The Ledger
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Katie Haun admits the majority of ICOs are frauds or scams
“Look, initial coin offerings or ICOs, I'll be the first to tell you, there is a tremendous amount the majority of them are, seem to be, Frauds or scams.”
Haun: U.S. government is not actively trying to trap ICO projects
“I do want to dispel the notion that the government is sitting there trying to trap, you know, an ICO project or a cryptocurrency project and saying, aha, we got you. That's just not the case. The fact of the matter is the government doesn't hurt for business w…”
Haun: Criminals serve as early adopters and beta testers for tech innovations
“I mean, they're the best beta testers of new technologies in many ways. And that's been true, not just of cryptocurrencies, right? That's been true of all kinds of things. If you think of cell phones, if you think of email, social media, the internet, and just…”
Haun: Blockchain technology itself has never been hacked, unlike crypto exchanges
“And we, blockchain's never been hacked. Some of the cryptocurrency exchanges have been hacked. You know, Mt. Gox, Coincheck more recently, Bitfinex, and others. But the blockchain itself has never yet been hacked.”
Haun prosecuted Wells Fargo executives for stealing from deceased customers
“When I was a prosecutor, I prosecuted Wells Fargo's executives for taking dead people's accounts and draining them of money. They basically found out who hadn't used their account for, you know, many years, and then they would drain the money to their own pers…”
Haun: Moving offshore will not protect crypto startups serving US consumers
“Well, I don't think they should wait, but I think they should have common sense and good judgment, and one of the red flags I see sometimes is, you know, and they'll publicly state, oh, we're moving offshore so that we don't have to comply with these laws that…”
Haun: Regulators won't prioritize crypto startups making best-effort compliance attempts
“Just try, and I think that those cases where people are demonstrating best efforts are not going to be the vehicles that the government regulators are going to want to choose.”
Haun: DOJ asked her to help shut down Bitcoin in 2012
“So for me, my story was in 2012, I actually was asked by the Justice Department to help shut down and prosecute Bitcoin.”
Blockchain transparency caught corrupt federal agents who stole Silk Road Bitcoin
“And I'm here to tell you that without it, we never would have caught these guys. In fact, without the blockchain, they would have still been sitting in the federal government today instead of in the federal penitentiary.”
Darknet Bitcoin transactions dropped from 30% in 2012 to under 1%
“In 2012, 30% of Bitcoin transaction value was associated with dark net markets like Alphabay or Silk Road, but by 2018, that number is down to less than one percent.”
Katie Haun concedes Bitcoin's main use is not peer-to-peer payments
“Satoshi's white paper says it's an electronic peer-to-peer cashless system for payments. Right. For payments, and I would grant you that it's right now, it's main use is, it's certainly not that.”
Katie Haun says Secret Service lacks resources for $100,000 counterfeiting cases
“The Secret Service in particular is an agency so strapped that I can't tell you how many counterfeiters we could never prosecute. You know, it's such a small fraction of cases that you really have a Secret Service agent. It has to be a mass scale counterfeit. …”
Katie Haun notes JPMorgan partnered with Zcash despite Jamie Dimon's comments
“JP Morgan was inking in a huge deal with Zcash. Zcash the privacy coin. So it's not that JP Morgan completely thought cryptocurrency, there was no there. They were doing a partnership with Zcash.”
Haun: NFTs will render traditional creator email mailing lists obsolete
“I'm all of a sudden thinking no more mailing lists, right? Like there's no need for that. No need for spam email. Because it allows people to interact, these creators to interact directly with their fans or people who want to use these products and services.”
Haun: Undisclosed government enforcement actions against crypto projects are coming
“So I think there are things in the space that we're not yet aware of, the public's not yet aware of, that will be coming.”
DOJ tasked prosecutor Katie Haun with shutting down Bitcoin in 2012
“The first time I ever heard the word Bitcoin was back in 2012 when I was a federal prosecutor at the US Department of Justice. And I heard the word Bitcoin because I was asked to prepare an investigation and a case against it and to help shut it down.”
Katie Haun: Shutting down Bitcoin is like shutting down the internet
“This was one of the early misconceptions out there about cryptocurrency, that you could shut something down like Bitcoin. That would be like saying, let's go shut down cash or the internet. Not only not possible, but also not desirable.”
Katie Haun: Cryptocurrency's complete anonymity is a myth
“Myths like cryptocurrency is just completely anonymous, so really it's only useful for criminals and money launderers. Now, how do I know that's just a myth? Well, I spent over a decade as a federal prosecutor, and during that time, I put murderers, organized …”
Secret Service agent Sean Bridges stole 21,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road
“Sean Bridges had also been at that proffer session where Curtis had turned over his password and computer and credentials, and that night, Sean Bridges went home using Curtis Green's computer, username, credentials, and password, and drained Silk Road accounts…”
Robert Mueller traced Bitcoin payments to Russian GRU operatives
“In fact, even special counsel Robert Mueller traced Bitcoin payments to Russian GRU operatives in the election interference case.”
