Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss the tools they use to investigate various frauds and scams.
This podcast was recorded on July 11th and 16th, 2024.
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English Transcript:
00:00:05:08 - 00:00:11:19
Cas Piancey
Welcome back everyone. I am Cas Piancey. I'm joined, as usual, by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today?
00:00:11:19 - 00:00:13:08
Bennett Tomlin
I'm doing well. How are you, Cas?
00:00:13:08 - 00:00:15:22
Cas Piancey
I'm doing good. We are discussing
00:00:15:22 - 00:00:20:10
Cas Piancey
something near and dear to both of our hearts, I think. And I mean that legitimately today.
00:00:20:10 - 00:00:22:17
Cas Piancey
as opposed to sarcastic, like, most days,
00:00:22:17 - 00:00:27:16
Cas Piancey
going to be talking about some of the tools that we utilize on a day to day basis, more or less,
00:00:27:19 - 00:00:30:15
Cas Piancey
to look into companies and individuals,
00:00:30:15 - 00:00:31:17
Cas Piancey
that are
00:00:31:17 - 00:00:34:07
Cas Piancey
involved in a lot of the investigations that we conduct.
00:00:34:07 - 00:00:39:05
Cas Piancey
for example, let's just say someone like Justin Sun or a company like tether,
00:00:39:05 - 00:00:46:09
Cas Piancey
so we're going to go ahead and just take a look at some of these tools, how we use them, show them to you guys so that you have an opportunity
00:00:46:09 - 00:00:54:16
Cas Piancey
if you ever feel like it, if you're doing some sort of due diligence or you're interested in a company before, I don't know, before investing or before,
00:00:54:16 - 00:00:56:06
Cas Piancey
talking to someone about them.
00:00:56:06 - 00:01:02:10
Cas Piancey
if you're interested in any of this stuff, this should give you some sort of leg up on at least understanding something about them.
00:01:02:10 - 00:01:06:03
Cas Piancey
At this point, I think it'd be good for Bennett to kind of talk to us about,
00:01:06:03 - 00:01:08:14
Cas Piancey
just the beginnings of of
00:01:08:14 - 00:01:12:21
Cas Piancey
you, how he ends up investigating or what
00:01:12:21 - 00:01:14:19
Cas Piancey
many of our viewers might end up
00:01:14:19 - 00:01:19:03
Cas Piancey
doing if at the very first steps of looking into a company or person.
00:01:19:03 - 00:01:28:09
Bennett Tomlin
one of the first things I want to talk about is that sometimes it can be a little tricky to figure out what company you're actually dealing with here. Let's start with this
00:01:28:09 - 00:01:40:07
Bennett Tomlin
generic company that we've perhaps talked about once or twice in this podcast before Bitfinex. And if you just go looking in corporate registries for the string Bitfinex, you're going to
00:01:40:07 - 00:01:46:09
Bennett Tomlin
miss most of the relevant corporate entities because very few of them are actually called Bitfinex.
00:01:46:11 - 00:01:59:00
Bennett Tomlin
However, most companies will, on their website give away what the actual name is. Sometimes it'll be down here in the footer. If you look at the copyright information, this tells you that it's tied to iFinex incorporated.
00:01:59:00 - 00:02:05:07
Bennett Tomlin
But alternatively, you can look at the terms or conditions or the privacy statement. And we can see here.
00:02:05:07 - 00:02:11:00
Bennett Tomlin
This site is owned and operated by iFinex Incorporated and its affiliates, including
00:02:11:00 - 00:02:13:12
Bennett Tomlin
BFXWW incorporated.
00:02:14:03 - 00:02:15:09
Bennett Tomlin
BFXNA incorporated
00:02:15:09 - 00:02:19:21
Bennett Tomlin
Unus Sed Leo Limited and iFinex financial Technologies Limited.
00:02:19:21 - 00:02:23:09
Bennett Tomlin
And once you kind of have this set of entities,
00:02:23:09 - 00:02:34:21
Bennett Tomlin
you are at a good place to start, especially if, like Bitfinex is really generous in this case here, where they're even giving you like these specific corporation numbers and where they're registered.
00:02:34:21 - 00:02:46:14
Bennett Tomlin
Not all places are going to do that, but at the very least, having the actual name for the company is a good place to start, because then you can take that name to places like OpenCorporates.
00:02:46:14 - 00:02:48:04
Bennett Tomlin
I think Cas wanted to talk about.
00:02:48:04 - 00:02:50:20
Cas Piancey
Open Corporates is pretty great.
00:02:50:20 - 00:02:52:20
Cas Piancey
in that you can definitely use it
00:02:52:20 - 00:02:54:20
Cas Piancey
for free. You don't need to sign up.
00:02:54:20 - 00:03:05:19
Cas Piancey
I'm sure there's some benefits to, becoming a power user for something like this, but generally you can just type in companies or for that matter, officers. So we'll go ahead and put officers this time.
00:03:05:19 - 00:03:07:23
Cas Piancey
Bennett brought up just now,
00:03:07:23 - 00:03:08:19
Cas Piancey
Bitfinex
00:03:08:19 - 00:03:09:11
Cas Piancey
and
00:03:09:11 - 00:03:10:15
Cas Piancey
Bitfinex.
00:03:10:15 - 00:03:17:04
Cas Piancey
we, we happen to know who their officers are. I think it might be listed on their, on their company website. Still,
00:03:17:04 - 00:03:25:05
Cas Piancey
if not, we we happen we happen to know who they are. So we're going to go ahead and type in one of their company officers into open corporates.
00:03:25:06 - 00:03:26:09
Cas Piancey
Jean Carlo
00:03:26:09 - 00:03:32:22
Cas Piancey
Dev, assignee. And we're going to search all jurisdictions. We're not going to try to hinder what we are shown.
00:03:32:22 - 00:03:33:23
Cas Piancey
And there you go.
00:03:33:23 - 00:03:35:11
Cas Piancey
Jean Carlo Dev assignee.
00:03:36:12 - 00:03:37:03
Cas Piancey
That's new
00:03:37:03 - 00:03:37:19
Cas Piancey
actually.
00:03:37:19 - 00:03:38:04
Cas Piancey
What.
00:03:38:10 - 00:03:45:16
Cas Piancey
I mean, so I mean, this is kind of a perfect example. I haven't looked for Jean Carlo. Assignee, probably in a very, very long time.
00:03:45:16 - 00:03:51:10
Cas Piancey
he's listed twice in this database, one with a Canadian company. Generally, Canadian companies have these
00:03:51:10 - 00:03:54:15
Cas Piancey
this weird numbering thing instead of actually going by names.
00:03:54:15 - 00:03:56:20
Cas Piancey
so this is not no longer active, but
00:03:56:20 - 00:03:59:13
Cas Piancey
in the past two years, he has apparently
00:03:59:13 - 00:04:03:00
Cas Piancey
created a company called the Cryptocurrency Association.
00:04:03:00 - 00:04:03:20
Cas Piancey
It is a non
00:04:03:20 - 00:04:06:17
Cas Piancey
profit and it is located
00:04:06:17 - 00:04:07:10
Cas Piancey
in
00:04:07:10 - 00:04:15:06
Cas Piancey
California. Now, we can't obviously be 100% sure that this is him. There could be another Giancarlo Devasini
00:04:15:06 - 00:04:18:19
Cas Piancey
creating cryptocurrency related companies. But we're going to go ahead and type in
00:04:18:19 - 00:04:19:16
Cas Piancey
this
00:04:19:16 - 00:04:20:09
Cas Piancey
although
00:04:20:09 - 00:04:21:11
Cas Piancey
I want to pause there.
00:04:21:11 - 00:04:23:11
Cas Piancey
So what this provides us
00:04:23:11 - 00:04:25:08
Cas Piancey
is it does give us an address.
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Cas Piancey
This is likely to.
00:04:26:15 - 00:04:28:05
Cas Piancey
Ban it. Are you seeing this.
00:04:28:05 - 00:04:29:19
Cas Piancey
this company's address is
00:04:29:19 - 00:04:34:19
Cas Piancey
6547 North Academy Boulevard. USD Bank LLC,
00:04:34:19 - 00:04:40:21
Cas Piancey
which is news to me that there is something called us PT Bank LLC in
00:04:41:02 - 00:04:42:18
Bennett Tomlin
I have follow up questions.
00:04:42:18 - 00:04:47:07
Bennett Tomlin
I have follow up questions that we wouldn't normally be recording. What?
00:04:47:07 - 00:04:51:09
Cas Piancey
I'm very like we're I hopefully you're going to cut all of this.
00:04:51:09 - 00:05:01:12
Bennett Tomlin
Yes. I'm not putting in. Wait. Why is there. Why is there a registered agent with the last name son and UST USB, PT Bank LLC?
00:05:01:12 - 00:05:03:01
Bennett Tomlin
Yunfeng Son.
00:05:03:01 - 00:05:15:04
Cas Piancey
dude. So. Okay. Anyway, look, we're kind of falling down a rabbit hole right now because I haven't looked then, and I have not looked for John Carlo. Never seen me on open corporates in a very long time, obviously.
00:05:15:04 - 00:05:17:20
Cas Piancey
finding this odd company
00:05:17:20 - 00:05:18:18
Cas Piancey
right now,
00:05:18:18 - 00:05:23:19
Cas Piancey
this non-for-profit is, is throwing both of us off. Now, the beauty of what this does
00:05:23:19 - 00:05:24:10
Cas Piancey
is that
00:05:24:10 - 00:05:26:15
Cas Piancey
Open Corporates provides us a link
00:05:26:15 - 00:05:29:14
Cas Piancey
to the California Secretary of State.
00:05:29:16 - 00:05:35:03
Cas Piancey
So now we can actually type in cryptocurrency association, search for it.
00:05:35:03 - 00:05:36:10
Cas Piancey
It should pop up.
00:05:36:10 - 00:05:37:07
Cas Piancey
Here. It is.
00:05:38:19 - 00:05:39:15
Cas Piancey
and then.
00:05:40:16 - 00:05:41:03
Cas Piancey
So
00:05:41:03 - 00:05:42:15
Cas Piancey
I would have to have an account
00:05:42:15 - 00:05:43:06
Cas Piancey
with
00:05:44:13 - 00:05:50:06
Cas Piancey
to view this, this document with the the state of California. They probably had that,
00:05:50:09 - 00:05:50:21
Cas Piancey
not
00:05:50:21 - 00:05:55:23
Cas Piancey
logged in right now, but basically you can find out what's going on with this. It is
00:05:55:23 - 00:06:02:04
Cas Piancey
that is available for us to figure out. We now know more about John Carlo, never seen, at least when it comes to
00:06:02:04 - 00:06:02:18
Cas Piancey
his
00:06:02:18 - 00:06:05:06
Cas Piancey
nonprofits located in
00:06:05:06 - 00:06:05:23
Cas Piancey
America.
00:06:06:08 - 00:06:09:08
Cas Piancey
now, is that everything that we can find out? Of course not.
