Note: This article is a result of further research related to a steemit article I wrote yesterday. It turns out, things are much more interesting than I could ever have imagined.
Today I found a loose thread and pulled and found a rabbit hole so deep, I haven't found the bottom yet.
I originally set out to prove HCash (HSR) was a scam. What I found instead is an elaborate scheme whose dots are difficult to connect. Shell companies, fraud, bitcoin mining huts, People's Republic of China, stolen Ethereum, and 'Useful Idiots'.
Two nights ago, I was doing my weekly altcoin research. I ran across a coin I had recently seen crypto_rand pumping on twitter, HCash (HSR). After 30 seconds of scanning HSR's website, my scam coin warning siren was going off full blast. The dead giveaways... Non-techie looking leadership team, too many marketing buzz words, and claims that HCash was solving all of the problems that other coins were still struggling to implement properly (DAG, quantum resistance, cross chain interopability, privacy, etc., etc.).
So, I did what everyone does... I googled 'HCash scam'. Which lead me to a video.
(front left: Sam Lee, back left: Dallas Brooks, back right: Andrew Wasylewic, front right: Khal Achkar)
In the video, HCash's CEO (Dallas Brooks), CTO (Khal Achkar), and BDM (Andrew Wasylewic) are being interviewed by an old mentee of Dallas', Sam Lee (NOTE: The fact that Sam Lee was identified as a mentee of Dallas' in the video is important, we will revisit that later). Dallas, Khal, and Andrew were TERRIBLE in the video. It was obvious that they had zero technical abilities related to cryptocurrencies. Their answers to Sam's questions made me laugh out loud, I couldn't believe what I was watching. I was thinking... "And this coin had a 1.6 BILLION USD market cap a few weeks ago!?!?!".
I moved on... scam coins shmam coins, they are everywhere, who cares. But... crypto_rand reared his ugly head again with another HSR pump and I realized he had written "TA backed by great fundamentals too" in his original pump. GREAT FUNDAMENTALS!!! WTF crypto_rand! So, I posted a link to the video as a comment to crypto_rand's tweet thinking someone would give a shit, but instead, crypto_rand pumped Hcash again the next day. My comment received no likes, no retweets, nothing. It was almost as if crypto_rand and his followers only care about making money even if it meant turning a blind eye to fraud.
Now, I was frustrated! And my first steemit article was born. Read it, and then come back, we are just getting started.
I wrote the article, but things just were not sitting right. I kept thinking, none of this makes sense. In the article I alluded to my internal struggle when I wrote the following statement.
If I let my conspiracy theory side get the best of me, I'd swear Sam Lee (the interviewer) conned Dallas into fronting the money for Hcash in an elaborate pump and dump scheme.
Well, well, well... wait until you see what I found. But first... let me explain what was eating at me. Ask yourself... How in the hell did people like Dallas Brooks and Andrew Wasylewic wind up the CEO and BDM of HCash? They aren't exactly the kind of people I would ever envision creating a multinational crypto currency with a development team in China and a second developement team in the US. Nothing was adding up. The idea that Dallas or Andrew are behind HCash, or worse an Hcash scam doesn't hold water, both of them are too simple to pull of this level of scam. Check out Dallas Brooks pre-HCash to cement in your head why we can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Dallas cannot be the mastermind behind the Hcash con.
So, I'm sitting at my computer watching my first steemit article not getting any views (other than my own), or comments, or votes, thinking... well, that was a waste of time. Then, I had an inspiration, I'll search twitter and reddit for like minded folks and send them a link to my article. That is when I ran across @jz_bz (a.k.a. Decred Jesus). Decred Jesus is Jonathan Zeppettini, the International Ops Lead of the Decred team. Check out some of jz_bz's tweet calling out Hcash:
Or this argument with one of the Hcash researchers.
Wow... so, Hcash is likely stealing code from the Decred team. But... why should I believe Decred Jesus? I shouldn't, time to do some more digging. I started looking for evidence of any original code created by the Hcash team. And I ran across the following on Hcash's subreddit.
Look, I am not by any means an expert on node programming, so, I can't tell if sgebb speaks the truth, but I did follow the link he provided.
Hey look, real code in a demo and the name of a developer I can investigate. And... what is this 'Collinstar-Amer...' facebookpage? It turns out the developer, John Woeltz, seems to be a legit dude. Check out his vimeo explaining quantum computing. But Collinstar-America is where the plot starts to thicken. Their first facebook post was November 24 2017. It turns out that Collinstar (a company based out of Melbourne Australia) funded Hcash and they pull the strings for Hcash. Essentially, Dallas, Andrew, and Khal are western looking frontmen and essentially puppets of the real owners. Additionally, John Woeltz was hired to be a western face of the developement team (coding is secondary to his true purpose). I know what you are thinking... "that was a HUGE logical leap". The following evidence will connect the dots for you (most of it comes from the Collinstar-America facebook page).
OK, so Collinstar is somehow related to Hcash
Wait one sec? So Collinstar owns Chinese mining farms? Weird right?
