Bitcoin Forum

Those coins ended up in DLBrrdzzH8B2V5QgrUTmiwoBw9mYtQxbH7 (http://dogechain.info/address/DLBrrdzzH8B2V5QgrUTmiwoBw9mYtQxbH7)

Today after 9 Days i got my 140k doges back! I think there is hope for everyone!

I deposited 145K DOGE there 4 days, never reflecting.
They don't respond to my ticket.

Hi lyon42,

We deeply apologize for the delay on the dogecoin deposits. There was a software bug with dogecoin and we were forced to re-issue deposit addresses to all our users. We are now recovering all the coins sent to the old deposit addresses and this is a time consuming process. We hope you understand.
We have now resolved the issue. Your funds have been credited to your account. Please check your wallet. If you still may have issues, contact us with your transaction id.
Thank you.
Ticket: https://coins-e.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/TICKET_ID

They responded to my second ticket after 5 days.


All my DOGE are reflecting ! \o/

Still care with them.

14k doges sent 8 days ago, 2 tickets no response...


Same for me

The owner of Coins-e is the crook, he's been stealing coins for months, why won't people get this through their thick skulls.
There is enough info out there that shows how many people have been scammed but people still keep depositing coins.

If the scam is true. (and for me it's true, 20 days without reply for support and deposits lost), could we have a big post-it on the forum. Everybody can see to not use this scam website.

Some admin/moderators can do this ?

[URL=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=418416.0][b][size=11pt][color=red][WARNING!!!!!!!][/color] DO Not Use Coin-E [/size][/b] You have been warned.[/URL]

Still waiting on 10k PXC I withdrew on September 6th

Shit is ridiculous...

Lost 186 maxcoins that I deposited to COINS-E 20 hours ago.
Still nothing. Support not answering emails.

The owner of Coins-e is the crook, he's been stealing coins for months, why won't people get this through their thick skulls.
There is enough info out there that shows how many people have been scammed but people still keep depositing coins.

There're other ways to spread the message such as using Twitter, IRC, etc. I don't believe the signature was effective because I didn't see it :P.

Chill a little :).

Dude stop acting all "noble". If you care as much as you said you did, place it as the first line of your signature. I've been more vocal about Coins-E in the IRC channels and on Twitter than you have, placing it as a signature that is partially covered because it's large and on the third. Oh, you also fail to mention that your Coins-E "warning" is a referral link to Bter instead of linking to this thread which would have been a lot more beneficial. I too, see which category you stand in :).

I don't cry all day, I joke about it actually. Getting into crypto is a risk in itself :). All good we just have a difference in beliefs :).

Anyway, good news, my BTC came in after about 22 hours. Bad thing is my GLC is still stuck there. Don't think I'll ever use Coins-E again once all my coins are out of them.

Just wanted to say thanks for making and keeping this thread updated.  Was considering moving some coins into Coins-e until I read this thread.  Some times there are scam threads for exchanges that are really just edge cases but it sounds like Coins-e is just out to scam or is negligent.  Anyways definitely will avoid, thanks.

Withdrew 2BTCs from COINS-E to Coinedup on 13 Feb. Now over 20 days later the BTCs have dissapeared from my Coins-e account, withdraw confirmed by email, not showing on blockchain and after numerous email, support tickets and tweets, silence from coins-e!!!! What kind of service is this??? Why do they even bother having a support 'fresh desk'??? I want my 2 BTCs! this is getting fuckin rediculous!!!!!!

I sent some DRK yesterday morning. It looks like they took the funds out but my deposit isn't showing, I can't even check the status on their site. Here's the transaction:

http://explorer.darkcoin.io/tx/89182a662a8e9858cc6f07b3bdf13cb371056dc775c1763b614766b7de2d28d8

I've found quite a few posts about them randomly scamming. I'm surprised people aren't warned every time their name is mentioned on a forum.

Well i still have not got my bitcoin back, no answer ever. They can manage to send a tweet no probs when they list another coin but cant answer a ticket.

This guy has got something to do with coins-e https://twitter.com/SaifAltimimi btw.

http://altexplorer.info/chains/NAN/block_crawler.php?transaction=bb8e74a7afc8fb373442c9aafbf47b448f76f702b1c038cee39bc436ca69b74c

Still waiting on a deposit of 163.62255489 NAN to post...sent it over 4 days ago, filed a ticket 3 days ago.  It's not a huge sum (was to be part of an experiment in arbitrage), but it doesn't inspire confidence.