00:06:09:08 - 00:06:09:21
Cas Piancey
there's
00:06:09:21 - 00:06:19:14
Cas Piancey
plenty of other officers companies that we could type in related to Bitfinex tether executives there and see what's going on with them, what they're
00:06:19:14 - 00:06:22:02
Cas Piancey
different, what associations they have,
00:06:22:02 - 00:06:22:18
Cas Piancey
and
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Cas Piancey
try to go from there. So this actually provides you with a huge amount of information,
00:06:27:07 - 00:06:31:15
Cas Piancey
a like kind of a shocking amount of information that you can utilize.
00:06:32:14 - 00:06:33:10
Cas Piancey
to
00:06:33:10 - 00:06:35:15
Cas Piancey
actively search for
00:06:35:15 - 00:06:37:18
Cas Piancey
these individuals. Now, I will say
00:06:37:18 - 00:06:42:02
Cas Piancey
John Carlo Dev senior is well known for being involved with Tether and Bitfinex.
00:06:42:02 - 00:06:46:17
Cas Piancey
I am not aware of the cryptocurrency association or his involvement with it.
00:06:46:19 - 00:06:50:07
Cas Piancey
so what this is showing us is his involvement in a US
00:06:50:07 - 00:06:55:19
Cas Piancey
nonprofit. It isn't showing us his offshore activities, etc..
00:06:55:19 - 00:07:17:07
Cas Piancey
a few days ago, you saw it. We discovered this on camera where we were just trying to show our audience some of these tools. And we in, in real time, discovered something we'd never seen before. Now it involved tether and tether executives, and you can only assume where my mind immediately ran when I saw that.
00:07:17:07 - 00:07:22:02
Cas Piancey
and but this is the beauty of what we're trying to teach you guys is that
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Cas Piancey
not only do you can you use the tools, which is great, and it gives you
00:07:27:09 - 00:07:31:09
Cas Piancey
all of, all of this great data and information at your fingertips.
00:07:31:09 - 00:07:32:09
Cas Piancey
And that's lovely.
00:07:32:09 - 00:07:42:01
Cas Piancey
But you need to know how to navigate that once you've acquired that information. And that's what we were able to do with this story. So hopefully we'll we'll link to it in
00:07:42:01 - 00:07:45:22
Cas Piancey
the YouTube and on the, in the podcast information.
00:07:45:22 - 00:07:52:18
Cas Piancey
so that if you want to follow along with us while we talk about this right now and how we did it, you can there's a Protos article about it.
00:07:52:18 - 00:07:56:06
Cas Piancey
So we'll include that Protos article in The Information. But,
00:07:56:06 - 00:07:56:18
Cas Piancey
Bennett,
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Cas Piancey
after we saw after I looked up Giancarlo Devasini and saw this company in, in California pop up,
00:08:04:16 - 00:08:05:21
Cas Piancey
can you kind of
00:08:05:21 - 00:08:09:16
Cas Piancey
talk about where, where it went from from there, just at least the beginning of it?
00:08:09:19 - 00:08:24:16
Bennett Tomlin
Well, there was a bunch of strangeness around it, like we mentioned. Well, we were recording several days ago. Part of it, like the address was USDT bank over somewhere in China associated with a company in Colorado as well. There was,
00:08:24:16 - 00:08:35:14
Bennett Tomlin
like, name changes to, like, names of other cryptocurrency companies as well. And then we started looking at some of the other non tether executive names that were associated with this entity.
00:08:35:16 - 00:08:43:15
Bennett Tomlin
And like what we found was that there was a civil Rico lawsuit against one of them from Google alleging they were like,
00:08:43:15 - 00:08:47:17
Bennett Tomlin
pig butchering scammer who was running a bunch of fake things. There was like.
00:08:47:17 - 00:08:52:03
Cas Piancey
a pause in case I think people have probably watched our, Zeke Faux episode.
00:08:52:03 - 00:08:54:01
Cas Piancey
longtime listeners probably have,
00:08:54:01 - 00:08:57:20
Cas Piancey
but just to recap, pig butchering is this scam basically where,
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Cas Piancey
it involves human trafficking, more or less where people are put into
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Cas Piancey
big
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Cas Piancey
apartment blocks in,
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Cas Piancey
Myanmar or Cambodia or Laos, basically Southeast Asia.
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Cas Piancey
I'm sure there's other places to maybe the Middle East and and other areas where you can kind of get away with this stuff if you keep your cool and your wits about you.
00:09:17:05 - 00:09:30:15
Cas Piancey
and so pig butchering is when you take all these human trafficked people, force them to work on this scam and steal money from people, whether it's through fake cryptocurrency apps and being the helpful support desk or it is,
00:09:30:15 - 00:09:33:00
Cas Piancey
a love a love romance scam.
00:09:33:02 - 00:09:40:01
Cas Piancey
but yeah, I just wanted to fill everybody in on what pig butchering is. Sorry. So, yeah, Sun Yunfeng is being sued
00:09:40:01 - 00:09:41:22
Cas Piancey
by Google civil Rico case
00:09:43:15 - 00:10:08:03
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. And then one of the other names on that same list also was like, someone who had been charged with a crime. And so then when we started to see these things, it seemed increasingly less likely that these were actually the tether executives participating. And if it was the tether executives participating, it was really important we figure out what was the context of what was going on here.
00:10:08:05 - 00:10:13:05
Bennett Tomlin
and when you started to look into this a little bit, Cas, you came across some of the
00:10:13:05 - 00:10:17:17
Bennett Tomlin
corporate loopholes that made it possible for this whole thing to come together.
00:10:17:17 - 00:10:18:06
Cas Piancey
Yeah.
00:10:18:06 - 00:10:24:11
Cas Piancey
and I understand a lot of states operate on a good faith filing policy. I assume just to keep paperwork to
00:10:24:11 - 00:10:29:20
Cas Piancey
a minimum. But there are certain there's gotta be ways to do this. Better than the way. It's
00:10:29:20 - 00:10:32:01
Cas Piancey
the way it's currently implemented.
00:10:32:01 - 00:10:33:07
Cas Piancey
but, yes, basically,
00:10:33:07 - 00:10:36:01
Cas Piancey
using the tools that we already were showing everyone.
00:10:36:01 - 00:10:41:20
Cas Piancey
I found these names on open Corporate's realized this was a California based company,
00:10:41:20 - 00:10:52:00
Cas Piancey
went to the California Secretary of state website, went search for corporate filings from this company, found these corporate filings, and then found the people actually involved.
00:10:52:05 - 00:10:58:18
Cas Piancey
And once you find out those other individuals and you start looking them up and finding out that they're involved in these
00:10:58:18 - 00:11:00:13
Cas Piancey
pretty serious scams,
00:11:00:13 - 00:11:08:20
Cas Piancey
It it leads you to start wondering about the mechanics of the policy in place. So basically, these guys were able to do this because
00:11:08:20 - 00:11:11:10
Cas Piancey
when they put all the names of these tether executives
00:11:11:10 - 00:11:12:20
Cas Piancey
on the corporate filing
00:11:12:20 - 00:11:14:22
Cas Piancey
for this is not an LLC.
00:11:14:22 - 00:11:16:08
Cas Piancey
This is some kind of other
00:11:16:08 - 00:11:18:01
Cas Piancey
domestic corporation.
00:11:18:01 - 00:11:21:01
Cas Piancey
when they put all these names on, they just lied and said,
00:11:21:01 - 00:11:27:12
Cas Piancey
yeah. All these tether executives are working with us, we promise. And they cross their fingers behind their backs.
00:11:27:12 - 00:11:30:17
Cas Piancey
now, is this illegal? It is. It certainly is.
00:11:30:17 - 00:11:36:07
Cas Piancey
the California Secretary of State's office told us that it it.
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Cas Piancey
If you're if I'm a if I were to do something like this, try to do something like this. I would get charged with perjury and that can carry certain. And it's like you can do jail time, prison time for that.
00:11:47:21 - 00:11:48:14
Cas Piancey
it is,
00:11:48:14 - 00:11:50:00
Cas Piancey
it can be a real
00:11:50:00 - 00:11:51:09
Cas Piancey
serious charge. But
00:11:51:09 - 00:11:54:16
Cas Piancey
one of these gentlemen is a Chinese national.
00:11:54:16 - 00:12:01:02
Cas Piancey
and he lives in China, and he ain't getting extradited for this. And so the question becomes, what? What
00:12:01:02 - 00:12:02:04
Cas Piancey
is in place
00:12:02:04 - 00:12:03:14
Cas Piancey
to try to
00:12:03:14 - 00:12:11:02
Cas Piancey
stop this from happening? And they were semi sophisticated, for what it's worth, because in California you can't name a company bank,
00:12:11:02 - 00:12:19:20
Cas Piancey
for instance. So what did they do then? They created that company in Colorado because Colorado doesn't have a law explicitly stating that you can't name a company bank like
00:12:19:20 - 00:12:27:00
Cas Piancey
they they were sophisticated enough to know those corporate rules and set up these companies in different places within the US.
00:12:27:09 - 00:12:30:04
Cas Piancey
and I don't know what the repercussions will be, but I do think,
00:12:30:04 - 00:12:32:19
Cas Piancey
yeah, let's let's dig a little deeper because I think it's important for
00:12:32:19 - 00:12:34:02
Cas Piancey
everyone to recognize
00:12:34:02 - 00:12:37:06
Cas Piancey
how we were able to as quickly as
00:12:37:06 - 00:12:39:06
Cas Piancey
as I think I was very much
00:12:39:06 - 00:12:43:01
Cas Piancey
like, oh, I'm going to run with this is going to be crazy. I'm going to run with this story
00:12:43:01 - 00:12:43:22
Cas Piancey
within,
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Cas Piancey
I want to say, 12 to 24 hours.
00:12:46:19 - 00:12:48:19
Cas Piancey
I had done enough digging to be like, oh, this is
00:12:48:19 - 00:12:49:22
Cas Piancey
definitely not
00:12:49:22 - 00:12:50:12
Cas Piancey
tether.
00:12:50:12 - 00:12:53:04
Cas Piancey
but yeah, let's talk about more of that. Like what other,
00:12:53:04 - 00:12:54:03
Cas Piancey
things did we have to do?
00:12:54:03 - 00:13:08:08
Bennett Tomlin
Because this seemed so extraordinarily strange for this person being accused of being a pig butcher. To be on this random association with these tether executives. There was a bunch of due diligence steps that,
00:13:08:08 - 00:13:20:17
Bennett Tomlin
we had to go through, and then that Protoss had to go to to report this out, reaching out to the Secretary of State's office to, like, confirm what the policies are and like how someone could possibly take advantage of that.
00:13:21:01 - 00:13:34:05
Bennett Tomlin
talking to someone at the attorney General's office about, like, how they manage the potential criminal aspect of some of these activities and trying to even reach out to tether themselves, was able to
00:13:34:05 - 00:13:37:03
Bennett Tomlin
state on the record that they had no association
00:13:37:03 - 00:13:46:05
Bennett Tomlin
with any of these firms, which seems to be the truth. This isn't the kind of thing that tether involves themselves in at this point in the arc.
