

Who is foolish enough to part with hard-earned cash to such an obvious scam? And why?

Some investors remain in denial:

“You guys should at least say something on extraction of profit. Fintoch has been the best and will always be, but withdrawals are not working!!!”.

I got news for you, sunshine. Withdrawals will never work again.