DO NOT TRUST COINS-E!!!! I still have not heard a word from them on my missing 2 BTCs!! Opened 5 support tickets with all the information! It seems they sent the 2 btcs to a different address to the 1 i gave them and that is in the confirmation email. All is clearly visible in the Blockchain!! What a way to run an exchange!! They are looking more and more like outright scammers by the day!!!

We are extremely sorry for the issues that you are facing currently. We are solving the complaints that have been registered on coins-e support desk and Bitcointalk. If you still may have issues, please do PM us with the transactions ids and coins' name. We will resolve the issues as soon as possible.

There were software issues with Dogecoin which were resolved.

We have high volume of new users registering with Coins-e and most of the delays in transactions are due to this volume.We are at the same time, restructuring the exchange to support this high volume. We again apologize for any delay that you face in this process.
Thank you for your support.

Your full of shit.....!

We are extremely sorry for the issues that you are facing currently. We are solving the complaints that have been registered on coins-e support desk and Bitcointalk. If you still may have issues, please do PM us with the transactions ids and coins' name. We will resolve the issues as soon as possible.

There were software issues with Dogecoin which were resolved.

We have high volume of new users registering with Coins-e and most of the delays in transactions are due to this volume.We are at the same time, restructuring the exchange to support this high volume. We again apologize for any delay that you face in this process.
Thank you for your support.

They finally updated there page to "coins that are under maintenance"

Can't believe it's taken them this long, along with hundreds of tweets, posts, tickets, emails and maybe even some phone calls to do something

 ???  Whats been updated?  that page still looks the same as it did last month and month before that, what are you seeing?

Just to ad:

I bought some bigger amont at coins-e (some hundreds of mio IFC) and tried to withdraw it in december 2013. They did not pay out but and did not answer on any support ticket until today.

Did they change the adress? I can't get to coins-e.com! ???

I just clickt on the adress on mine signature, and got to their trade-site.
Nevermind, i just withdrawed some coins, let's see how long it will take before i receive it.

Did you send it from cryptsy?

We are extremely sorry for the issues that you are facing currently. We are solving the complaints that have been registered on coins-e support desk and Bitcointalk. If you still may have issues, please do PM us with the transactions ids and coins' name. We will resolve the issues as soon as possible.

There were software issues with Dogecoin which were resolved.

We have high volume of new users registering with Coins-e and most of the delays in transactions are due to this volume.We are at the same time, restructuring the exchange to support this high volume. We again apologize for any delay that you face in this process.
Thank you for your support.

tried to withdraw some net coins it been 48 hours and still have not receive anything as of yet.

I'm just like you, I got more than 60K NET and the withdrawal appears as confirmed and with a Tx ID that is not valid in the block expler

Me too! NET withdrawal appears as confirmed.
But, TX ID  is not valid in the block expler. Transaction not found.

I requested 0.04324365 BTC withdrawal to my btc wallet but it just says initiated and under the token where usualy is txid it says null ?

I deposited 5934.06 WDC one day ago, but it not reflected in my account.

No response on my 3 tickets, like nothing going on. >:(

Almost a month trying to log in to the website to withdraw all my funds, and i can't.. because i got 2 step authentication issue..
i have made almost 4 ticket in the past month... without a response, i send many emails to the website and admins.. = same result..
i tried to contact them though twitter.. guess what = NOTHING!!!
I THINK THE SITE IS A SCAM!! we SHOULD do some actions against them..

Me too! NET withdrawal appears as confirmed.
But, TX ID  is not valid in the block expler. Transaction not found.

I requested 0.04324365 BTC withdrawal to my btc wallet but it just says initiated and under the token where usualy is txid it says null ?

