Another Gary Gensler, FTX connection, this time its NASAA

In a recent tweet by Ripple General Counsel Stuart Alderoty, an interesting question that had gone pretty much overlooked was posed:

“What about the first two payments on the $100M fine? Did the SEC confirm BlockFi’s ability to pay and/or the source of funds?”

I began too look deeper into this to see if there were any loose ends we hadn’t discovered and found that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were to receive only half of the $100M.

The other $50M was to go to 53 separate jurisdictions which are all members of the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA).

This is significant because NASAA was part of “Operation Cryptosweep” which was “a coordinated series of enforcement actions by state and provincial regulators in Canada and the United States to crack down on fraudulent Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency investment products.”

Serving on the NASAA Board is Melanie Lubin who President at the time of the settlement. Lubin was also Maryland’s State Securities Commissioner at the time that current SEC chairman Gary Gensler served on the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission. Another connection to the FTX saga which has seemed to intertwine so many US agencies.

It was revealed through Gary Gensler’s calendar that Melanie Lubin and NASAA representatives met with Gensler on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, 6 months prior to the announcement that the SEC was probing BlockFi.

Back in January of this year it was announced that Bitbuy a Canadian exchange, would be delisting XRP which came as a surprise for 2 reasons.

One was because we were one year into the SEC v Ripple lawsuit and two because Bitbuy was a Canadian exchange.

Today we learned that Kevin O’Leary who is a known investor into FTX also backs a company named WonderFi which is a crypto trading platform. WonderFi purchased Bitbuy back in March of this year soon after getting approved to operate by the Ontario Securities Commission.

Bitbuy became the first crypto marketplace to be fully approved by the OSC when it received its formal approval in December of last year.

So who exactly is pulling the strings and are regulators actually behind the FTX crash? D

id these regulators and agencies accept what are now considered stolen funds by FTX through its BlockFi settlement?

Some, like Digital Asset Investor are calling this a “controlled demolition” and it sure is beginning to look like it. Currently there is so much being uncovered that only time will tell where the pieces land to this puzzle.

Stay tuned…

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