After FTX went bankrupt, Finder decided to sunset its Earn product, seemingly after getting a warning from Australian regulators. A few days later, Schebesta stepped down as CEO and a few days after that, Australian regulators sued the company for handing out illegal financial advice and offering this product without the appropriate licensure. That feels like a reasonable end to the story. And it would be if FTX hadn't recently filed its creditor matrix, which counterintuitively lists entities that may not be creditors. It's intentionally broad to ensure that people who may be creditors get notified. This document ended up containing HiveEx, Finder, Goldfields Money, and the Australian Attorney General's Office. Now, obviously, Australian regulators didn't intervene in time to have any impact on the collapse, but it does seem that they were working on figuring out what FTX was doing down under. That appears to be that, but there's one little detail that's circumstantial, non-conclusive, and bothering me. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Australian authorities disrupted a $10 billion Chinese-Australian money laundering operation. The seizure included crypto, and they're currently investigating how crypto exchanges were used as part of their laundering strategy. They used a shadow banking system where funds were extended on 'credit' in Australia and then 'collected' overseas to ensure that funds didn't cross international borders. Specifically, they seem to have needed both casinos and crypto businesses to pull this off. This operation seems to be linked to triad activity out of China. There's no clear connection to any specific crypto company and it's been a long-term investigation. |
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