Have some additional intel for you folks, from twitter this time.  Quoting verbatim:

digit ‏@_digit_ Mar 3

@SaifAltimimi seems 2 b owner/operator of #coinse - http://imgur.com/ksb2gxL (http://imgur.com/ksb2gxL)  http://www.meetup.com/BitcoinKW/ (http://www.meetup.com/BitcoinKW/)  #bitcoinkw #Kitchener #Waterloo @calyxxx

This might indeed be the current owner/operator of coins-e exchange.

any news regarding the withdrawal with invalid txid??
mine still there, not fixed.

hey guys,

Saif Altimimi here - I don't mind helping resolve these issues you are experiencing but please understand I am not the current owner of Coins-E. My only affiliation was interest in the business and helping out with some high level business development. I am obviously concerned with the integrity of the business but I want to make sure that their is no malicious intent going on. I can assure you with certainty that your coins are not lost/stolen or being used in any shady activity. The issues Coins-E is having is that of man power. The current owner is Vignesh who also runs Bitaccess.co and is in school full-time - as you can all imagine running a digital currency exchange requires a team committed to it's users. Part of the arrangement with Vignesh was for me to come on board and help evolve Coins-E into a transparent and reliable exchange. With that being said, at this point in time I have very limited control of company. I am in direct talks with Vignesh and have sent him several messages with regards to fixing these issues. If you are still not able to resolve them within 24 hours send me a direct message here and I will make sure that each and every one of you receives what is right and fair.

cheers!

Hey everybody!

Just an update on the situation. I sat with Vignesh today and we put together a support team and process to handle all current requests. Some of the issues are as silly as pressing a button on our end and others require an update of the entire blockchain. Right now most issues have already been resolved. We are updating the Doge Coin and Bitcoin client to prevent a fork and 0-conf issues. Any delays in Doge coin or Bitcoin withdrawals will be processed within the next 24-48 hours. If you're having specific issues please refer to:

https://coins-e.freshdesk.com


Thanks for your patience!

Hey everybody!

Just an update on the situation. I sat with Vignesh today and we put together a support team and process to handle all current requests. Some of the issues are as silly as pressing a button on our end and others require an update of the entire blockchain. Right now most issues have already been resolved. We are updating the Doge Coin and Bitcoin client to prevent a fork and 0-conf issues. Any delays in Doge coin or Bitcoin withdrawals will be processed within the next 24-48 hours. If you're having specific issues please refer to:

https://coins-e.freshdesk.com


Thanks for your patience!

If you get control of Coin-E make sure to start a announce thread and post in this thread as I and I'm sure others would remove it from our "stay the Fuck away" list. I have removed the warning from my sig as it looks like it is moving in the right direction.

They havnt sorted anything out. Complete silence and still missing 2 BTCs!!! This is outrageous!!! Fucking proper SCAM exchange!!! STAY AWAY FROM COINS-E LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!!!!!!

They havnt sorted anything out. Complete silence and still missing 2 BTCs!!! This is outrageous!!! Fucking proper SCAM exchange!!! STAY AWAY FROM COINS-E LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!!!!!!

Ive got something to add here!

They have locked up my 1.46437914 bit coins for over a week now. I have no outstanding offers/trades

I sent 3 support messages which were ignored.

I then sent another support message being a bit threatening to expose them on forums. They responded almost immediately (by closing my ticket with no explanation)

http://www.imagebam.com/image/fc45b6329548492

AND

http://www.imagebam.com/image/17faf4329548503

http://www.imagebam.com/image/17faf4329548503
http://www.imagebam.com/remove/329548503/6c37ab6a81b930ae1c57c95b74da645e

Whats going on, is there something wrong with their system which causes coins to get lost or sent to someone else? And they don't compensate for it?  *** somethings fishing with coins-e. 

  Ticket #10135  Dark coins not showing up. 

Darkcoin block chain explorer shows 386 confirmations, and that the output to the Coin-e wallet has not been redeemed. 

Is the wallet not connected?  Not connected to the correct chain? 

  I'm sure I'm not the only one with a problem..   

  Ticket #10135  Dark coins not showing up. 

Darkcoin block chain explorer shows 386 confirmations, and that the output to the Coin-e wallet has not been redeemed. 

Is the wallet not connected?  Not connected to the correct chain? 

  I'm sure I'm not the only one with a problem..   

    This problem has been solved.  Thanks guys.  I've deposited and withdrawn other coins with out problems.  I have noticed every so often you need to use their tool to run the block chain and get things confirmed.  I've used it a couple of times and the coins show up in my balance in seconds.  Thanks for a good exchange. 

I deposited 145K DOGE there 4 days, never reflecting.
They don't respond to my ticket.

