The informal association of former employees and founders of the operator of the largest centralized electronic payment system PayPal Inc., which includes five billionaires, is known as the “Mafia PayPal”. If we talk about the cryptocurrency industry, then on closer examination it turns out that the American company Coinbase has acquired its own "mafia" for the six years of its existence. The Block has presented an entertaining infographic showing the participants in this association.
Note that the expression "Mafia Coinbase" does not belong to journalists, but to the head of the company, Brian Armstrong.
Coinbase Mafia ? https://t.co/4uBxdZWBFP
– Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 3, 2018
So, probably the most famous in the “mafia” list is the creator of Litecoin “digital silver” Charlie Lee. It also includes the head of Polychain Capital, a major investment firm, Olaf Carlson-Uii, and the co-founders of Scalar Capital, Linda Xie and Jordan Clifford, who were suspected of being involved in listing 0x tokens.
The Block Data
Do not forget that Coinbase co-founder Fred Ersam also left the company and created Paradigm hedge fund in partnership with former top manager of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital Matt Juan and ex-employee of the crypto fund Pantera Capital Charles Noyes. According to Bloomberg, at the start of operations under Paradigm management, there was about $ 400 million.
Add, a former employee of the company Tanuzh Loutra took the position of CTO in the startup Elph, which develops Plasma sidechains for scaling the Ethereum network, and Josef Urgo co-founded the district0x network for creating markets and communities in the DAO format. It is noteworthy that the district0x token also recently appeared in the Coinbase listing.
If we turn to another interesting infographic, you might get the impression that the scale of the “mafia” in the cryptocurrency industry is much more than it seems at first glance.
And here you can see why I was right. The DCG is the new establishment. Like a gated community. With their own press, their own executive structure.
"Emanzipation from the banks", right?
Why fighting the establishment when you can become it.
"@ Mdudas" pic.twitter.com/mJ4qCPzrY3– Tangleblog.com (@tangleblog) November 29, 2018
So, a giant in the Digital Currency Group [DGC] industry has a stake in Coinbase under the management of the Forbes cryptomillionaire list helper Barry Silbert. We add that Armstrong itself is also on this list.
By the way, DGC, Coinbase and Polychain Capital recently formed a blockchain association, the first lobbying group that will represent the industry in Washington.
At the same time, DGC has stakes in BitGo [a US- licensed digital asset custodian, attracted investments from Goldman Sachs], Grayscale Investments [ can own 1% of all existing bitcoins, fully controlled by DGC], Kraken trading platforms, bitFlyer and ShapeShift, maker of popular hardware wallets Ledger, media CoinDesk, as well as Californian startup Ripple.
In turn, the DGC does not exist on its own, but is partly owned by MasterCard, which was an investor in the first round of financing.
Continuing the theme of interesting connections, you can see that more recently Coinbase and the startup Circle [owner of the Poloniex exchange], who attracted investments from Goldman Sachs, formed the CENTRE consortium to promote the "programmable dollar" USDC.
In late October, it became known that the capitalization of the industry 's first unicorn exceeded $ 8 billion against the background of a successful round of financing led by hedge fund Tiger Global Management. Coinbase has also become one of the few cryptocurrency companies whose advertising has been allowed on Facebook.
Probably, conspiracy theorists will consider that many events that occur in the industry are not really coincidences at all, but the machinations of a cartel supported by the traditional financial industry. True or not – remains a mystery.
Earlier, BlockchainJournal published a review of the most entertaining and dynamic theories about bitcoin conspiracies.
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