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<\/p>\n ESTONIA, 2017:<\/b> Send your money on holiday to sunny e-Estonia, the e-country with blockchains for e-verything! Billions of dirty dollars flowed through the Estonian office of Danske Bank \u2014 and the crooks are using crypto as a vehicle.<\/p>\n Crypto companies with an Estonian license are using those credentials to commit fraud elsewhere \u2014 so the Estonian regulator has stripped more than 500 companies of their local permits.<\/p>\n There’s another 900 crypto companies registered in Estonia. More than half have no staff or operations in Estonia, so are likely to lose their licenses too. [Bloomberg<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n The Danske Bank money laundering scandal came to light in mid-2018, after a customer blew the whistle. Estonia started investigating around the same time. [Bloomberg<\/i><\/a>, 2018<\/i>]<\/p>\n Swedish banks Swedbank and SEB fueled a similar scam in Latvia \u2014 30 million EUR lost to “crypto exchange companies, letter box companies and Maltese banks.”<\/p>\n Warning signals included … implausible interest rates! The excuse for the Ponzi-like yields was that the money was going to short-term loans to startup companies.<\/p>\n “At the address in Riga where the cryptocurrency company is registered, there is today only an old abandoned factory building in concrete from the Soviet era, which is completely empty.” [SVT<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n SVT says: “Cryptocurrency is, according to financial crime experts, a strong warning signal about suspected crime and money laundering.” Ya don’t say.<\/i><\/p>\n Just as crypto is the history of financial scams on fast forward, Decentralised Finance<\/a> is the history of crypto scams on fast forward \u2014 first as farce, then as bigger farce.<\/p>\n How DeFi works:<\/p>\n The purpose seems to be to skim dimes from suckers, and funnel them to Andreessen Horowitz. If you ever wonder “why did COMP think X was a good idea,” that’s the answer.<\/p>\n Crypto fans look forward to luring fresh suckers into crypto by talking up the unfeasible interest rates on DeFi \u2014 “much like the ICO bubble.” [Twitter, <\/i>archive<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n It is difficult to overstate how laughably illegal it would be to run an “investment” market in this manner outside crypto \u2014 or inside crypto, if the SEC ever notices. This makes the Telegram ICO scam<\/a> look defensible.<\/p>\n If you think DeFi is a good investment vehicle, and you don’t know who the sucker at the table is \u2014 it’s you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tried to pay for my coffee at @Starbucks<\/a> with $DAI<\/a> but the stupid barista said they couldn't accept it. Made the manager come out and he acted like he'd never even heard of @MakerDAO<\/a> <\/p>\n I'm suing.<\/p>\n — NFTKaren (@defikaren) June 21, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/squiddy-mask.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMy “not buying cryptos to launder money” shirt is raising a lot of questions answered by the shirt<\/h3>\n
\nESTONIA, 2020:<\/b> I am shocked, shocked<\/i> to find that these “crypto” companies are money laundering.<\/i><\/p>\nGosh, this poker table seems completely devoid of suckers<\/h3>\n
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