And, here they explain John Woeltz's job responsibility.
"Mo and John will provide updates to the Silicon Valley blockchain community on HCash’s research and development around the implementation of quantum-resistant techniques from SJTC and other leading universities in Singapore and Australia."
In other words, they are western looking and western speaking technical marketeers. At face value, this is good business, but... the plot will continue to thicken.
And there is the proof that Collinstar Capital makes the decisions at Hcash. And the second article shows proof that Collinstar setup the relationships with universities to develop Hcash. Hcash marketing material will lead you to believe the opposite, that Hcash established the relationships with the universities.
I decided to check out Collinstar's website and ran across this pretty cool blog post:
http://www.afr.com/technology/lisa-kangding-story-20160706-gpzx7e
In the article we learn the origin story of Ryan Xu (a.k.a. Zijing Xu). Ryan Xu also happens to be the "Managing Director" of Collinstar and the Cheif Strategist/Co-founder of a different organization called "Bitcoin Group".
Wait! Is that Sam Lee from the interview video on the left? Why, yes it is! Co-founder of Bitcoin Group. Didn't Dallas Brooks (CEO of Hcash) say he mentored Sam Lee? I call bullshit on that one. Sam Lee is obviously one wealthy as hell bitcoin holder, if anyone was being mentored, it was Sam Lee mentoring Dallas Brooks.
So... let's connect the dots. Sam Lee introduces Dallas Brooks (Sam's 'Useful Idiot') to the crypto world and out of the good of his heart hands over the keys to Hcash to Dallas? Nope... its a con. For one reason or another, Sam and Ryan Xu are avoiding the spotlight.
We are not done yet. Getting close though. It seems Ryan Xu has a sketchy ICO past.
You really have to read the whole article. It is almost as if Media Chain is where Ryan Xu honed his conman skills. Below are some relevant quotes from the article.
Shortly after its ICO, the team behind Media Chain(“影视链”in Chinese) liquidated all ETHs they’ve collected and vanished from the face of internet, scamming nearly 100 million yuan from investors. Disappearing acts always indicate to a scam.
A person on Weibo claimed that one of Media Chain’s software engineers named Eugene Kyselov was actually a Canadian actor. Eugene Kyselov ‘s profile has been deleted. That is, the team just find a westerner’s image to help attract newbies. And team members are found to be tampered with for a few times, Asian faces being replaced by the Westerners.
More absurdly, Ryan XU, or Zijing Xu, serves as an adviser for this project. Many blockchain projects backed by Mr.Xu are labeled as scams, like HPS, HRS. MediaChain follows suit .
Now, ask yourself again... why are Ryan Xu and Sam Lee parading a bunch of westerners around world to hawk Hcash? I don't know for sure, but I have a plausible half cocked theory. We will kick it off with this youtube video of Hcash Vice President Adam Gerry and BDM Andrew Wasylewic.
Transcript of the important part:
09:28
Interviewer: "so you have this Collinstar Capital of Australia and the Bitmain of China as one of your clients so would you tell us more about how it was possible to grab such an opportunity"
Adam Gerry: "okay so Collinstar is one of the main backers of Hcash, they helped us to get this organized and obviously we're working fairly close with them yeah"
Andrew Wasylewic: "yes similar to how I mentioned before just through our network were able to get access to some of these people which is great and they can obviously see what we're trying to achieve in and know the depth of the team and the branch of universities were associated with so it's good to be able to get those people on board as well.
Interviewer: "I see, so now I want to go more in depth on this matter but, if this question is too uncomfortable you don't have to answer. So as far as I know the China aesthetic bank is one of your clients and apparently the bank is you know owned by the government of China, does that mean that the government of China has an intense intention to invest in cryptocurrency, indirectly? just a pure question."
Adam Gerry: "Yeah sure... uhhh.... sigh stutter uh talking about the governments in general. I'm not sure whether it's a question that I'm so comfortable with I think. that's for sure."
My guess is that Collinstar is working with or possibly even controlled by the People's Republic of China (PRC). If you do a bit of research about the PRC's activities in foreign countries to increase their global influence, you will see a lot of similarities between Collinstar's activities and PRC initiatives. For example, PRC is busy building a super highway in Uganda. Similarly, Collinstar is helping Uganda create their own crypto currency.
(source: Collinstar America FB page)
Also Collinstar has invested heavily in multiple universities, which is something the PRC is known to do.
(source: Collinstar America FB page)
(source: Collinstar America FB page)
(source: Collinstar America FB page)
That is as far as I have gone down the rabbit hole, except for one last bit. Using ignorant capitalist businessmen as pawns is a classic communist maneuver, which is why I kept using the term 'Useful Idiots'.
A useful idiot (also useful fool[1], Russian: полезный идиот) is "a dupe of the Communists", usually a citizen of a non-communist country sympathetic to the Soviet Union who is susceptible to propaganda and is cynically misused.[1][2] The phrase was used by Soviet communists and the KGB to refer to persons in the West their country had successfully manipulated.[1] The phrase is often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but it remains controversial whether he used this term in his publications.