The company is Stablegains, Inc. and the people to name are Kamil Ryszkowski and Emil Rasmessen, co-founders and, I think, Board members. Copy Ken Paxton, Office of the Attorney General, P. O. Box 12548, Austin, Texas as well as his challenger George P. Bush at P. O. Box 26677, also in Austin. (Stablegains and its founders are in Texas. They are spearheading the criminal complaint.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Paxton#State_securities_fr...
Successful "crypto startups" hardly exist, and most of those are selling shovels to suckers. What was the expectation here?
Severely disappointing. I respect PG too much to believe he would knowingly condone this. The partner who did this didn't understand what they were investing in or should be decoupled with haste.
At the very least, the Alaska RMB, U of M Endowment, Bloomberg's family office and SMC should be asking why their capital is backing what should have been clear as day ex ante a fraud. Anyone living in Alaska, going to or an alumni of U of M or Stanford, or working for Bloomberg should be asking the same question.
And certainly all of them can go away, they're mere digital storage systems. There's nothing permanent about any of it, not by any stretch of the imagination.
They're particularly, almost pathetically, temporary records. Most of these garbage coins will have no comprehensive financial records remaining several decades from now. By contrast, I know a lot of small businesses that have elaborate financial records going back 30-40 years, and the country is surely filled with similar (and most large corporations will have such).
None of this will amount to anything, and you’ll feel awful until you give up. Then the healing can begin.
On the other hand, I’m not sure if I was mentally capable of hearing this advice back then, so…
But it’s true. It’s 2022 now. That’s almost a decade ago. In fact I forget when exactly Gox collapsed, which is how little it matters to me now. But back then, it felt like the end of the world.
Even if you think it's not fraudulent on the part of the founders, the industry is frothy and unproven and fraud-adjacent enough that investing in many companies in the space should appear to be a huge potential reputational risk beyond just losing some invested money. The people putting up the cash should be looking long and hard at this whole story.
And then once you get into the details, the moment you hear about one of the use cases for defi lending leading to these high interest rates being "put up crypto collateral to borrow to buy even more crypto since it's appreciating rapidly"... run!
I'm beginning to agree.
Piercing the corporate veil is reserved for "serious misconduct" [1]. If you're told someone will sell an unlicensed deposit-like product [2], promise depositors (their words) "will not lose [their] funds" [3] and pay a ten or 20% interest rate, and you give them money to do it, you aided and abetted fraud. (At the very least you were grossly negligent with your LPs' money.) You should have to make the people you scammed and hoped to profit off whole.
[1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/piercing_the_corporate_veil
[2] https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402680375...
[3] https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402680425...
[a] Thank you nrmitch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31462617
You don't write to your A. G. to get your money back. (You won't.) You do as an act of civic service.
These people will defraud again. Their investors will back people who will defraud again. Putting people in jail doesn't get anyone's money back. But it deters the next fraud.
Write the letter, send the evidence, write off the loss and then move on.
It was a mistake I made, so I’m just hoping to help people realize that things get so much easier when you stop caring.
The facts.
Copies of marketing you saw, statements showing what you invested and what you were paid, e-mails and other communication from the company and a statement of loss. There are links in this thread where promises were made that turned out to be lies; I would include those as well if you saw them ex ante.
This is their bread and butter.
Also: are you suggesting they should look at themselves as a victim? They might be in one sense, but in other senses they might not be.
VC doesn’t want to get out early #386. What drives their decisions is far more complex than your pithy summary.
Dear government I'm trying to subvert, I complain about the instability of your useful, fiat currency, so I entered into a get rich quick scheme with no intention of reporting gains on my taxes. This obvious scam fell apart. Please punish them with the government system I don't believe in.
The way the rehabilitation proceedings are going you will either be able to recover ~20% of the cash, or ~20% of the BTC which would be a considerable gain at this point.
At a bare minimum they should be doing due diligence for their own investors to prevent losses if not the higher standard of being a good citizen and shutting down the fraud.
We would not think it’s ok for a fund backing pharma startups to give cash to Avon Barksdale…
Ah, yes, VC's decision making process is too great for us mere mortals to understand. Their motivation and calculus are beyond our ken. Woe to the uninformed laypeople who cannot fathom their singular desire for money and influence. The nuances of 'make more money' justify the great wealth which their discerning judgement deserves. As if a simple understanding of finance and deal making under advisement in most cases and a larger capacity for risk due to having excess wealth makes them any better than the rest of us humans.
I admit my second comment wasn’t much better, sorry.
VCs want to hold on to their successful investments as long as possible, with some limitations depending on the contracts for when LPs expect their money back. VCs obviously do not sellout their successful investment(s) as early as they could, usually they are buying into it and doubling down instead.
In some situations a VC might push to sell early: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/drive-bydeal.asp In others, they won’t, as is mentioned in that article. Perhaps if there is a good IRR they might wish to delay marking to market for as long as possible, so they can tell a story on their existing funds based on numbers that are not realistic? It really depends on the particular fund, the VC, the current market, and the specifics of each investment.
Disclaimer: I am an engineer.
I was not the original commenter with whom you were speaking. I'll admit that my comment could be rude, and for that I'm sorry. The length of the mockery was a bit much, but I don't think it was uncalled for. To assume that venture capital exists without the primary motivation and purpose of making money is misleading at best and delusional more generally. Tangential motivations such as investing for impact or being motivated by other considerations don't change the underlying goal and assumption of the act of venture capital.
> I admit my second comment wasn’t much better, sorry.
Placing venture capitalists within some special class whose reasoning or motivations are beyond the understanding of most people is where I take umbrage. Yes, there are considerations such as the underlying technology, exit strategy and timing, rounds of investing, and risk assumption. The vast majority of the time venture capital is performed under advisement of attorneys, accountants, and consiltants. Venture capitalists perform no special function beyond writing the check, transferring the money, and rarely coaching or dealmaking with founders. However the chief expectation is outsized returns for above average risk in a least a few of the ventures to make up for all of the startups that failed. If the aim was social good, there are very many worthy causes and charities that need that capital. 'Stablegains' is not and was not a charity working for the collective good of society and neither are an alarming number of startups and YC-backed startups these days.
Snarkiness, Mockery, Sarcasm are very strongly discouraged or outright “banned” depending on context. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21187460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23482110
Your “replies” are not engaging, and it feels like you are mocking me with strawman shit I never said. That is very unpleasant, and nobody likes that. You have read an awful lot into sentences where I am just trying to be factual.
You have no idea what I think about VCs morally, so why are you responding with moral points?
For example: “To assume that venture capital exists without the primary motivation and purpose of making money is misleading at best and delusional more generally”. Who are you arguing against? Who assumes what? And “delusional” is an unpleasant flamebait word.
>> I admit my second comment wasn’t much better, sorry.
> Placing venture capitalists within some special class whose reasoning or motivations are beyond the understanding of most people is where I take umbrage
I mean, where is your reply even connected to what you quoted? Are you just baiting?
The quality of your two comments is extremely low in my opinion. Please, reread the guidelines (I do regularly), and try and learn to follow the unwritten standards the community follows.