00:13:46:07 - 00:13:56:06
Bennett Tomlin
and so like you have the and this is a good reminder. We had the initial moment of, oh, this is a really strange tether thing. What is tether up to now? And the answer is nothing.
00:13:56:06 - 00:14:08:15
Bennett Tomlin
Tether was not as far as reason can tell, involved in any way, shape or form with this. This was another set of scammers trying to use tether as a cloak of legitimacy.
00:14:08:15 - 00:14:14:05
Cas Piancey
That's right. And I don't you. You made this point. It's not an I and I and you cleared. You cleared it up too. So I don't want to
00:14:14:05 - 00:14:15:18
Cas Piancey
in a sense.
00:14:15:18 - 00:14:18:12
Cas Piancey
tether is one of the victims in this. They are not
00:14:18:12 - 00:14:25:06
Cas Piancey
they're not a real victim. Nothing was stolen from them. And ultimately, there is zero reputational damage to the company.
00:14:25:06 - 00:14:25:19
Cas Piancey
Tether.
00:14:25:19 - 00:14:29:04
Cas Piancey
Realistically, like, even if even if the companies
00:14:29:04 - 00:14:32:16
Cas Piancey
or the individuals that did get scammed. Think of tether when they
00:14:32:16 - 00:14:37:01
Cas Piancey
think of who scammed them because of the involvement that these guys,
00:14:37:01 - 00:14:38:17
Cas Piancey
pretended tether had.
00:14:38:17 - 00:14:43:23
Cas Piancey
ultimately there is very little damage done here, but I do think it's important to note
00:14:43:23 - 00:14:50:02
Cas Piancey
that the Secretary of State's office and along with the attorney general, like they aren't checking this data.
00:14:50:04 - 00:14:51:09
Cas Piancey
And the only way
00:14:51:09 - 00:14:52:04
Cas Piancey
for
00:14:52:04 - 00:14:56:18
Cas Piancey
tether to get their names stricken from those corporate records is for them to have someone reach out
00:14:56:18 - 00:14:58:03
Cas Piancey
and file complaints,
00:14:58:03 - 00:14:59:11
Cas Piancey
which is insane.
00:14:59:11 - 00:15:06:12
Cas Piancey
I don't know, like, how else to think about that other than it shouldn't be. We shouldn't put the burden on the victim.
00:15:06:12 - 00:15:07:02
Cas Piancey
Of
00:15:07:02 - 00:15:09:06
Cas Piancey
what? What amounts to identity theft.
00:15:09:06 - 00:15:13:08
Cas Piancey
we shouldn't put the burden on them to prove that it is identity theft.
00:15:13:11 - 00:15:16:04
Cas Piancey
It should have been clear that this was identity theft.
00:15:16:04 - 00:15:22:02
Cas Piancey
so I do, I yeah, I do think it's it's important. Also, we're known as being tether critics and,
00:15:22:02 - 00:15:23:05
Cas Piancey
and skeptics.
00:15:23:05 - 00:15:25:05
Cas Piancey
So reaching out to them
00:15:25:05 - 00:15:30:02
Cas Piancey
and essentially working with them to stomp out someone who was
00:15:30:02 - 00:15:32:14
Cas Piancey
actively trying to pretend to be them
00:15:32:14 - 00:15:34:04
Cas Piancey
was a different place for us to be.
00:15:34:04 - 00:15:40:07
Cas Piancey
But it also tells me that we do what we do because we care about fraud more than
00:15:40:07 - 00:15:41:03
Cas Piancey
some.
00:15:41:05 - 00:15:41:17
Cas Piancey
well,
00:15:41:17 - 00:15:53:09
Cas Piancey
the enemy of my enemy is my friend or something like that. Like, you know, you don't want to think about that or think like that as a journalist. Or if you are just trying to look for information, you also want to try to be objective.
00:15:53:15 - 00:16:02:12
Cas Piancey
Obviously, again, we come in with a bit of a tilt when I find that when I find that information, I'm thinking, oh, tether's up to no good again. But
00:16:02:12 - 00:16:16:22
Cas Piancey
to give, to give yourself the space and the time necessary to back off from any initial bias, I think is a good exercise for anyone to have, because we all have that bias when it comes to anything.
00:16:16:22 - 00:16:17:16
Cas Piancey
so,
00:16:17:16 - 00:16:19:04
Cas Piancey
yeah, I think like a lot of
00:16:19:04 - 00:16:26:16
Cas Piancey
good lessons were not necessary. We these are things we practice regularly, but practice in good lessons took place
00:16:26:16 - 00:16:29:18
Cas Piancey
and we somehow we're able to record it in real time, which I think
00:16:29:18 - 00:16:35:18
Cas Piancey
is great because now we can share this moment with the audience again. A lot of due diligence, though, went into this five days.
00:16:35:22 - 00:16:36:18
Cas Piancey
It did. We didn't
00:16:36:18 - 00:16:44:08
Cas Piancey
find it and immediately post online like, look, looks like tether executives are in involved in this shady company in
00:16:44:08 - 00:16:50:20
Cas Piancey
in California. Like, no, that's not the right way to go about this. And if you want to do your research properly, you gotta
00:16:50:20 - 00:16:54:10
Cas Piancey
you gotta actually get into the weeds and get into the muck.
00:16:54:10 - 00:16:54:21
Cas Piancey
And,
00:16:54:21 - 00:16:56:10
Cas Piancey
sometimes it's boring.
00:16:56:10 - 00:17:02:09
Cas Piancey
Sometimes it's frustrating when people don't call you back or don't email you back or refuse to speak with you.
00:17:02:09 - 00:17:06:06
Cas Piancey
but these are steps that you have to take. Otherwise you're going to make mistakes and you're going to look foolish.
00:17:06:18 - 00:17:07:03
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah.
00:17:07:03 - 00:17:25:17
Bennett Tomlin
I think that's a good point. And it emphasizes points we've made before in places like episode 100. In places like that. And like, just before we end this little cut in, I was it was really interesting to see the kind of inner workings of this part of this likely scam. And like,
00:17:25:17 - 00:17:32:05
Bennett Tomlin
this is speculation, but my speculation is that the reason they're doing this is so that when they're targeting, like
00:17:32:05 - 00:17:35:19
Bennett Tomlin
larger whales for this scam, they had like
00:17:35:19 - 00:17:42:17
Bennett Tomlin
legitimate corporate documents that had like no names in the industry on it that they could use to try to defraud people.
00:17:42:23 - 00:18:01:14
Bennett Tomlin
And it was really interesting to me to think about, like, that avenue as a way to, like, do this type of fraud on this type of scale so that even if someone who was like the actual victim of this type of scam tried to do due diligence, they could be presented with legitimate corporate records that list people's names.
00:18:01:18 - 00:18:09:07
Bennett Tomlin
And even if they went further and went to like the California Secretary of State website and domain like search that company name and pulled it up,
00:18:09:07 - 00:18:18:14
Bennett Tomlin
they would see that same set of names. Like, there was a lot of deliberate steps here to take, taken to like make due diligence on that part.
00:18:18:14 - 00:18:19:04
Bennett Tomlin
Hard.
00:18:19:04 - 00:18:22:09
Cas Piancey
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a that's an excellent point. And I think
00:18:22:09 - 00:18:23:21
Cas Piancey
this is another thing that,
00:18:24:13 - 00:18:31:04
Cas Piancey
I didn't I didn't really think about this, but, you know, part of what gave us pause was a couple. I was like, well, there's no way
00:18:31:04 - 00:18:32:21
Cas Piancey
Tether's due diligence department
00:18:32:21 - 00:18:34:07
Cas Piancey
is worse than me.
00:18:34:07 - 00:18:41:20
Cas Piancey
About, like, suspecting these two. Well, maybe for maybe, maybe when they didn't have a compliance or a due diligence team at all.
00:18:41:20 - 00:18:50:01
Cas Piancey
You know, maybe back then you and I were outpacing them for sure. But nowadays, I don't think that we could compete with whatever compliance team they have in place.
00:18:50:01 - 00:18:51:09
Cas Piancey
and they are working with,
00:18:51:09 - 00:18:55:04
Cas Piancey
the Secret Service and the FBI and all the three letter agencies and stuff.
00:18:55:04 - 00:18:56:03
Cas Piancey
so I don't think
00:18:56:03 - 00:18:57:19
Cas Piancey
we could compete with them any longer.
00:18:57:19 - 00:18:59:01
Cas Piancey
And I also
00:18:59:01 - 00:19:00:17
Cas Piancey
was like the I,
00:19:00:17 - 00:19:02:20
Cas Piancey
I don't doubt we know that
00:19:02:20 - 00:19:07:01
Cas Piancey
Bitfinex and Tether have worked with unsavory characters before,
00:19:07:01 - 00:19:11:15
Cas Piancey
but these characters weren't those kind of unsavory characters. They were
00:19:11:15 - 00:19:12:12
Cas Piancey
just
00:19:12:12 - 00:19:15:05
Cas Piancey
the bottom rung of scam artist.
00:19:15:05 - 00:19:26:22
Cas Piancey
And it like there was no incentive for tether to work with these people. And I think our familiarity with this subject matter is a huge reason that we were able to pause and be like, whoa,
00:19:26:22 - 00:19:29:03
Cas Piancey
this is sloppy and a mess.
00:19:29:03 - 00:19:31:11
Cas Piancey
Even for tether, this doesn't make sense.
00:19:31:11 - 00:19:35:19
Cas Piancey
so I, I do think there's like a lot of layers to it and a lot of levels,
00:19:35:19 - 00:19:37:05
Cas Piancey
and I
00:19:37:05 - 00:19:44:08
Cas Piancey
hopefully this doesn't poison the rest of the episode. I think these tools are important. Learning to use these tools are it's important, but
00:19:44:08 - 00:19:45:13
Cas Piancey
there's also just
00:19:45:13 - 00:19:53:03
Cas Piancey
spending the time and practicing and learning about the subject matters and how to use the tools and how to take the time.
00:19:53:13 - 00:19:57:17
Cas Piancey
and you can't learn that overnight. You can't learn that in a week. You can't learn that in a month. Like
00:19:57:17 - 00:20:02:11
Cas Piancey
this takes a significant amount of practice and time, and you're going to make mistakes.
00:20:02:11 - 00:20:04:07
Cas Piancey
you know, journalists are humans,
00:20:04:07 - 00:20:05:17
Cas Piancey
and I,
00:20:05:17 - 00:20:08:22
Cas Piancey
I think it takes a really long time to get good at it.
00:20:08:22 - 00:20:14:15
Cas Piancey
so don't expect to start utilizing these tools and instantly be a private investigator or something.
00:20:14:19 - 00:20:16:04
Cas Piancey
but again, a really good
00:20:16:04 - 00:20:19:19
Cas Piancey
foundational structure for
00:20:19:19 - 00:20:21:00
Cas Piancey
finding these people.
