![]() sanctions and, most important, by allowing Americans to trade on BitMEX without meeting various obligations. They compiled evidence that Hayes had intentionally violated banking law by failing to guard against money laundering by accepting Iranians as customers, against U.S. Investigators were motivated to come after him. (SBF, for his part, has pleaded not guilty.) Hayes made enemies by joking about bribing government officials, posing next to a fleet of supercars on the streets of New York, and taunting the Securities and Exchange Commission on Twitter. The economist Nouriel Roubini calls Hayes the sleaziest player in a sleazy industry, even when considering Bankman-Fried. ![]() Hayes, who is 37, does have his detractors. “He didn’t follow rules that some people say shouldn’t exist in the first place.” “He’s not the typical bad actor who embezzled money or stole money or did something really nefarious,” says Daniel Bresler, a partner at the law firm Seward & Kissel, which specializes in crypto and financial crime. “BitMEX never screwed over their clients, never got hacked, never lost money.” If anything, Hayes has become something of a bitcoin martyr. “He’s absolutely one of the good guys of crypto,” says Nic Carter, the co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, a blockchain-focused investment firm. He slept on a friend’s couch for months to save money during a period when the whole gambit looked like a failure.Īnd then there’s the biggest difference: Where Bankman-Fried effectively (but still allegedly) stole billions of dollars from regular people around the world, Hayes has never been accused of taking anything that didn’t belong to him, or lying to his customers, or running a crooked business. In 2014, when Hayes was setting up the exchange known as BitMEX, there were no reverent venture capitalists salivating over his vibe or speculating that he would be history’s first trillionaire. Where Bankman-Fried was tagged for success his entire life, Hayes created his fortune almost as an act of will, surprising pretty much everyone but himself. Where Bankman-Fried is a zhlub who looks like he logs 20 hours a day at a computer, Hayes is impossibly chiseled and handsome. Where Bankman-Fried was a white kid from an elite echelon of society, Hayes was a Black kid from the Rust Belt. The parallels are all the more remarkable because so much else in their lives is different. It’s also that of Arthur Hayes, who appeared on the crypto scene before SBF, got sidelined, and is now poised to return to it. This is not just the arc of Sam Bankman-Fried. Neither he nor the crypto industry will ever be the same. He negotiates the terms of his return to the States and surrenders to federal authorities, facing multiple felony counts. Then, maybe on account of hubris, he starts to make mistakes. The young man is the acknowledged crypto king. ![]() He’s on TV a lot, slays on Twitter, and emerges as the face of the insurgent industry - the kind of entrepreneurial rebel you can’t help but pay attention to, even if you aren’t a bitcoin person. This story may sound familiar: A brash young man with a blue-chip education spends a few years as a trader before starting a crypto exchange and quickly becoming a billionaire.
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