#FTX hosts the largest market for $CEL token in terms of volume. On the surface, it appears that there are many different parties sending and receiving $CEL from the exchange (I know pic sucks, best I could do): 3/n explorer.bitquery.io/ethereum/addre…
However, when you examine the transaction history for these downstream wallets, nearly all of them were funded by small #Ether transfers from one of #Celsius' distributor wallets. (4/n)
These downstream wallets also appear to serve a single task- they withdraw tokens from #FTX, then send them back to #Celsius Wallet 5. (5/n)
Several others, including the largest single withdrawer of $CEL from #FTX, serve as larger #Celsius "rail" wallets- intermediaries between #Celsius and other parties.
The largest withdrawing wallet currently holds $197 million worth of $Cel token: (6/n) etherscan.io/address/0x845c…
Of the 3.4 million $CEL withdrawn from #FTX over the last month, 2.8 million ended up right back in #Celsius wallets, mostly in wallet 5:
From this evidence, it looks like #Celsius is manufacturing the appearance of organic demand and customers moving $CEL from #FTX. What other explanation would justify the time and transactional costs of doing things in such a convoluted fashion? (7/7)
Apparently second tweet in thread is getting shadowbanned. Links to previous thread illustrating how the Celsius distribution wallet network operates upstream:
The secretive Christopher Harborne has a mysterious past, vast wealth, and deep political connections. Is he also he brains behind the world’s largest stablecoin?
While figures like Paolo Ardoino and Giancarlo Devasini get credit for running the massive Tether stablecoin, one major shareholder hasn't gotten nearly as much attention.
His name is Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne, AKA Chakrit Sakunkrit, a British-Thai dual citizen.
Mr. Harborne's interests span multiple industries and continents. He owns stakes worth hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contractors, aviation companies, fintech firms, and Ifinex, the parent company of Tether and Bitfinex:
“TESLA WHISTLEBLOWERS FILED A COMPLAINT TO THE SEC IN 2021, BUT THE AGENCY NEVER INTERVIEWED THEM”
… go on (1/n)
“In one example, the tipsters said screenshots showed other Tesla employees changed the status of material used in manufacturing from "scrap" to "work in progress." Scrap refers to material generated from a manufacturing job that is unusable waste.” (2/n)
hm
“Tesla’s information systems don’t seem to be very transparent and robust for internal people, which then leads to questions about how the auditor navigated those systems in their internal control testing, and became comfortable with using the data being produced by it.” (3/)
The SEC has rejected every previous Bitcoin ETF application, citing the same reasons each time.
Broadly, these boil down to:
A. Potential problems with Bitcoin network itself (3 and 4)
B. Fraud and market manipulation affecting the price of Bitcoin (1, 2, 5, 6, 7).
(2/)
The (B) problems are the most pressing.
And as we have seen in the past few months, the SEC has asserted that the largest exchange in crypto, Binance, is engaged in all of these illicit practices.
As long as Binance and similar entities control Bitcoin prices, no ETF. (3/)
In December, we proved that billions of dollars in crypto had flowed between Binance and Binance US using a pair of conduit wallets that, to us, appeared to be under Binance control. (2/)
Notably, at points Binance US was running out of crypto to pay out customer withdrawals and had to get transfers from Binance main to pay them back…