00:20:21:00 - 00:20:28:13
Cas Piancey
I can now keep going on the corporate stint here because Open corporates is going to show up state to state. It's going to show us,
00:20:28:13 - 00:20:31:03
Cas Piancey
it's going to show us some specific countries sometimes.
00:20:31:03 - 00:20:32:19
Cas Piancey
but what it won't do is show you,
00:20:32:19 - 00:20:33:16
Cas Piancey
other places.
00:20:33:16 - 00:20:35:02
Cas Piancey
So this is again, like, I,
00:20:35:02 - 00:20:38:09
Cas Piancey
I just want to go ahead and go here, let me share this now.
00:20:38:09 - 00:20:38:21
Cas Piancey
So
00:20:38:21 - 00:20:45:06
Cas Piancey
now I'm looking at what is called companies House. This is the UK version essentially
00:20:45:06 - 00:20:45:23
Cas Piancey
of
00:20:46:05 - 00:20:46:23
Cas Piancey
of
00:20:46:23 - 00:20:48:04
Cas Piancey
open corporates.
00:20:48:04 - 00:20:51:04
Cas Piancey
And so what we can do here again, I don't know, I might as well
00:20:51:04 - 00:20:55:01
Cas Piancey
just for continuity purposes, type in Giancarlo Devasini.
00:20:55:03 - 00:20:59:18
Bennett Tomlin
And as far as we know, he's not an officer for any companies in the UK. So nothing should come up.
00:21:00:14 - 00:21:03:04
Cas Piancey
right. Nothing. But we do know
00:21:03:04 - 00:21:08:06
Cas Piancey
let's bring up a perfect example for this. There's somebody who goes by the name of Christopher Harborne.
00:21:08:14 - 00:21:09:04
Bennett Tomlin
Sometimes.
00:21:09:04 - 00:21:10:05
Cas Piancey
sometimes he has other names.
00:21:10:20 - 00:21:11:18
Cas Piancey
this gentleman,
00:21:11:22 - 00:21:16:06
Cas Piancey
has been involved with Tether and Bitfinex and,
00:21:16:08 - 00:21:18:07
Cas Piancey
also helped fund Brexit.
00:21:18:07 - 00:21:27:23
Cas Piancey
So this was the number one financier of Brexit. Christopher Harborne, also known as Chakrit Sakunkrit. That is his Thai name. He is a Thai citizen as well.
00:21:27:23 - 00:21:34:13
Cas Piancey
He currently has. What what they're telling us is that he has two appointments. And so we're going to go ahead and scroll down. Maybe
00:21:34:13 - 00:21:43:11
Cas Piancey
we're going to scroll down and you can see that this is the gentleman who we named. Right. And how do we know? Well, as I just told you, his other name is Chakrit Sakunkrit
00:21:43:11 - 00:21:49:04
Cas Piancey
well, that is his Thai name. His country of residence is listed as Thailand here as well as here.
00:21:49:04 - 00:21:53:01
Cas Piancey
and it tells us when he was appointed to this, it was in 2018, 2016.
00:21:53:01 - 00:21:55:15
Cas Piancey
It's giving us information about his companies
00:21:55:15 - 00:21:58:09
Cas Piancey
in the UK. There's AML Global Payments, which
00:21:58:09 - 00:22:00:04
Cas Piancey
I believe is his aviation
00:22:00:04 - 00:22:01:13
Cas Piancey
fuel company.
00:22:01:13 - 00:22:07:13
Cas Piancey
and then there is Cambridge Advanced Research Alliance, which I don't think anyone's done any reporting on. Let's go ahead and click it.
00:22:07:13 - 00:22:13:01
Cas Piancey
So if we click Cambridge Advanced Research Alliance, we soon find out that this is a
00:22:13:01 - 00:22:17:18
Cas Piancey
private limited company by guarantee without share capital use of limited exemption.
00:22:17:20 - 00:22:19:18
Cas Piancey
We find out that
00:22:19:18 - 00:22:24:16
Cas Piancey
it's up to date. Everything is okay with it currently and we can go ahead and click people
00:22:24:16 - 00:22:26:16
Cas Piancey
if we want to find out who's involved. We already know
00:22:26:16 - 00:22:28:14
Cas Piancey
that Christopher Harborne is involved,
00:22:28:14 - 00:22:36:02
Cas Piancey
but now we find out that Katherine Mary Harborne Christopher Harbans sister, is also a director. She has resigned
00:22:36:02 - 00:22:36:21
Cas Piancey
apparently
00:22:36:21 - 00:22:38:19
Cas Piancey
so she resigned in 2021.
00:22:38:21 - 00:22:41:21
Cas Piancey
So now it is just Christopher Harborne and
00:22:41:21 - 00:22:44:07
Cas Piancey
Sari Johanna Arminen
00:22:44:11 - 00:22:48:18
Cas Piancey
who was appointed in 2018 as a director finish apparently
00:22:48:20 - 00:22:49:20
Cas Piancey
living in the UK.
00:22:49:20 - 00:22:55:13
Cas Piancey
So now we have some sort of idea about the people involved. Now we can click people with significant control.
00:22:55:13 - 00:22:57:01
Cas Piancey
We find out that that is
00:22:57:01 - 00:22:58:08
Cas Piancey
three active people
00:22:58:08 - 00:22:59:08
Cas Piancey
now.
00:22:59:08 - 00:23:00:10
Cas Piancey
Christopher, Harbans
00:23:00:10 - 00:23:02:04
Cas Piancey
sister is no longer a part of this.
00:23:02:04 - 00:23:03:13
Cas Piancey
Oh, there she is. Yeah. Ceased.
00:23:03:13 - 00:23:04:00
Cas Piancey
So,
00:23:04:00 - 00:23:05:12
Cas Piancey
we have a
00:23:05:12 - 00:23:07:21
Cas Piancey
apparently a Thai citizen,
00:23:07:21 - 00:23:11:18
Cas Piancey
a Finnish citizen. And, Christopher, as people with significant control,
00:23:11:18 - 00:23:18:13
Cas Piancey
we can go to filing history. And the beauty of the filing history is that we can see things like when the exact date
00:23:18:13 - 00:23:22:20
Cas Piancey
when his sister stepped down as a person with significant control,
00:23:22:20 - 00:23:25:11
Cas Piancey
we can look at exactly when the incorporation occurred.
00:23:25:11 - 00:23:26:09
Cas Piancey
And when we click that,
00:23:26:09 - 00:23:27:14
Cas Piancey
we can actually see.
00:23:27:14 - 00:23:30:11
Cas Piancey
So now we can see this is actually the incorporation
00:23:30:11 - 00:23:31:11
Cas Piancey
like
00:23:31:11 - 00:23:41:21
Cas Piancey
exact corporation date. And we can find out kind of some distinct things about it. We can find out who was involved the day it became a company.
00:23:41:23 - 00:23:43:11
Cas Piancey
we can find out
00:23:43:11 - 00:23:44:18
Cas Piancey
if we scroll down,
00:23:44:18 - 00:23:47:15
Cas Piancey
everyone who has shares, we can find out.
00:23:47:15 - 00:23:48:05
Cas Piancey
What do we got?
00:23:48:05 - 00:23:53:10
Cas Piancey
Articles of, like, all this stuff is usually pretty nondescript. We don't need to,
00:23:53:13 - 00:23:56:01
Cas Piancey
worry about it. I think there's all kind of legalese,
00:23:56:23 - 00:23:59:14
Cas Piancey
but, yeah, you can you can go through.
00:23:59:14 - 00:24:00:07
Cas Piancey
And
00:24:00:07 - 00:24:04:22
Cas Piancey
click any of these things to find out extra information about this, where they're registered,
00:24:04:22 - 00:24:08:22
Cas Piancey
who's involved? And you can try to find out more about them after that.
00:24:08:22 - 00:24:11:21
Cas Piancey
You're not going to get a ton of information from this stuff.
00:24:11:21 - 00:24:13:06
Cas Piancey
You will get people involved,
00:24:13:06 - 00:24:15:08
Cas Piancey
their whereabouts, where they're from,
00:24:15:08 - 00:24:20:03
Cas Piancey
and whether or not they have a controlling interest in the company. All those things are actually quite important.
00:24:20:04 - 00:24:24:23
Cas Piancey
and I think that this is a great resource for, again, figuring these things out. It's why
00:24:24:23 - 00:24:29:09
Cas Piancey
all three of the things that we've discussed so far, whether you're going on the website and finding out the company names
00:24:29:09 - 00:24:30:09
Cas Piancey
and people involved
00:24:30:09 - 00:24:32:14
Cas Piancey
or using open corporate's or,
00:24:32:14 - 00:24:33:12
Cas Piancey
companies House
00:24:33:12 - 00:24:37:00
Cas Piancey
to try to find out more information about these individuals or companies
00:24:37:00 - 00:24:38:17
Cas Piancey
where they're incorporated,
00:24:38:17 - 00:24:42:07
Cas Piancey
how they're incorporated, what industries they're involved in, etc..
00:24:42:07 - 00:24:42:19
Cas Piancey
yeah,
00:24:42:19 - 00:24:43:21
Cas Piancey
that should
00:24:43:21 - 00:24:44:16
Cas Piancey
do it.
00:24:44:19 - 00:24:57:16
Bennett Tomlin
Well, and I think, like the thing to remember is that the UK is somewhat unique in that they allow free and relatively unfettered access to their corporate registry. But it's valuable to check the corporate registry often
00:24:57:16 - 00:25:05:20
Bennett Tomlin
wherever you're looking like. I know I've been able to report on a few stories by going through ASICS, which is the Australian
00:25:05:20 - 00:25:06:15
Bennett Tomlin
registry.
00:25:06:17 - 00:25:18:09
Bennett Tomlin
there you have to pay for most of the documents, but the documents you do get are pretty detailed, like down to the specific shareholders and things like that. Similarly, both Cas and I have had,
00:25:18:09 - 00:25:23:15
Bennett Tomlin
been able to report stories by pulling documents from ICRIS, which is Hong Kong system.
00:25:23:15 - 00:25:25:12
Bennett Tomlin
It is not
00:25:25:12 - 00:25:26:19
Bennett Tomlin
easy to use.
00:25:26:19 - 00:25:30:20
Bennett Tomlin
It is easy to spend money that you didn't realize you were spending.
00:25:30:22 - 00:25:52:10
Bennett Tomlin
But it is possible to get useful documents from it. And so once you have the corporate name and have moved through the broader resources like open corporate or and things like that, and you've identified what country it is, if there's more information you need to know about that entity, going to that country's corporate registry is generally a good place to start.
00:25:52:10 - 00:25:58:09
Cas Piancey
Yep. I agree with all of that. And I also think, obviously, you're right where the first place is to go to the website and just kind of check
00:25:58:09 - 00:26:06:14
Cas Piancey
other company names, the real company names, essentially, because they're, they're usually doing business as something they're incorporated as something else.
00:26:06:14 - 00:26:10:03
Cas Piancey
and then after you have that information, that's when you can actually
00:26:10:03 - 00:26:12:18
Cas Piancey
start to explore on a more comprehensive scale.
