THE TIMEPIECE GENTLEMAN CONTROVERSY FULL

It relies on a secure, decentralized ledger-called a blockchain-to record transactions, manage the issuance of new “coins” or “tokens,” and prevent fraud and counterfeiting. A number of these sources requested anonymity so as not to prejudice pending legal proceedings on the advice of counsel, Hayes, Delo, and Reed opted not to comment for this story.)Ĭryptocurrency, it bears repeating, is a digital form of payment and a method for storing value. Since the October indictment, I have spoken at length with insiders who know and are in communication with Hayes and his two indicted business partners, Ben Delo and Sam Reed.

(I interviewed Hayes and some of his cohorts in Hong Kong, Singapore, and New York in 20. I had been an investment banker, so I wasn’t sleeping on the streets. “I wasn’t married, had no kids, no obligations. He was wearing his standard attire: skintight T-shirt, jeans, and a pricey timepiece (a Hublot Big Bang). “Bankers tell you everybody has a bullet with their name on it,” he explained one afternoon over tea at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore-the iconic hotel featured in the finale of Crazy Rich Asians. Hayes was just hitting his stride when a pink slip arrived in May 2013. “Nichols gave him the setting, the stimulation, and at one point, the scholarship to thrive.” Hayes, in return, has given back: underwriting a scholarship that ensures “a deserving student will be able to experience the excellence of a Nichols education and the lifelong benefits it brings.”Īfter attending the Wharton School of business, he headed off to Hong Kong, where he worked at Deutsche Bank and Citibank as a market maker for exchange-traded funds, or ETFs-hybrid securities that, not unlike mutual funds, diversify an investor’s risk but can be traded like stocks. “He succeeded at everything, from his studies the sports field, to making lasting friendships,” reads a testimony, featuring Barbara, on one of the fundraising pages of the school’s website. Born to middle-class parents who worked for General Motors and were beholden to the ever-changing fortunes of the auto giant, he split his formative years between Detroit and Buffalo, where his mother, Barbara, moved mountains to get her gifted son into Nichols School, a leafy private institution founded in 1892. But the crypto condor has not always been so elusive.

THE TIMEPIECE GENTLEMAN CONTROVERSY FULL

THE CRYPTO GOLD RUSH-AND A BACKPACK FULL OF CASH But the feds describe Arthur Hayes differently: a wanted man who “flouted” the law by operating in the “shadows of the financial markets.” Hayes’s indictment was unsealed in October, and he remains at large in Asia as prosecutors in New York hope to arrest him and try him on two felony counts, which carry a possible penalty of 10 years in prison.Īt a time when the SEC is seemingly doing the bidding of Wall Street titans-eager to punish the unwashed masses of day traders for scuttling banks’ and hedge funds’ trading positions on GameStop and other stocks-Hayes might just be patient zero when it comes to exposing the hypocrisy in high finance that is now coming into sharp relief. Screen-star handsome and fabulously wealthy, the African American banker turned maverick personifies the contemporary fintech pioneer. And all the while he keeps one eye trained on an obscure-sounding currency exchange that he built out of thin air and through which more than $3 trillion has flowed. One minute Hayes is hitting the powder in Hokkaido, the next he’s crushing it on a subterranean squash court in Central-Hong Kong’s Wall Street. Just replace New York with Hong Kong and infuse it with a dose of Silicon Valley-where unicorns spring from the minds of irrepressible company founders-and, well, you get the picture.

The timepiece gentleman controversy