:o :o ::) ::)

People still use this exchange? Amazing!

I just had $500 in coins stolen by them.

2 days ago they decided they didn't like my email address when I tried to transfer an alt coin to a private wallet.   They asked for another one and when I asked what was wrong with the one I signed up with and offered another to try, they deleted my account and that was the last I heard.  No followups to any of my emails.

Now I have no access to my coins.

Stay away from this scam.

have you tried to contact them by phone? you may try

My issue was resolved... after many phone calls, twitter messages, one support ticket, facebook messages and posts, and forum posts. I suggest anyone that has a problem to email saif@coins-e.com ... It seems he is in charge and has the ability to make financial transactions within the company. For what it's worth, he was very nice on the phone and emphasized he was working on improving customer support. More FWIW... it seems this site is not a scam site, but is just somewhat mismanaged and under staffed.

I will remove my prior posts/tweets/facebook posts as promised.

Thank you coins-e.com for clearing this up.

Sooo...this is the guy that stole my Litecoins >:(

Could you explain a little on that?  Is CoinHoarder involved in coins-e?  ???

My issue was resolved... after many phone calls, twitter messages, one support ticket, facebook messages and posts, and forum posts. I suggest anyone that has a problem to email saif@coins-e.com ... It seems he is in charge and has the ability to make financial transactions within the company. For what it's worth, he was very nice on the phone and emphasized he was working on improving customer support. More FWIW... it seems this site is not a scam site, but is just somewhat mismanaged and under staffed.

I will remove my prior posts/tweets/facebook posts as promised.

Thank you coins-e.com for clearing this up.

What # did you call?

Btw - I'm pretty sure what they are doing is taking peoples coins. Then when people complain they ignore them unless they are very persistent. At a certain point they will start paying back some (or in some cases all coins). However, for everyone else that was unfortunate to not follow-up they just keep the coins. This is classic gox'ing, except on a much smaller scale.

I can't remember as that was a long time ago. I did some investigation into the site and found its previous owner who is involved at a new start up. I then posted things on his page via social media stating he was a scammer and to give me back my money. He got in contact with me and explained he had sold the business to Saif and gave me his contact information including his phone number. I then called Saif and he fixed the problem rather quickly. Unfortunately, I have since deleted my twitter account so those messages are no longer available. I will post what I remember though.

Since it appears he's still selectively scamming people, I will dox him. This is the "Saif" I referred to in my posts:

Saif Altimimi
https://www.facebook.com/altimimi
https://twitter.com/Alltims

Hey guys,

Saif Altimimi here. I'm not the owner of Coins-e - I don't actually have much access to the backend. I was involved as a potential investor/acquirer as the owner was interested in off loading it. I'm still doing due diligence on the business and of course this is a serious concern. I have taken a look briefly at the business and funds do not seem to be missing... the company right now seriously lacks dev resources and part of my involvement was to assist with this. I've been getting a flood of tweets - if you want to contact the real owner you can tweet him here. He's based in ottawa and working on the Bitaccess ATMs.

https://twitter.com/vigsun

http://www.vigneshsundaresan.com/

You can keep tweeting me but there really is nothing I can do.. I've forwarded all your concerns to Vignesh and am waiting a reply. I will keep you guys notified on the status but there is no need to worry in regards to missing funds - coins-e does not operate on a fractional reserve and all user funds are still deposited (to my limited knowledge).


Edit: more info on reddit after googling -  http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1v1ec1/ama_request_someone_from_coinse/

That twitter account doesn't exist anymore, and neither does that facebook account. He obviously closed them as soon as people started making comments on them about him not processing coins-e withdrawals.

This user who claims to be Saif Altimimi denies he's the coins-e owner and claims it's owned by a twitter user called vigsun.


Vigsun's first tweet says "Verifying myself: My Bitcoin username is vignesh", so he's involved in crypto

https://twitter.com/vigsun/status/482690996241580032

Contacting the vigsun twitter account might be worth a shot.

Thanks for jogging my memory a little bit.

Vignesh is the guy I first got ahold of. He told me he sold the exchange to Saif and gave me Saif's phone number. Soon after I called Saif, my withdraw was processed (I kind of ambushed him on social media too.)