00:26:12:20 - 00:26:16:17
Cas Piancey
And it's again, worth noting, like you, you can delve into
00:26:16:17 - 00:26:21:18
Cas Piancey
corporate documents. It will often cost you money even in the United States. Sometimes,
00:26:21:18 - 00:26:25:19
Cas Piancey
to access. Yeah, to access these corporate documents. Right. If it's in
00:26:25:19 - 00:26:27:15
Cas Piancey
specific states,
00:26:27:15 - 00:26:36:02
Cas Piancey
it will cost you money. And the reality is, in a lot of states like Wyoming, you're probably not going to get very much information from any of these corporate documents.
00:26:36:02 - 00:26:37:22
Cas Piancey
They specifically create their,
00:26:37:22 - 00:26:40:13
Cas Piancey
their corporate structure to be
00:26:40:13 - 00:26:42:13
Cas Piancey
very privacy
00:26:42:13 - 00:26:43:11
Cas Piancey
focused.
00:26:43:17 - 00:26:59:08
Bennett Tomlin
Now, if it's in a place like Florida. Florida is great. You get free access to their corporate registry, and they tell you, like, everything you get, like, almost complete access to every document they've ever filed with the secretary of state. You can get specific detail about shareholders and members.
00:26:59:08 - 00:27:03:01
Bennett Tomlin
Florida is a good place if you're trying to do research on that type of thing.
00:27:03:01 - 00:27:06:13
Bennett Tomlin
So after we've learned a little bit about the company,
00:27:06:13 - 00:27:08:11
Bennett Tomlin
what's the next thing we should do?
00:27:08:11 - 00:27:11:13
Cas Piancey
it depends on what kind of company company it is.
00:27:11:13 - 00:27:12:20
Cas Piancey
if, for instance,
00:27:12:22 - 00:27:16:09
Cas Piancey
I think maybe I'll pass this one off to you, Bennett. But
00:27:16:09 - 00:27:20:19
Cas Piancey
if it's a us, let's say a us publicly traded company.
00:27:20:19 - 00:27:24:23
Cas Piancey
where where would you go next? What would be the next move, in your opinion?
00:27:24:23 - 00:27:38:06
Bennett Tomlin
I guess was saying, when you're dealing with publicly traded companies, you can search all of their SEC filings by going to the SEC search, which they call Edgar. I don't know why they call it Edgar. It's apparently an acronym.
00:27:38:06 - 00:27:44:14
Bennett Tomlin
But like if we look at MicroStrategy, we can see their current reports, their insider trading reports.
00:27:44:14 - 00:27:46:11
Bennett Tomlin
are different registrations of sales.
00:27:46:11 - 00:27:49:13
Bennett Tomlin
And so if I'm trying to understand, like their most recent,
00:27:49:13 - 00:27:55:04
Bennett Tomlin
financial situation, I'm going to look at their most recent failed quarterly reports or updates like that.
00:27:55:04 - 00:27:58:14
Cas Piancey
And I want to. I just want to put this out there for everybody. But,
00:27:58:14 - 00:28:04:21
Cas Piancey
don't expect to jump into these filings and be like, oh, this is very clear and easily
00:28:04:21 - 00:28:10:03
Cas Piancey
understandable. I can decipher this very quickly. These things are complicated.
00:28:10:03 - 00:28:14:01
Cas Piancey
there's a lot of moving parts. There's stuff that even to this day,
00:28:14:01 - 00:28:15:13
Cas Piancey
I do not understand.
00:28:15:13 - 00:28:21:23
Cas Piancey
Bennett and I have recently been talking about convertible notes and stock warrants, which are just a complex,
00:28:21:23 - 00:28:22:16
Cas Piancey
mess.
00:28:22:16 - 00:28:35:08
Cas Piancey
But there's. He's he's looking through this right now, and you can just see it's numbers on numbers on numbers. It even the idea that, like, it looks like we're talking about thousands. Well we're not you know, this is in millions or in whatever.
00:28:35:08 - 00:28:42:10
Cas Piancey
Like they're you really got to know your math and know what the hell is, is happening.
00:28:42:10 - 00:28:43:17
Cas Piancey
before you can even
00:28:43:17 - 00:28:44:14
Cas Piancey
try
00:28:44:14 - 00:28:46:04
Cas Piancey
to publicly comment
00:28:46:04 - 00:28:47:18
Cas Piancey
on what these
00:28:47:18 - 00:28:49:21
Cas Piancey
reports are suggesting.
00:28:49:21 - 00:28:59:06
Bennett Tomlin
Well, I know from experience you can try publicly commenting even before you really fully understand them. but it's helpful to spend some time trying to understand it.
00:28:59:06 - 00:29:02:11
Bennett Tomlin
so, yeah, this is helpful to look into things about,
00:29:02:11 - 00:29:04:23
Bennett Tomlin
different companies. The other one,
00:29:04:23 - 00:29:10:04
Bennett Tomlin
that can be good, especially if you're doing something like crypto research or financial research is,
00:29:10:04 - 00:29:12:17
Bennett Tomlin
looking for their,
00:29:12:17 - 00:29:15:07
Bennett Tomlin
money services, business registration.
00:29:15:09 - 00:29:16:22
Bennett Tomlin
Why does Coinbase have their center?
00:29:16:22 - 00:29:17:15
Bennett Tomlin
Oh, here we go.
00:29:17:15 - 00:29:25:05
Bennett Tomlin
Like if we want to look at Coinbase, as we can see all the places they are registered, we can see their address that they're registered at
00:29:25:05 - 00:29:29:20
Bennett Tomlin
when it's valid for. And we can even download that registration
00:29:29:20 - 00:29:31:02
Bennett Tomlin
and take a look at it.
00:29:31:02 - 00:29:35:05
Bennett Tomlin
So registered at of their address in New York.
00:29:35:19 - 00:29:39:05
Bennett Tomlin
They are registered in basically probably every state
00:29:39:05 - 00:29:39:23
Bennett Tomlin
for activity.
00:29:39:23 - 00:29:44:15
Bennett Tomlin
I'm not gonna count to make sure that all the places are there, but they're there.
00:29:44:15 - 00:29:45:06
Bennett Tomlin
and so
00:29:45:06 - 00:29:54:16
Bennett Tomlin
it's good to do that. Sometimes those types of things will include a little bit of extra information about the company, like based on where they're registering it or things like that.
00:29:54:21 - 00:29:56:00
Bennett Tomlin
And so starting to look at,
00:29:56:00 - 00:29:59:14
Bennett Tomlin
what I think of as regulatory filings. So going through Edgar, going through
00:29:59:14 - 00:30:08:08
Bennett Tomlin
FinCEN, going through things like that helps you make sure that the company is like valid current and like up to date, right, that if they're
00:30:08:08 - 00:30:14:08
Bennett Tomlin
money services business, they've got that registration. If they're a public company, they are up to date with their filings.
00:30:14:13 - 00:30:19:19
Bennett Tomlin
And when you check the Secretary of state or the corporate registry, sometimes you'll even find there
00:30:19:19 - 00:30:25:19
Bennett Tomlin
that companies are behind on their filings. And that can be useful information.
00:30:25:19 - 00:30:30:17
Cas Piancey
And that's. That's what publicly traded stocks, I think. Or. Sorry, publicly traded companies.
00:30:30:17 - 00:30:36:20
Cas Piancey
I guess some private companies as well. It depends on who they're acquiring money from, whether they have to file with the SEC.
00:30:36:20 - 00:30:39:15
Cas Piancey
if it's a company that isn't necessarily
00:30:39:15 - 00:30:40:10
Cas Piancey
a
00:30:40:10 - 00:30:41:20
Cas Piancey
publicly traded company,
00:30:41:23 - 00:30:44:12
Cas Piancey
maybe it's mostly a VC
00:30:44:12 - 00:30:45:07
Cas Piancey
related,
00:30:45:08 - 00:30:46:20
Cas Piancey
VC related company.
00:30:46:20 - 00:30:49:15
Cas Piancey
That's when I would suggest to people to explore something
00:30:49:15 - 00:30:50:08
Cas Piancey
like
00:30:50:08 - 00:30:51:02
Cas Piancey
Crunchbase.
00:30:51:02 - 00:30:51:18
Cas Piancey
Now,
00:30:51:21 - 00:30:58:00
Cas Piancey
I will say that I have an account, so I am able to kind of utilize it in
00:30:58:00 - 00:31:11:02
Cas Piancey
a better way than some people might be able to. However, if we look at a company like tether, what I'm able to ascertain from this is that they have made 13 investments. They've had three exits.
00:31:11:02 - 00:31:13:01
Cas Piancey
I can get employee profile pages.
00:31:13:01 - 00:31:14:02
Cas Piancey
Some of these might be
00:31:15:13 - 00:31:22:23
Bennett Tomlin
There's sometimes a little questionable. The Crunchbase. It, like the investment parts, is good. The employee profiles can be a little eyebrow raising.
00:31:22:23 - 00:31:33:23
Cas Piancey
there's some confusing bits about it. Like they say, it's located in Seattle, Washington. That's wrong. There's a different company called tether that is located in Seattle, Washington. So like there are things that you have to
00:31:33:23 - 00:31:38:21
Cas Piancey
you have to know what you're getting yourself into when you're using a site like Crunchbase, because there can be
00:31:38:21 - 00:31:39:22
Cas Piancey
plenty of errors.
00:31:40:01 - 00:31:44:11
Cas Piancey
But as Bennet pointed out, the investment part is generally pretty reliable and reliable.
00:31:44:11 - 00:31:47:01
Cas Piancey
So we go here, we can see how many investments
00:31:47:01 - 00:31:48:14
Cas Piancey
over what period of time,
00:31:48:14 - 00:31:50:16
Cas Piancey
the investments were made and whether or not
00:31:50:16 - 00:31:56:04
Cas Piancey
tether was a lead investor, lead investor, simply meaning more or less that they were one of the
00:31:56:04 - 00:31:57:04
Cas Piancey
higher,
00:31:57:06 - 00:31:58:03
Cas Piancey
capital,
00:31:58:03 - 00:32:02:00
Cas Piancey
one of the companies that put in a larger amount of capital into a raise.
00:32:02:00 - 00:32:03:19
Cas Piancey
and they'll tell you the most recent investment
00:32:03:19 - 00:32:15:15
Cas Piancey
for and how much the raise was for. That doesn't mean to keep to be clear here. Like this says, oh, they they went into a company called X Rex and raised eight, which raised 18.8 million. Well,
00:32:15:15 - 00:32:20:18
Cas Piancey
that doesn't mean necessarily that they raised $18.8 million
00:32:20:18 - 00:32:24:06
Cas Piancey
from tether. It means that they raised that in total.
00:32:24:08 - 00:32:25:18
Cas Piancey
And that tether
00:32:25:18 - 00:32:31:20
Cas Piancey
was a lead investor. So if we go down here, you can see it says lead investor. Yes, it was a corporate round.