Katie Haun says most of the 1,600+ cryptocurrencies are untrustworthy
“I think, you know, it's not just governments that could create untrustable cryptocurrency. I think there are a lot of untrustable cryptocurrencies out there right now. Obviously there are over 1600, I think maybe even more, but at 1.1600, and I certainly would…”
Katie Haun argues Bitcoin price volatility is lessening over time
“I think now what we're seeing is the price is, the volatility is lessening, and I grant you, there's still a lot of volatility.”
Katie Haun predicts several cryptocurrencies will succeed long-term
“I don't think there would only be a couple cryptocurrencies that succeed. I do agree with you that it will not be 1600. I think you might see, I don't want to put a number on it, but I think you'll see several emerge as ones that are going to stick around.”
Katie Haun predicts cryptocurrency will not replace major fiat currencies
“I don't think, though, to answer your question, that it's going to replace all of the other currencies. I'm not saying that, oh, it's going to replace the dollar and replace the euro. I actually don't believe that, ah, is likely to happen.”
Katie Haun predicts crypto will develop as an alternative to gold
“I also don't believe it's going to replace big, ah, gold as a store of value entirely, and if I suggested that during my presentation, all I meant to suggest was that I think it will develop as an alternative store of value.”
Katie Haun predicts wave of government enforcement actions against fraudulent ICOs
“Well, much like Secret Service, they can't do every case, number one, so a lot of those scams are gonna get a pass, but number two, I predict we are gonna see a lot of enforcement actions against fraudulent, scammy ICOs, and good because they bring down the na…”
Katie Haun says Coinbase fired its law firm in 2012 over licenses
“When they were just starting out that company in San Francisco in 2012, they were told by their lawyers, big law firm, don't worry about getting those licenses, you don't need them. They fired those lawyers”
Haun: Financial regulations are intentionally broad to grant prosecutors wide discretion
“All of the existing laws and regulations are really, really very broadly worded, and they're broadly worded by design so that regulators and prosecutors have broad discretion to use their own judgment for what they think are the best vehicles to regulate or pr…”
Haun: Government agencies are years away from mainstreaming crypto oversight
“I don't want to slap a number of years on it, but I think you're still a few years away from that, at least.”
Haun: OCC federal fintech charter effort has not made progress
“OCC is trying to come up with a federal fintech charter. So that only one license would be needed. So far, that hasn't gone anywhere.”
Silk Road founder paid $80,000 to order hit on site administrator
“And DPR paid Nob 80,000 dollars to torture and kill Curtis Green.”
Blockchain forensics traced $500 million Mt. Gox hack to BTC-e
“We were able to go back to the blockchain and trace those payments that had resulted from the five hundred million dollar Mt. Gox hack straight back to BTCE, and one guy named Alexander Vinnick, who it turns out profited with hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Katie Haun: Cryptocurrency networks are currently in their dial-up era
“There are all these issues that we hear about it, and the important thing to understand here is that we are still in the dial-up days of cryptocurrency and crypto networks.”
Katie Haun says stablecoins are important for hedging crypto market volatility
“I think things like stable coins are really interesting and really important to this ecosystem to hedge against that volatility.”
Katie Haun notes Ethereum is transitioning to proof-of-stake
“Ethereum is migrating to what's called a proof of stake, so it won't be doing proof of work mining and using all of this energy.”
Katie Haun cites study claiming one in three millennials prefers cryptocurrency
“There was a study I saw and I can't cite you the source, but it said that one out of three And this is in the United States. One out of three millennials would rather own Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies than stocks.”
Katie Haun asserts the underlying blockchain has never been hacked
“The blockchain has never been hacked.”
Katie Haun argues commercial enterprises require financial privacy to protect data
“There needs to be financial privacy, especially in the case of businesses, right? One business doesn't want its competitor to see what it's paying or charging customers, and that's where Zcash comes in for that really commercial use.”
Haun: FinCEN was first U.S. agency to regulate virtual currency
“FinCEN was the first U.S. Government agency to put out guidance saying virtual currency is going to be subject to what are called money service business laws and the Bank Secrecy Act.”
Undercover agent chatted daily with Silk Road founder for years
“Nob and DPR became online confidants, and they chatted online daily by encrypted messaging applications for years.”
Informant sold government investigation data to Silk Road founder for Bitcoin
“French Maid was selling DPR information into the government's investigation for hundreds of thousands of dollars of Bitcoin.”
21,000 Bitcoin disappeared overnight from Silk Road vendor accounts in 2013
“Overnight, 21,000 Bitcoin, worth today about a hundred and fifty million dollars, went missing from Silk Road vendor accounts overnight.”
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht turned down a plea deal
“What's little known is that he turned down a plea deal, and he went to trial, and he was sentenced by a judge to life in prison.”
Silk Road corruption was the US government's first blockchain fraud case
“Now, aside from its salacious facts, that case was the first example of the US government using blockchain technology to uncover fraud and corruption.”