I still have Vignesh as a Facebook friend from when I was doing my investigation... that is how I originally got in touch with him. He seemed generally helpful, and not until I got in contact with Saif did the problem resolve itself. IMO, from my experience with the two (at least at the time I contacted him)... I think that Saif was the owner of Coins-e.

Interesting enough, they are FB friends as I see I have 1 mutual friend with Saif... and it is Vignesh. I guess Saif has more strict privacy settings on his FB account now, and that is why you guys can't see his profile. It still exists though. I guess it is possible that they are both in on it. I think it has to be at least one of the two of them if not both, seeing as though they are both pointing a finger at each other. I am leaning towards Saif though, because I think it was more likely that he was the one that processed my withdraw manually.

I have 250k in my coins-e wallet. did not looked at them for 3 years. Now finally it has some value but than I discover that this site is closed and my coins are gone?


sent this guy Vignesh a message on FB  and twitter, but have little hope as he seems to be offline for the last month ( what a suprise)


Will report any news.

Did you get to manage to get a refund or something? Or a reply from the guys?

To Everyone who lost money on coins-e.com:

Vignesh (coins-e founder) is trying a new scam ICO. Are you interested to help preventing him from scamming more people?

He is doing a reddit AMA on Feb 8th! Confront him and demand your money back!

(this is his ICO: https://lendroid.com/token_launch)


We have a website to track and organize legal action: lendroidscam.com

Metakovan, the mystery Beeple art buyer, and his NFT/DeFi scheme

Last week, a crypto whale going by the moniker “Metakovan” bought a Beeple artwork via Christie’s auction for $69 million—$60 million in ETH and $9 million in fees, also in ETH*—outbidding a surprised Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, in the last minute.

    7/12 I tried to update my bid to $70 MIL at the last 30 secs yet my offer was somehow not accepted by Christie’s system even though there was still 20 secs left.
    — Justin Sun🌞 (@justinsuntron) March 12, 2021

After the barest amount of digging, I am going to hazard a guess that the mystery Beeple buyer is Vignesh Sundaresan, a crypto entrepreneur who has been in the crypto landscape for about seven years.  

It’s pretty obvious, really. Metakovan has given a few audio interviews. And if you compare those to previous Sundaresan interviews, like this one, it’s the same voice—and the same crypto origin story.

In a recent interview with the Good Time Show, for instance, Metakovan says he got into crypto in 2013, lived in Canada for several years, and then left for Singapore in 2017 because crypto regulations in North America were too “unclear.” That’s basically Sundaresan’s background as well.

Putting aside the matter of why Sundaresan would want to keep his real identity cloaked in the first place, the next question is the grift—how is he spinning a profit off of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs?

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first…
Who is Sundaresan?

According to the bio on his website, Vignesh Sundaresan is behind several crypto startups.

He co-founded BitAccess, an early bitcoin ATM company in Canada. BitAccess was accepted into the Y Combinator startup accelerator in June 2014, according to Coindesk.  

And then, in January 2017, he founded the Singapore-based Lendroid Foundation. The firm raised $47.5 million (50,000 ETH) in a two-day initial coin offering in February 2018, according to CryptoRank.

He also founded consulting firm Portkey Technologies and claims to have backed several popular crypto projects, including Ethereum, Polkadot, Dfinity, Omisego and Decentraland.

Going back further, Sundaresan launched crypto exchange Coins-e in Ontario in 2013. (Coincidentally, the same year that Gerald Cotten and Michael Patryn launched their failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX.)
Coins-e, a defunct Canadian exchange

Several Coins-e users have taken to social media to complain about losing money on Coins-e, calling it a scam and warning others to watch out. (See Reddit—here and here—and BitcoinTalk.)  

The posts on r/dogecoin are the most alarming. Coins-e clients report having their dogecoin disappear. Wireguysny described watching 1.3 million DOGE evaporate and the frustration of being unable to reach tech support to get to the bottom of the matter.

Xclusive2 wrote: “I’ve had just about enough of of Coins-e millions of coins missing, no reply from support ever! the reason is because it’s a one man operation. the problem is this joker is stealing and trading everyone’s coins when and how he feels to make himself rich he knows that Doge is worth a lot of BTC in large volumes.”

Sundaresan denies being the guy who allegedly ripped people off. According to him, Coins-e was sold to a company called Casa Crypto in Waterloo. The transfer was overseen by law firm LaBarge Weinstein, he claims.