00:32:31:20 - 00:32:38:18
Cas Piancey
And so if we click this now just to just so everyone has some sort of idea here again if we click X Rex
00:32:38:18 - 00:32:39:16
Cas Piancey
we can see
00:32:39:16 - 00:32:42:08
Cas Piancey
even though last round they made 18.8
00:32:42:08 - 00:32:46:10
Cas Piancey
they've actually total their total funding has been for 42.8.
00:32:46:12 - 00:32:49:20
Cas Piancey
What it tells us what they do, where they're located. Again
00:32:49:20 - 00:32:56:03
Cas Piancey
these are things we need to double. We need to double check. Right. We cannot we cannot rely on Crunchbase to accurately suggest
00:32:56:03 - 00:32:59:14
Cas Piancey
this company is located in Taipei. It very well might be, I don't know,
00:32:59:14 - 00:33:00:14
Cas Piancey
but it will tell us
00:33:00:14 - 00:33:05:04
Cas Piancey
their total funding amount and over what amount of time and how that money was acquired.
00:33:05:04 - 00:33:06:02
Cas Piancey
So we can see
00:33:06:02 - 00:33:07:02
Cas Piancey
that
00:33:07:02 - 00:33:09:14
Cas Piancey
the majority of their funding was actually through seed rounds,
00:33:09:14 - 00:33:11:19
Cas Piancey
but their corporate round most recent
00:33:11:19 - 00:33:12:14
Cas Piancey
is when,
00:33:12:17 - 00:33:14:10
Bennett Tomlin
That's when tether gave them a bunch of money.
00:33:14:10 - 00:33:19:14
Cas Piancey
million. So we can see there's been a lot of investors in this company. There's been roughly,
00:33:19:14 - 00:33:25:10
Cas Piancey
21 investors or so. Maybe some of these are duplicates, but there's been something like 20 investors.
00:33:25:12 - 00:33:28:10
Cas Piancey
There was only one investor in the corporate round. It was tether.
00:33:28:10 - 00:33:28:22
Cas Piancey
And
00:33:28:22 - 00:33:30:17
Cas Piancey
they gave 18.8. So
00:33:30:17 - 00:33:35:22
Cas Piancey
these are these are things we can ascertain. It helps us understand connections. It helps us look into
00:33:35:22 - 00:33:37:12
Cas Piancey
other companies. It helps us
00:33:37:12 - 00:33:41:16
Cas Piancey
kind of I guess depends on the company, but definitely helps you
00:33:41:16 - 00:33:45:23
Cas Piancey
get an idea of like what they're investing in or who is investing in them.
00:33:46:07 - 00:33:48:03
Cas Piancey
and I think all of those things are quite valuable.
00:33:48:22 - 00:33:51:15
Cas Piancey
quite valuable for us. So I've, I've,
00:33:51:15 - 00:33:53:03
Cas Piancey
I've had a lot of
00:33:53:03 - 00:33:53:17
Cas Piancey
good
00:33:53:17 - 00:33:58:21
Cas Piancey
value from Crunchbase. As much as I think I don't know who created it.
00:33:58:21 - 00:34:01:18
Cas Piancey
is this Michael Arrington? It is, it
00:34:01:20 - 00:34:03:16
Bennett Tomlin
I do not know the answer to that.
00:34:03:16 - 00:34:06:03
Cas Piancey
might be. And if it is, that feels bad.
00:34:06:03 - 00:34:06:16
Cas Piancey
But,
00:34:09:10 - 00:34:09:20
Bennett Tomlin
See,
00:34:09:20 - 00:34:14:09
Bennett Tomlin
I I'm glad to hear that Arrington did at least one useful thing in his life.
00:34:14:09 - 00:34:15:01
Cas Piancey
I'm,
00:34:15:01 - 00:34:19:04
Cas Piancey
I do think it's funny that he's, like, created his fund
00:34:19:04 - 00:34:21:18
Cas Piancey
and called it XRP. Like everything is XRP
00:34:21:18 - 00:34:24:13
Cas Piancey
and just like how embarrassing that is. But anyway,
00:34:24:13 - 00:34:35:10
Cas Piancey
yeah, let's continue here outside the fact this this actually something that Bennett is going to show you right now is far outside the scope of what we were just discussing, even though it's it's pretty applicable to everything.
00:34:35:10 - 00:34:36:01
Cas Piancey
So go ahead.
00:34:36:01 - 00:34:46:08
Bennett Tomlin
court listener recap. Search is an incredible tool because what they do is they like index every single docket in the United States federal courts.
00:34:46:08 - 00:34:49:00
Bennett Tomlin
And whenever someone who's a,
00:34:49:00 - 00:34:51:15
Bennett Tomlin
free law member with the recap extension
00:34:51:15 - 00:35:07:05
Bennett Tomlin
like I am goes and spends money on Pacer like I do, it copies that document and uploads it here. So that way when you want to do something like lookup Sam Bankman-Fried, you just type in his name here, give it a minute to search because it's a nonprofit.
00:35:07:05 - 00:35:08:17
Bennett Tomlin
Things run a little bit slow
00:35:08:17 - 00:35:13:02
Bennett Tomlin
and then we can find his docket here
00:35:13:02 - 00:35:15:12
Bennett Tomlin
though it in descending and we can see,
00:35:15:12 - 00:35:16:12
Bennett Tomlin
let's find a good one.
00:35:16:12 - 00:35:29:21
Bennett Tomlin
You can open up the PDF filings and read like the specific court documents and things like this. And in any case, where there is not a document yet, if you have a Pacer account like again I do,
00:35:29:21 - 00:35:32:11
Bennett Tomlin
you can just go directly to pacer.
00:35:32:14 - 00:35:33:04
Bennett Tomlin
And then
00:35:33:04 - 00:35:39:22
Bennett Tomlin
it will like automatically prompt you to buy and upload the file, which I'm not going to do it now because that's just a notice of attorney appearance.
00:35:39:22 - 00:35:50:07
Bennett Tomlin
But this lets you like actually read in understand the multitude of court cases going on at any given time. Well, let's you read them. Understanding is a separate issue.
00:35:50:07 - 00:35:51:12
Bennett Tomlin
You have to deal with yourself.
00:35:51:12 - 00:35:55:14
Cas Piancey
Bennett just mentioned pacer, and and I will say pacer is a
00:35:55:14 - 00:35:58:20
Cas Piancey
ugly system, and it is.
00:35:59:16 - 00:36:01:09
Cas Piancey
All about value extraction.
00:36:01:09 - 00:36:05:21
Cas Piancey
and it, like, I dislike everything about it, but I will say
00:36:05:21 - 00:36:10:22
Cas Piancey
that again, it is quite valuable. And if you can afford it. Okay. And,
00:36:10:22 - 00:36:12:05
Cas Piancey
I totally understand
00:36:12:05 - 00:36:14:00
Cas Piancey
there's plenty of people out there who can't. It.
00:36:14:00 - 00:36:15:16
Cas Piancey
It can be expensive.
00:36:15:16 - 00:36:22:07
Cas Piancey
as Bennett pointed out to me today, if you spend over $35 in a quarter, is it every quarter?
00:36:22:09 - 00:36:29:04
Bennett Tomlin
It's something like that. It might be 30, but there's some minimum you can spend up to each quarter where you don't actually get billed.
00:36:29:04 - 00:36:32:02
Cas Piancey
to be clear, like it's $0.10, every document
00:36:32:21 - 00:36:34:03
Bennett Tomlin
Every page.
00:36:34:03 - 00:36:37:17
Cas Piancey
Right. Every page. So if a document is 65 pages,
00:36:37:17 - 00:36:43:23
Cas Piancey
right, you're paying like you are paying six and a half dollars just for that 65 page document. So,
00:36:43:23 - 00:36:46:06
Cas Piancey
it can absolutely get expensive,
00:36:46:06 - 00:36:49:18
Cas Piancey
especially if you're really trying to keep up on some big important case.
00:36:49:20 - 00:36:58:07
Cas Piancey
and I don't want to suggest that everyone can afford afford it. We have the benefit of working for a organization that is
00:36:58:07 - 00:37:06:01
Cas Piancey
in the media space. So we tell them we bought this thing, pay us back for it.
00:37:06:01 - 00:37:08:23
Cas Piancey
if especially if it applies to something we're writing.
00:37:08:23 - 00:37:14:18
Cas Piancey
not everyone has that, but sometimes it can be well worth your time, your money, and your energy to go for it.
00:37:14:18 - 00:37:16:14
Cas Piancey
You know, it might be worth it for you.
00:37:16:14 - 00:37:20:11
Cas Piancey
especially if it's some small case that isn't being reported by the media in general. Like
00:37:20:11 - 00:37:28:03
Cas Piancey
if it's something you're really fascinated by, I don't know, I it just I just think it's worth it to have a pacer account. So I want to I want to put that out there.
00:37:28:23 - 00:37:30:18
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah, I will add also.
00:37:30:18 - 00:37:31:08
Bennett Tomlin
It's
00:37:31:08 - 00:37:50:21
Bennett Tomlin
a pacer account is a good thing to get ahead of time, because it takes a while to have an active pacer account. You put in your information, and they mail you a physical like confirmation code that you have to type in. And so there's like a weak leg at minimum from when you say, I went to pacer account until you're able to start reading dockets.
00:37:51:00 - 00:37:54:20
Bennett Tomlin
So if that's the thing you think you might need coming up, start, get in on it.
00:37:54:20 - 00:37:58:12
Cas Piancey
So. And now I know we're going to start getting into some other kind of,
00:37:58:12 - 00:38:00:02
Cas Piancey
blockchain exclusive
00:38:00:02 - 00:38:03:00
Cas Piancey
tools that people can utilize. But before we do that,
00:38:03:00 - 00:38:05:23
Cas Piancey
just want to utilize one other thing for everybody.
00:38:05:23 - 00:38:06:15
Cas Piancey
so
00:38:06:15 - 00:38:07:17
Cas Piancey
I know,
00:38:07:17 - 00:38:08:12
Cas Piancey
I know that
00:38:08:12 - 00:38:14:07
Cas Piancey
there's going to be qualms about this. And people suggesting, you know, The New York Times is garbage.
00:38:14:07 - 00:38:14:19
Cas Piancey
Look,
00:38:14:19 - 00:38:18:07
Cas Piancey
I have my issues with the New York Times as well. I am not suggesting,
00:38:18:07 - 00:38:22:19
Cas Piancey
I'm not suggesting that everyone should go out there and immediately go buy a New York Times account.
00:38:22:19 - 00:38:27:02
Cas Piancey
The reason that I have an account personally is less because I want to.
00:38:27:02 - 00:38:29:17
Cas Piancey
It's less because I want to read their current
00:38:29:17 - 00:38:37:10
Cas Piancey
articles about, I don't know. Some Biden advisers are discussing how to persuade. I don't give a shit, really. I truly don't care. Not only do I not care about this,
00:38:37:15 - 00:38:40:16
Bennett Tomlin
How is that? The first thing under their masthead?
