Before Bitfinex and Tether
Bitfinex/Tether Executives and Founders and what they did beforehand:
- Bennett Tomlin (@BennettTomlin) March 27, 2021
Stuart Hoegner, the General Counsel for both Bitfinex and Tether, used to be Director of Compliance for Excapsa. ( Archive) Excapsa was notorious for being the parent company of Ultimate Bet. Ultimate Bet allowed some of the poker players on their site access to a ‘God Mode’ that allowed them to see other players cards. ( Archive) This does seem to have been occurring during Stu’s tenure.
Phil Potter, the former Chief Strategy Officer and Director of Bitfinex and Tether, was once profiled in a New York Times piece where he bragged about this wealth. ( Archive) Weeks after this article was published he left his position at Morgan Stanley. ( Archive) Several months later he started a new position at Bear Stearns.
Giancarlo Devasini, the Chief Financial Officer of both Bitfinex and Tether, was a retired software pirate ( archive) before joining Bitfinex.
Raphael Nicolle, the founder of Bitfinex, was an active participant in and defender of ponzi schemes, at one point even trying to start his own high yield lending program.
Brock Pierce, the co-founder of Tether, fled to Spain with his friend and business partner Marc Collins-Rector while Marc, was an indicted fugitive on child sexual trafficking charges. ( Archive) They were both arrested at a villa in Spain that was full of child pornography. ( Archive)
Jonathan Yantis made his money farming and selling items for online games. Later he was accused by a colleague of having a way to mint items in game. ( Archive) This was while he was part of IGE with Brock Pierce.
Reeve Collins, the former Tether CEO, raised $70 million dollars for this. ( Archive) Yeah I had to double-check that valuation too.
Andrii Zamovsky, the former Chief Security Officer of Tether, was the founder of NoveltyLab ( archive) who created HolyTransaction a cryptocurrency wallet.
Most of the other early directors and executives were much less exciting. William Quigley was a VC and now helps run WAX.IO ( with Jonathan Yantis). ( Archive) Craig Sellars was Chief Technical Officer for the MasterCoin Foundation (later the Omni Foundation). However, there is one who is an enigma.
Tether’s first Chief Compliance Officer was Matthew Tremblay. Matthew Tremblay has very little web presence. As far as I can tell he does not have a LinkedIn. He is no longer mentioned anywhere on the Tether website. Reverse image searching the photo used for him on the Tether page does not return any results. I have zero idea what Matthew Tremblay did before Tether and I have no idea if he still works for Tether. If anyone knows anything about Matthew, or can confirm they have had conversations with him I would be quite interested. Last I remember hearing he was still working at Tether, though in a different role since Leonardo Real was brought on.
Originally published at http://bennettftomlin.com on March 27, 2021.