This multi-million crypto rug pull has a new twist: The CEO may not exist

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An Ai face looks down on a human.

The Guardian Australia published an investigation several months ago into acrypto scheme-slash-scam called HyperVerse, a fund that used major celebrity endorsements to attract millions of dollars from small investors before collapsing. Blockchain Global went bust owing $58 million USD in 2021, but now there’s a rather classic fraudster sting in the tail: The CEO who promoted this scheme doesn’t seem to be a real person.

Lewis appeared in the HyperVerse launch video and you can watch him below. I invite you to consider whether this is a Cambridge graduate and Goldman Sachs operator, or a jobbing actor who doesn’t quite realise what he’s signed up for: note especially the pronunciation of “HyperVerse”.

Of the two (alleged) company founders, Xu is mostly inactive while Lee seems to be involved in all sorts of misdoings. HyperVerse is linked to another crypto scheme of his called HyperFund and Lee is linked to multiple other crypto investment platforms including the unbelievably ironic “We Are All Satoshi”. This is a reference to Satoshi Nakamoto, the nom-de-plume of the founder ofBitcoin, whose original idea of empowering the little guy to avoid centralised banking is a far cry from the wild west of hucksters and thievescryptocurrencyhas become.

A “desist and refrain order” was issued to Lee in California for controlling the We Are All Satoshi scam, which said it was a “fraudulent pyramid and Ponzi scheme”.

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Last year Lee briefly met Hyper investors after the collapse became obvious and encouraged them to “rebuild your tree”. I’m not sure anyone even needs to hear the rest after that.

There is no number for how much people may have lost through Blockchain Global: the estimates go from the tens of millions into the low billions. That itself says something fundamental about crypto.

And perhaps it’s appropriate that Steven Reece Lewis almost disappeared in this article: After all, it seems very likely he was never real to begin with. No-one knows what’s there and, while we all may be Satoshi in spirit, nature is rather more red in tooth-and-claw.

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