{"id":21638,"date":"2022-01-27T12:31:34","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T12:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=21638"},"modified":"2022-04-20T06:18:19","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T06:18:19","slug":"michael-patryn-of-quadrigacx-is-back-as-0xsifu-from-defi-protocol-wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/01\/27\/michael-patryn-of-quadrigacx-is-back-as-0xsifu-from-defi-protocol-wonderland\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Patryn of QuadrigaCX is back \u2014 as 0xSifu from DeFi protocol Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Patryn is a convicted fraudster. He was the guy at collapsed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX<\/a> who isn\u2019t<\/i> alleged to have faked his own death.<\/p>\n

Patryn is back on the crypto scene \u2014 as DeFi guy 0xSifu, most recently of protocol Wonderland (TIME token).<\/p>\n

(I really wasn’t expecting anything new in the Quadriga saga. I should have guessed it’d be from Patryn.)<\/p>\n

Patryn, who was then known as Omar Dhanani, was convicted in 2004 of credit card fraud and served 18 months in prison. Dhanani had also been active on a high-yield investment (i.e.,<\/em> Ponzi scheme) site called TalkGold, where he met Gerry Cotten of Quadriga in 2003. The two ran a Liberty Reserve exchanger called Midas Gold from 2008 to 2013. They founded Quadriga in 2014 \u2014 though Patryn claims he wasn’t actively involved in the exchange since 2016. [Amy Castor<\/i><\/a>; <\/i>Amy Castor<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

I was wondering what Patryn had been up to after Quadriga \u2014 serial fraudsters like Patryn don\u2019t just stop<\/i>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ZachXBT posted on Twitter this morning: [Twitter<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

This needs to be shared. @0xSifu\u00a0 is the Co-founder of QuadrigaCX, Michael Patryn. If you are unfamiliar that is the Canadian exchange that collapsed in 2019 after the founder Gerald Cotten disappeared with $169m. I have confirmed this with Daniele over messages.<\/p>\n

Prior to Quadriga, Michael helped run a identity theft ring called shadowcrew in which he later plead guilty to<\/p>\n

While Dani insists it is fine he puts both his rep on the line along with most importantly all the money people have deposited in his protocols at risk<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wonderland founder Daniele Sestagalli confirmed that he knew 0xSifu was Patryn, but thought even convicted felons deserved a chance: [Twitter<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

I want everyone to know that I was aware of this and decided that the past of an individual doesn\u2019t determine their future. I choose to value the time we spent together without knowing his past more than anything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a lot to be said for redemption and forgiveness when someone’s done their time \u2014 but then there’s making a serial fraud with a track record like Patryn’s a core developer with treasury access.<\/p>\n

Sestagalli later posted an official statement from the Wonderland project: [blog post<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Now having taken some time to reflect, I have decided that he needs to step down till a vote for his confirmation is in place. Wonderland has the say to who manages its treasury not me or the rest of the wonderland team.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wonderland forked in September 2021 from hilariously blatant Ponzi scheme Olympus (OHM). Olympus is the source of CoinDesk\u2019s worst take ever:\u00a0 [CoinDesk<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s a Ponzi scheme. But who cares? So are the dollars in your pocket.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite its origins, Wonderland was presented to the DeFi crypto degens<\/del> community as a more trustworthy DAO \u2014 because Sestagalli was a known, identified and traceable person. Sestagalli being “fully doxxed” helped Wonderland\u2019s popularity.<\/p>\n

This is even with Sestagalli’s long trail of unfortunately failed projects in the crypto space \u2014 e.g.<\/i>, Zulu Republic in 2018. [Medium<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Wonderland is \u201ctrustworthy\u201d only relative to other DeFi protocols. It was offering 88,000% interest in December \u2014 blatantly Ponzi rates of return. [CryptosRUs<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Wonderland failed to deliver these fabulous returns \u2014 it recently suffered a liquidation cascade, and the TIME token fell below the value of its supposed backing tokens. How unfortunate! [CoinDesk<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto was a victim of Quadriga, and appeared in the Dead Man\u2019s Switch<\/i><\/a> documentary about the exchange. Monahan has continued to trace activity by Patryn. One Ethereum address she tagged in 2019 as Patryn\u2019s has remained active to date. [Twitter thread<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

0xSifu\u2019s wallet had over $450 million in various tokens earlier this morning. As I write this, it’s at $150 million. [Debank<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Become<\/a>

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I was wondering what Patryn had been up to after Quadriga \u2014 serial fraudsters like Patryn don\u2019t just stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2691,1552,1164,2692,938,2693,2689,2690],"class_list":["post-21638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-daniele-sestagalli","tag-defi","tag-michael-patryn","tag-olympus","tag-quadrigacx","tag-taylor-monahan","tag-wonderland","tag-zachxbt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/dhanani-patryn.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21638"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22597,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21638\/revisions\/22597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}