“Since it was sold, I have not been associated with Coins-E. Allegations of a scam are FUD,” he told me.

I am so far unable to confirm that sale. I can’t find any announcement or press release on the sale. The Coins-e website no longer exists, and an archive of the site’s “About” page from 2016 doesn’t reveal who is behind the operation. I can’t find a company called “Casa Crypto” in Waterloo either.

Sundaresan offered to show me proof of the sale via a video call. I told him I was open to that, but he hasn’t gotten back to me to set up a time. He did not comment on whether he was Metakovan.

Meanwhile, I’ve looked up the domain registration for Coins-e.com. The site was registered in May 2013 and the only update was in May 2020—after customers complained about their coins vanishing.

The site was originally registered to Ramesh Vinayagam—the name of a famous Indian composer, per Reddit user xclusive2. Another alias perhaps? And, according to a Paste from January 2014, the site was registered to the man himself shortly before the registration was made private and Sundaresan entered the Y Combinator program.
The NFT connection

NFTs are the big thing now. They took over as the latest grift when decentralized finance, or DeFi, ran out of steam last year. Fellow nocoiner David Gerard wrote a blog post explaining how NFTs work and why digital ownership of art is utter nonsense.

“NFTs are entirely for the benefit of the crypto grifters,” he said. “The only purpose the artists serve is as aspiring suckers to pump the concept of crypto — and, of course, to buy cryptocurrency to pay for ‘minting’ NFTs.”

Stepping back, we first see the connection between Sundaresan’s startup Lendroid and NFTs in a blog post titled “Why DeFi Needs NFTs.” The post, written by his business partner Anand Venkateswaran, describes how NFTs solve the problems of DeFi, such as flash crashes, volatility, and governance. (Venkateswaran, a comms person, also has a pseudonym—he goes by Twobadour Pannar.)

Lendroid powers WhaleStreet, an Ethereum-based platform for swapping ERC20 tokens—that’s the standard for fungible Ethereum tokens. WhaleStreet has its own native “yield-farming token” called Shrimp.

Metakovan is also behind Singapore-based Metapurse, a crypto-based investment firm. Metapurse’s mission, according to its website, is to “democratize access and ownership to artwork.” The firm has been acquiring NFTs. It purchased Beeple’s “Everdays: 20 Collection” artworks for $2.2 million in December.

Metapurse has taken Beeple’s multiple artworks, or NFTs, along with three virtual museums, and combined everything into a “massive bundle.” Would you like to invest in this wonderful package? You can. All you have to do is stock up on Metapurse’s new B20 token.

This blog post on the Metapurse substack lays out the grand plan:

    “We believe we truly achieved this with B.20 — the name of a massive NFT bundle we are fractionalizing so that everyone can have ownership over the first large scale public art project within the metaverse. It is important to note that we’re fractionalizing ownership, not the assets themselves. These fractions will be available as 10 million B.20 tokens, and can be referred to as the “keys” to this digital vault.”

Number go up

The name of this game is “number go up.” This is about pumping B20, so holders and Metapurse can benefit when they go to sell the token—i.e., get more ETH, buy more NFTs, rinse, repeat.

The token distribution is something to pay attention to. Metakovan has 59% of all the B20 tokens. Why does he own the majority of tokens? As he explains it, that is to prevent any single person from owning more than half of B20 tokens—and snatching up all this wonderful artwork for themselves. The idea is to decentralize and democratize art, only Metakovan controls the token supply.

What’s interesting is that Beeple, the creator of the artwork, is actually a business partner of Metakovan’s. He owns 2% of all the B20 tokens. I’m sure there is no conflict of interest here.

WhaleStreet hosted the B20 sale on Jan. 23. Apparently, 1.6 million B20 tokens were sold to the public for $0.36 per token. After the Christie’s auction, B20 shot up to $23. It’s now down to around $16, according to Coinmarketcap. That’s a nice profit for anyone who got in early—and worth over $3 million for Beeple, if he dumps his coins quickly and there’s enough liquidity to actually sell them.