00:38:40:16 - 00:38:48:08
Cas Piancey
of it. All. Everything about this does not appeal to me. Okay? I just want to be upfront and honest about that. But what does appeal to me is their,
00:38:48:11 - 00:38:51:09
Cas Piancey
archives, their archives, because they are
00:38:51:09 - 00:38:51:23
Cas Piancey
the
00:38:51:23 - 00:38:52:14
Cas Piancey
the
00:38:52:14 - 00:38:56:02
Cas Piancey
new the newspaper of record for America for
00:38:56:02 - 00:38:57:18
Cas Piancey
over 100 years.
00:38:57:20 - 00:38:59:14
Cas Piancey
You can utilize this archive
00:38:59:14 - 00:39:08:21
Cas Piancey
in ways that you can't necessarily utilize other archives. So I'll go ahead and type in a company that is again near and dear to our hearts. Deltec. And if I type in Deltec,
00:39:08:21 - 00:39:15:09
Cas Piancey
we're finding stories from 1968 Deltec banking raises profit. We're finding stories about Deltec.
00:39:15:20 - 00:39:17:19
Bennett Tomlin
The shoe string one is fun.
00:39:17:19 - 00:39:26:16
Cas Piancey
Dell tracked shoestring leases. Continents Deltec encircles the world Deltec sees profit for first quarter January 18th, 1972.
00:39:27:08 - 00:39:35:18
Cas Piancey
we get all of these these interesting stories that could teach you a lot about something that you do not know, like
00:39:35:18 - 00:39:38:02
Cas Piancey
Deltec. Still a,
00:39:38:02 - 00:39:41:05
Cas Piancey
in an important Caribbean Bank that,
00:39:41:08 - 00:39:44:01
Cas Piancey
is involved in all kinds of weird stuff.
00:39:44:03 - 00:39:53:03
Cas Piancey
And, you know, you can search through here and find some really interesting stories about Deltec from decades past. Now, does that apply to Deltec now?
00:39:53:03 - 00:39:58:22
Cas Piancey
No it doesn't. I don't think it does. I don't think it's fair for me to utilize a story from 1978,
00:39:58:22 - 00:39:59:22
Cas Piancey
to discuss,
00:39:59:22 - 00:40:01:04
Cas Piancey
the current situation,
00:40:01:04 - 00:40:03:06
Cas Piancey
it does provide you
00:40:03:06 - 00:40:05:02
Cas Piancey
with some sort of
00:40:05:02 - 00:40:13:12
Cas Piancey
archival concept. And sometimes it's great for some company that you're looking into and you need something from
00:40:13:12 - 00:40:20:00
Cas Piancey
5 or 10 years ago even. Right. Like so I do think there is a lot of value to be had there. From the New York Times archive.
00:40:20:00 - 00:40:23:07
Cas Piancey
does that mean that you need to go out and immediately buy a New York Times subscription?
00:40:23:07 - 00:40:27:17
Cas Piancey
No, and I'm not suggesting that, but I have found it quite useful for myself.
00:40:27:19 - 00:40:29:15
Bennett Tomlin
Their cooking coverage is also pretty good.
00:40:29:15 - 00:40:33:00
Cas Piancey
Yes, but that's for you. And I don't think that's
00:40:34:01 - 00:40:34:09
Bennett Tomlin
But,
00:40:34:09 - 00:40:49:21
Bennett Tomlin
you know, speaking of archives, it is very helpful to be able to kind of look at the past for certain things. And so like say you were a person with an unhealthy fascination with stablecoins. And so you wanted to learn more about the very beginning of the very
00:40:49:21 - 00:40:52:16
Bennett Tomlin
first stablecoin. We're to call tether, the first stablecoin.
00:40:52:16 - 00:41:02:21
Bennett Tomlin
It works for most definitions of stablecoin, and so it can be like interesting and helpful to go back and see how these companies were marketing themselves in 2014.
00:41:03:03 - 00:41:08:06
Bennett Tomlin
In 2015, in things like that, see what questions they thought were going to be,
00:41:08:06 - 00:41:11:23
Bennett Tomlin
important for the firm and things like that. And like
00:41:11:23 - 00:41:14:01
Bennett Tomlin
in doing this, you can often,
00:41:14:01 - 00:41:17:21
Bennett Tomlin
like find changes, see, like at what period? They,
00:41:17:21 - 00:41:24:00
Bennett Tomlin
added a certain executive to the website, took a certain executive after the website changed,
00:41:24:00 - 00:41:27:09
Bennett Tomlin
the way they were discussing certain features or things like that.
00:41:27:14 - 00:41:47:11
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. Talking about they removed the part where they talk about how you can get tethers without going through the KYC process. At a certain point, you decide you don't want that listed on your public website anymore. But thanks to wonderful tools like the Wayback Machine, assholes who are obsessed with stablecoins can still find it and go back and mention it for years to come.
00:41:47:11 - 00:41:52:07
Bennett Tomlin
You know, it's things like that that can be really helpful on these archive websites.
00:41:52:07 - 00:41:53:01
Bennett Tomlin
yeah. And so
00:41:53:01 - 00:42:06:21
Bennett Tomlin
also similar thing like sometimes you can see like a corporate entity change. At 1.3 years ago they were referencing one corporate body. Now they're referencing another one. And now you have an opportunity to figure out was there a merger, was there like a free domiciled link?
00:42:07:02 - 00:42:22:18
Bennett Tomlin
Why did this change in does that mean anything? Did a bunch of new investors come in and it's not really the same company it used to be. They're just using the same name. Those kind of things happen. And so looking at how it's changed over time helps you kind of figure that kind of thing out.
00:42:22:18 - 00:42:25:10
Cas Piancey
Yep. Yep. I think that's awesome. The last.
00:42:25:10 - 00:42:30:21
Cas Piancey
The last ones. I have no other ones on my docket. I think the last couple are all you,
00:42:30:21 - 00:42:31:10
Cas Piancey
Bennet?
00:42:31:10 - 00:42:32:10
Cas Piancey
you're the last three.
00:42:32:10 - 00:42:36:04
Bennett Tomlin
this one right here is called built with. And it's a little bit of a
00:42:36:04 - 00:42:37:04
Bennett Tomlin
funky one.
00:42:37:04 - 00:42:51:17
Bennett Tomlin
It's not going to apply to everything, but what it does is it tells you what technology a website is built with, what libraries are loaded, which hosting providers they're using, and things like that, which on its own can be useful for,
00:42:51:17 - 00:42:52:09
Bennett Tomlin
finding things.
00:42:52:09 - 00:42:56:17
Bennett Tomlin
I don't have the advanced features, but what's most useful on this website to me
00:42:56:17 - 00:43:03:18
Bennett Tomlin
and is one of their free features, is their relationship tab. Here. And so what this is showing us is the different like,
00:43:03:18 - 00:43:07:17
Bennett Tomlin
analytics IDs. So Google Universal Analytics and Google's
00:43:07:17 - 00:43:12:12
Bennett Tomlin
newer analytics. What tags have been a associated with this website
00:43:12:12 - 00:43:15:20
Bennett Tomlin
and what other websites have those been associated with.
00:43:15:20 - 00:43:23:04
Bennett Tomlin
And so like you can see other websites that have overlapped with this man. There are some nonsense ones on here. What is going on?
00:43:23:04 - 00:43:24:09
Bennett Tomlin
I thought this was going to.
00:43:26:16 - 00:43:29:17
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I guess what's happening here?
00:43:29:19 - 00:43:40:00
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. So I think what's happening here must be that some of these scam websites are like copying and pasting the whole source code of the tether website,
00:43:40:00 - 00:43:51:16
Bennett Tomlin
including the like analytics IDs. And so when they stand up their website, it's being tracked into the same analytics IDs, because most of these are not things you would expect to be associated with tether.
00:43:51:18 - 00:43:55:12
Bennett Tomlin
More commonly, what you'll see in this kind of thing is it'll help you kind of,
00:43:55:12 - 00:44:03:05
Bennett Tomlin
you'll see like a cluster of companies that all use the same marketing firm or something like that. And so again, it's just another tool to start piecing through,
00:44:03:05 - 00:44:11:16
Bennett Tomlin
relationships. In this case, I think most of these are scammers who are like copy and pasting the source code and therefore copying and pasting the analytics
00:44:12:00 - 00:44:25:17
Cas Piancey
Which also tells you something. About what? The. What? They're used like. It tells you that tether is a essentially a payment service, right? Like that's why they're getting copied and scammed, or copied by scammers. And in such a way.
00:44:25:17 - 00:44:28:16
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. And this will also show you perhaps more valuable,
00:44:28:16 - 00:44:42:09
Bennett Tomlin
the IP addresses for the hosting. And so sometimes here overlap can be more meaningful. Early on in Tether's history it was more common for them to use kind of shared hosting and stuff. Now their addresses are basically only associated with
00:44:42:09 - 00:44:44:22
Bennett Tomlin
their domains because there are more serious company.
00:44:44:22 - 00:44:48:14
Bennett Tomlin
Now wait, I see that than what is this done.com?
00:44:48:14 - 00:44:55:02
Bennett Tomlin
Interesting. Not the point, but like, this can is another way to help you kind of piece out some relationships.
00:44:55:02 - 00:45:02:20
Bennett Tomlin
The last two tools I kind of want to talk about are the only two tools we're talking about today that actually touch on the blockchain, and one of them is
00:45:02:20 - 00:45:11:05
Bennett Tomlin
the Blockchain explorer for whatever your blockchain of choice is, ether scan is probably the best.
00:45:11:05 - 00:45:11:18
Cas Piancey
Yeah.
00:45:11:18 - 00:45:15:09
Cas Piancey
There might be like. If you're. If you're a Solana user, there's SolScan. If you're
00:45:15:09 - 00:45:20:04
Cas Piancey
if you're a Tron user, there's a Tron scan. There's usually if it's a,
00:45:20:04 - 00:45:22:18
Cas Piancey
a well-known blockchain, it will have its own
00:45:22:18 - 00:45:24:13
Cas Piancey
kind of scanning
00:45:24:13 - 00:45:25:01
Cas Piancey
site.
00:45:25:04 - 00:45:25:18
Bennett Tomlin
Exactly.
00:45:25:18 - 00:45:26:06
Bennett Tomlin
And
00:45:26:06 - 00:45:35:01
Bennett Tomlin
what that lets you do is take an address that you have that you found somewhere. And look at who is that address transacting with.
00:45:35:01 - 00:45:37:21
Bennett Tomlin
What kind of tokens are they transferring in and out?
00:45:37:21 - 00:45:44:16
Bennett Tomlin
What kind of assets have they like held over time? This is one of Justin's old addresses. It's mostly abandoned now.
00:45:44:16 - 00:45:46:05
Bennett Tomlin
except to hold a bunch of value.
