- Investors lost around $190 million when the exchange went down in 2019.
- Patryn was sentenced to serve time in the United States.
According to a tweet from on-chain analyst zachxbt, the anonymous treasury manager for Wonderland’s decentralized finance (DeFi) project and one of its co-founders, 0xSifu, is actually Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, co-founder Michael Patryn, who misled investors of more than $190 million. Wonderland is an Avalanche-based DeFi protocol.
1/ This needs to be shared @0xSifu is the Co-founder of QuadrigaCX, Michael Patryn. If you are unfamiliar that is the Canadian exchange that collapsed in 2019 after the founder Gerald Cotten disappeared with $169m
— zachxbt.eth (@zachxbt) January 27, 2022
I have confirmed this with Daniele over messages. pic.twitter.com/qSfWNnQPhr
Popsicle Finance, Wonderland, and Abracadabra, called ‘Frog Nation,’ developed by prominent DeFi creator Daniele Sestagalli, have all been shocked by the news.
As a result of the news, there has been a steep decline of Frog Nation-related assets, including ICE, TIME, and SPELL, as they went down in excess of 30%. Abracadabra’s MIM-one of the most significant algorithmic stablecoins with a circulation supply over $4.6 billion – investors are now concerned that it may lose its peg.
$SPELL down 30% this morning and although the $MIM peg is still 1:1 the Curve finance pool is becoming increasingly imbalanced w/ ~$0.5B in farmers exiting.
— FreddieRaynolds (@FreddieRaynolds) January 27, 2022
Before 0xSifu news
$1.4B 3Crv, $1.1B $MIM
After 0xSifu news
$0.8B 3Crv, $1.25B $MIM pic.twitter.com/03eTn5Ayhi
Sestagalli said:
“Today allegations about our team member @0xSifu will circulate. I want everyone to know that I was aware of this and decided that the past of an individual doesn’t determine their future. I choose to value the time we spent together without knowing his past more than anything.”
QuadrigaCX Exchange
When Gerald Cotten and Michael Patryn co-founded the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX in 2013, tensions arose over the business’s ambitions to go public. Michael Patryn departed the company three years later. Investors lost around $190 million when the exchange went down in 2019.
Patryn was sentenced to serve time in the United States as part of an identity-theft ring. Since 2003, Patryn changed his name twice with the Canadian British Colombia government – first to Omar Patryn and then to Michael Patryn in 2008. In prior reports, he denied being Omar Dhanani.
Several unconnected offenses, including burglary, grand theft, and computer fraud, were confessed by Patryn in 2007. While in jail, he became engaged with cryptocurrency and was subsequently deported to Canada, where he reinvented himself.