    It was a privilege to engineer the largest bundle ever, and to also host the #B20 sale portal. We've made it bright and shiny. Come check in at 6:30 pm CST at https://t.co/UO5YO6l628 https://t.co/wvA6vQraam
    — WhaleStreet (@WhaleStreetoffl) January 23, 2021

At the end of the day, this is a straight-up initial coin offering-style index fund to speculate on NFTs, with a twist: Metakovan owns most of the tokens—and he has an existing business relationship with the artist.

I wonder if Metakovan anticipated having to pay this much ETH to Beeple for his “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”? Metakovan knew he needed the artwork for his index fund. But did he expect Sun to keep bidding the price up to the very last second?

Also, in an earlier version of this post, I questioned why we can’t see the blockchain transaction—which was supposed to be 42,329.453 ETH. If we can’t see the transaction, how do we know that Beeple actually got paid for the sale and is not in cahoots with Metakovan to make number go up?

I now have a theory.

As Christie’s spells out in its conditions of sale, the transaction needs to come directly from a digital wallet maintained with Coinbase Custody Trust, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets Services, Gemini Trust Company or Paxos Trust Company. And it sounds like the funds may even have gone into Christie’s escrow wallet.

Anyhow, if both parties had Coinbase accounts, the exchange could just change the database records off-chain to flip account balances. In this way, Coinbase acts like a second layer, and you wouldn’t see the ETH transaction.

When all was said and done, the Christie’s auction turned out to be a sweet deal for Beeple who now has a reason to shill crypto to his 2 million Instagram followers. And Metakovan gets publicity for his ICO project, so his own personal B20 holdings rise in value.

    holy fuck.
    — beeple (@beeple) March 11, 2021

Since I published this article, Sundaresan has written to me and asked me to take it down. I refused, but agreed to make edits if he could point to anything specific that was wrong—so far, he hasn’t.

I’m posting Sundaresan’s full comment on the matter below:

“Hello Amy, I am replying to address your concern about coins-e as relating to me. Definitely there are several factual inaccuracies in your blog post and your tweets. I would appreciate if you would temporarily pull down the posts until you have the facts right, as such a post causes unnecessary FUD and obviously it is your choice to not take it down. But if you do it will show that your intentions are in the right place and that you are looking to have a conversation. Regarding coins-e, it dates back to days when the crypto industry was very unorganized and the service itself was quite small and did not warrant a press release when the sale was done. The service was not even big enough to attract the crypto media attention, the service started growing bigger as the Casa crypto was taking over. The transfer happened through a well documented process with assistance from lawyers on both sides. Post the sale I had moved on to build Bitaccess, backed by YCombinator and I have had no link to Casa Crypto after the sale and I have repeatedly addressed this issue via newsletters and Q&As. For the other parts of your question, I believe it shall be better answered by contacting @metapurse and @twobadour directly.“

————-

(March 14, 2021—This article has been updated to add comments from Sundaresan and more detail about Coins-e. Additional updates made later in the day to theorize on why the transaction did not show up on the blockchain, add some Gerard quotes and spruce of the ending a bit.)

(*March 15, 2021—Christie’s accepted its fees in ether—the native crypto of the Ethereum network. When Christie’s originally announced the sale, the auction house said it would accept crypto as payment, but the buyer’s premium had to be in real money. Later it changed its policy to accept ETH, according to Bloomberg.)

When Sundaresan created the B20 project, he gave himself 59% of the outstanding tokens and 2% of it went to Beeple.

According to an independent blogger Amy Castor, this represents a conflict of interest. The two may have been in cahoots to ensure that the ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ artwork, by Beeple, gets added to the Metapurse collection.

This scammer has another article about him and his $69million Beeple NFT purchase. 
https://cryptoslate.com/metakovan-explains-why-he-paid-69-million-for-beeples-nft-artwork/

and this one
https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/the-man-who-bought-beeples-69-million-nft-reveals-his-identity-to-show-the-equalising-power-of-crypto-but-is-caught-in-a-controversy-himself/articleshow/81583375.cms




They are still scamming and Christies doesn't even realize are now a part of the scam having helped launder $69 million of cryptocurrencies and pump the price of B20 token. Beeple and Sundaresan would seem to be partners.

He saw opportunity... to steal millions in cryptocurrency from coins-e customers :D (spot the lendroid sticker)
https://i.imgur.com/ZsGTmBB.png

https://i.imgur.com/EX1n1Uc.png
https://twitter.com/ahcastor/status/1378894958510317569