00:45:46:10 - 00:45:51:14
Bennett Tomlin
What kind of tokens do they still hold? And things like that. And so this is,
00:45:51:14 - 00:45:52:02
Bennett Tomlin
like,
00:45:52:02 - 00:46:08:04
Bennett Tomlin
before I had the more advanced tool I'm about to show. I did, like, entire long blockchain tracing things, just carefully following transactions through blockchain explorers. This one funded this one, this one co spent with this one etc. and like gradually building that up.
00:46:08:08 - 00:46:11:07
Bennett Tomlin
And you can do that just with the blockchain explorers.
00:46:11:10 - 00:46:14:04
Cas Piancey
And really dating us here. I think you and I both
00:46:14:04 - 00:46:23:13
Cas Piancey
started utilizing blockchain explorers with Omni. More so than Ethereum. So we were. We were because Omni was the main,
00:46:23:17 - 00:46:27:17
Cas Piancey
chain of choice for tether. We were utilizing Omni,
00:46:30:12 - 00:46:31:11
Bennett Tomlin
Omni explorer.
00:46:31:13 - 00:46:32:02
Bennett Tomlin
It does.
00:46:32:04 - 00:46:36:17
Cas Piancey
and it was quite useful for us back then. It was great, actually. It was really, really, really useful.
00:46:36:20 - 00:46:39:00
Cas Piancey
and getting getting
00:46:39:00 - 00:46:41:22
Cas Piancey
proficient and utilizing these, these things,
00:46:41:22 - 00:46:48:09
Cas Piancey
while it's not as good as some of the tools that you can use, as Bennett is about to show, it is pretty,
00:46:48:09 - 00:46:48:17
Cas Piancey
like
00:46:48:17 - 00:46:52:10
Cas Piancey
if you're if you're proficient, it can be really, really useful for you.
00:46:52:10 - 00:46:52:20
Cas Piancey
Yeah.
00:46:52:20 - 00:46:59:22
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. And then if you are doing more advanced blockchain analytics, I've had really good luck with breadcrumbs.
00:46:59:22 - 00:47:08:12
Bennett Tomlin
They have some inexpensive tiers. Relatively inexpensive I think like 5 to 10 bucks a month. They give you access to like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
00:47:08:13 - 00:47:14:08
Bennett Tomlin
and then they have ones that scale in price. Beyond that up to those targeted at organizations.
00:47:14:10 - 00:47:17:11
Bennett Tomlin
But like you can take an address you have like that,
00:47:17:11 - 00:47:26:23
Bennett Tomlin
plug it in here and start to see what other addresses are we sending to, what other addresses are we receiving from? How are those interconnected?
00:47:26:23 - 00:47:29:20
Bennett Tomlin
What do the, transactions coming?
00:47:29:20 - 00:47:31:18
Bennett Tomlin
into and out of this look like
00:47:31:18 - 00:47:38:13
Bennett Tomlin
and things like that, all which help you kind of gain a better understanding of where this address sits.
00:47:38:16 - 00:47:42:03
Bennett Tomlin
And how it matters or if it matters.
00:47:42:17 - 00:47:44:22
Bennett Tomlin
again, this is a little bit more of,
00:47:44:22 - 00:47:47:02
Bennett Tomlin
another one of those advanced tools. I think
00:47:47:02 - 00:47:54:08
Bennett Tomlin
blockchain analytics is not something even a lot of people who want to investigate crypto really need to necessarily
00:47:54:08 - 00:48:01:15
Bennett Tomlin
use a tool like this, for you can get really far just using like regular blockchain explorers and things like that.
00:48:01:18 - 00:48:09:08
Bennett Tomlin
If you picture yourself someday being the next ZachXBT, then yeah, start cutting your teeth on breadcrumbs, get a little comfortable,
00:48:09:08 - 00:48:24:10
Bennett Tomlin
and spend some time making sure you understand how it works so you don't end up making a bunch of crazy claims online like Vitalik Buterin fund, the Chinese mafia or whatever different people try to claim sometimes because they don't know how to read these things.
00:48:24:12 - 00:48:28:05
Bennett Tomlin
Spend some time, look at the transactions. Remember anyone
00:48:28:05 - 00:48:32:21
Bennett Tomlin
can send anyone. So receiving from someone doesn't necessarily
00:48:32:21 - 00:48:41:02
Bennett Tomlin
incriminate someone. Spend some time, look at it, think it through. But can be a really useful tool, especially as you get into more kind of
00:48:41:02 - 00:48:43:12
Bennett Tomlin
advanced blockchain analytics.
00:48:43:12 - 00:48:51:23
Cas Piancey
yeah, I would, I would say always for everyone, no matter what tool it is we mentioned, whether it's the New York Times or breadcrumbs or whatever.
00:48:51:23 - 00:48:53:16
Cas Piancey
if you can utilize it for free,
00:48:53:16 - 00:48:57:09
Cas Piancey
utilize it for free to the fullest extent that you possibly can.
00:48:57:10 - 00:48:58:17
Cas Piancey
and if you feel like
00:48:58:17 - 00:49:00:03
Cas Piancey
you've either a
00:49:00:03 - 00:49:02:19
Cas Piancey
accumulated enough value from it or,
00:49:03:14 - 00:49:05:14
Cas Piancey
or need to utilize
00:49:05:14 - 00:49:06:07
Cas Piancey
kind of
00:49:06:07 - 00:49:08:04
Cas Piancey
more complex tools
00:49:08:04 - 00:49:10:16
Cas Piancey
that they offer to find out more,
00:49:10:16 - 00:49:12:21
Cas Piancey
than I would, I would recommend, you know,
00:49:12:21 - 00:49:14:11
Cas Piancey
just just ride it until you can.
00:49:14:11 - 00:49:16:17
Cas Piancey
And when you're ready to pay for it, pay for it.
00:49:16:17 - 00:49:18:18
Cas Piancey
but all of these tools hopefully
00:49:18:18 - 00:49:21:17
Cas Piancey
prove to be quite useful for everyone.
00:49:21:17 - 00:49:30:02
Cas Piancey
and, like I assume most people are quite familiar with most of these already, but if you're not, hopefully we introduced you to,
00:49:30:02 - 00:49:34:03
Cas Piancey
introduced you to a tool that you will be able to utilize in the future.
00:49:34:03 - 00:49:34:21
Cas Piancey
At some point.
00:49:34:23 - 00:49:39:12
Bennett Tomlin
And these things can be really intimidating. But I do want to add that, like,
00:49:39:12 - 00:49:51:14
Bennett Tomlin
Cass and I are almost entirely self-taught in this regard. There were some people on Twitter who helped us out or introduced us to some of these tools early on, but in terms of like their daily use, it was mostly just like
00:49:51:14 - 00:49:58:17
Bennett Tomlin
trial and error working through it, trying to understand it step by step and going back over it and back over it.
00:49:58:19 - 00:50:22:22
Bennett Tomlin
And I think that lots of people can benefit from trying out this kind of thing. And I think practicing this kind of thing makes like the useful skepticism we talked about way back in episode 100. We easier and way more like natural when you have some familiarity with how to vet certain types of claims or how to look into certain things, it is way more easy to be an effective skeptic at that point.
00:50:22:22 - 00:50:31:11
Cas Piancey
Yeah. Exactly like instead of it, I think it's really daunting to actually be skeptical. In general, I think you and I feel far less
00:50:31:11 - 00:50:36:02
Cas Piancey
like there is no dawn. We don't feel daunting at all when we're skeptical, because we can
00:50:36:02 - 00:50:42:23
Cas Piancey
utilize any of these tools to instantly be like, is my skepticism founded or am I crazy? And
00:50:43:10 - 00:50:45:10
Bennett Tomlin
Sometimes we've been crazy.
00:50:45:10 - 00:50:53:20
Cas Piancey
you. We're crazy for sure. But we can we can at least stop ourselves from from announcing it publicly by utilizing some of these tools.
00:50:55:08 - 00:51:08:11
Bennett Tomlin
And I will add, this will not always be possible. It is helpful to have a partner in crime where you can text them or message them and go, hey, am I crazy or is this what I think it is? And having
00:51:08:11 - 00:51:13:09
Bennett Tomlin
someone or a couple of someones who are on the same journey as you, who are willing to go?
00:51:13:09 - 00:51:18:17
Bennett Tomlin
I think you've misread that completely, can help you avoid some embarrassing missteps.
00:51:18:19 - 00:51:21:02
Cas Piancey
Yeah. And and, you know, this is another thing
00:51:21:02 - 00:51:21:14
Cas Piancey
I,
00:51:21:14 - 00:51:26:23
Cas Piancey
I think X has that, like, if you're just starting on, on Twitter X or whatever you want to call it,
00:51:26:23 - 00:51:35:14
Cas Piancey
it's far less useful than it used to be. But then at night, we're able to grow followings to the point where we can at this point,
00:51:35:14 - 00:51:39:16
Cas Piancey
again, I think this is we've benefited from timing on this, but,
00:51:39:16 - 00:51:44:14
Cas Piancey
we can reach out to people or publicly say, I don't understand this thing.
00:51:44:14 - 00:51:55:22
Cas Piancey
I would love if someone who does understand it could talk to me about it, and we actually get a response. Now, not saying everyone is going to get that, especially if you're new and you have like new followers on X or something like
00:51:55:22 - 00:51:58:20
Cas Piancey
probably no one's going to see your your call to help.
00:51:58:20 - 00:52:00:16
Cas Piancey
we have been able to utilize that a lot.
00:52:00:16 - 00:52:01:17
Cas Piancey
And I will say
00:52:01:17 - 00:52:04:19
Cas Piancey
that experts are often quite responsive. And it's
00:52:04:19 - 00:52:05:17
Cas Piancey
it is worth
00:52:05:17 - 00:52:09:08
Cas Piancey
it's it's worth at least shooting them a cold email or whatever.
00:52:09:08 - 00:52:14:04
Cas Piancey
even if they don't respond. And I'm not and don't get upset with someone if they don't respond. People are busy, like, don't be an asshole.
00:52:14:04 - 00:52:17:23
Cas Piancey
I think it's worth reaching out to these people just to at least be like, hey,
00:52:17:23 - 00:52:18:20
Cas Piancey
I don't know this.
00:52:18:20 - 00:52:19:16
Cas Piancey
Could you help me?
00:52:19:16 - 00:52:21:04
Cas Piancey
and oftentimes
00:52:21:04 - 00:52:23:16
Cas Piancey
you'll find out that they'll be like, sure, I'd love to help.
00:52:23:16 - 00:52:26:13
Cas Piancey
so, yeah, I mean, this is this is the best summary,
00:52:26:13 - 00:52:28:12
Cas Piancey
Ben and I can give I know that we've had,
00:52:28:12 - 00:52:35:17
Cas Piancey
Zach asked on before to discuss, like, other cryptocurrency tools and and how to be careful in general,
00:52:35:17 - 00:52:38:08
Cas Piancey
when investing or putting money into crypto.
00:52:38:10 - 00:52:45:22
Cas Piancey
so feel free to listen to that episode if you're so inclined. Otherwise, please don't look up Cash Coin on any of these tools that we've talked to you about.
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