Santa’s Crypto Naughty List 2024

Whereas the crypto market’s newest bull run has put further money in business gamers’ pockets, Ol’ Saint Nick is getting ready to place coal in a few of their stockings.  

From controversial founders to outright scammers, a number of key figures in crypto landed themselves on Santa’s “Naughty Listing” in 2024. 

Listed below are Decrypt’s picks for the seven naughtiest in crypto this yr:

Hawk Tuah Lady (Hailey Welch)

Viral web star Hailey Welch, aka the “Hawk Tuah” Lady was catapulted into shitcoin superstardom earlier this month when she introduced the launch of her HAWK meme coin. 

However Welch’s crypto debut went sideways shortly after the HAWK launch, with crypto traders mentioning that the token sale had all the major marks of an insider scam. 

Hawk-eyed merchants identified that Welch’s workforce owned between 80-90% of HAWK’s provide on launch day, probably permitting them to govern the worth of the token. 

Welch’s HAWK token had a $490 million market cap shortly after it debuted within the first week of December. Nevertheless, its value rapidly plummeted to lower than 5% of its preliminary worth inside just a few hours of its launch.

A legislation agency has sued her business partners over the collapse, and she or he emerged from a two-week social media blackout quickly thereafter—to say she’s working with the legal professionals, and declare she wasn’t responsible for the mess.

Ryan Selkis 

Messari founder Ryan Selkis courted controversy and stirred up drama inside the crypto group in 2024. 

From excoriating his political adversaries to evoking one other U.S. civil struggle, Selkis’ commentary main as much as the U.S. 2024 presidential election flew within the face of others’ efforts to domesticate a greater public picture for the maturing digital property business.

His spicy rhetoric on X (previously often known as Twitter) led to his departure from Messari when issues apparently received too scorching for his colleagues. Selkis in the end received what he needed with Donald Trump’s reelection, however a few of his techniques in encouraging that shift landed him squarely on Santa’s naughty listing this yr.

Jonathan and Tanner Adam

Jonathan and Tanner Adam is probably not family names, however their alleged crimes are definitely on Santa’s radar—and the SEC’s, too.

The pair allegedly led a crypto-focused Ponzi scheme that bilked greater than 80 traders out of a complete of $60 million, in line with court docket filings. Below the scheme, traders had been informed their cash could be put right into a lending pool that may fund “flash loans” to finish arbitrage trades that had been recognized by a particular buying and selling bot. 

Nevertheless, the SEC alleges that the lending pool as described to traders by no means existed. Relatively, the duo allegedly used these thousands and thousands to help their lavish existence, spending almost half one million {dollars} alone on quite a lot of luxurious autos.

Gary Gensler 

Gary Gensler is the much-maligned SEC chairman who led the regulatory company’s cost towards digital property in the course of the Biden administration. 

Below Gensler, the SEC has adopted a “regulation-by-enforcement” model for reining within the unwieldy crypto business, resulting in an unprecedented variety of SEC lawsuits towards main digital property corporations equivalent to Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance.US.

In 2023, the SEC introduced a complete of 46 cryptocurrency-related enforcement actions, a 53% improve from 2022, according to Cornerstone Analysis. That is additionally a report excessive for the company since 2013. However a lot of which may be for naught with Gensler asserting plans to resign in January as Trump takes workplace. Most crypto business supporters aren’t unhappy to see him go.

Eli Regalado

Pastor Eli Regalado allegedly scammed religious parishioners of his Denver-based church out of greater than $3 million via the sale of a token referred to as INDXCoin, in line with the Colorado Division of Securities. Nevertheless, the pastor denies being fully at fault for the scheme. His rationale: The Lord made him do it.

Whether or not God whispered in his ear or not, one factor is evident: Regalado was dwelling the excessive life on his followers’ cash. The pastor purchased luxurious digs and different gadgets together with his ill-gotten beneficial properties from INDXCoin’s sale, in line with costs from the Colorado Securities Commissioner filed earlier this yr.

Craig Wright

They are saying imitation is the sincerest type of flattery, however within the case of Craig Wright and his claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, it is also a criminal offense. 

Within the case of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) versus Craig Wright, Wright was found guilty in March of mendacity about being storied Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. A U.Okay. court docket additionally dominated that there was “overwhelming” proof that Wright fabricated documents and lied on the stand in the course of the trial. The Wright saga performed out for years, however the consequence has earned him a spot on Santa’s naughty listing this yr.

Sahil Arora

Crypto influencer and celeb wrangler Sahil Arora has fallen out of traders’—and Santa’s—good graces in 2024.

That is as a result of the crypto celeb promoter allegedly made between $2 million and $30 million by exploiting his connections to various celebrity meme coin projects, in line with on-chain analyses by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT and crypto knowledge agency Bubblemaps.  

(Arora denied any wrongdoing in an unique interview with Decrypt in Might.)

So, how precisely did Arora get so wealthy? Nicely, it isn’t precisely clear, however a number of celebrities and traders have one thing to say on the matter.  

In Might, Caitlyn Jenner stated Arora “scammed” her “massive time” by working away with the proceeds of the JENNER meme coin he helped launch. 

R&B singer Jason Derulo adopted up together with his personal meme coin and related allegations towards Arora, which Arora later informed Decrypt wasn’t what it appeared. The controversy was “orchestrated” and all “part of the script,” he stated.

As if that double dose of celeb drama weren’t sufficient, traders additionally accused Arora of raking in as much as $380,000 from the presale of an Iggy Azalea-themed meme coin challenge that he launched on Pump.enjoyable earlier this yr. Shortly after the presale, traders within the challenge alleged they hadn’t received any of the tokens they had been promised. In the meantime, no less than some funds from the presale pockets appeared to have been moved, SolScan knowledge showed.