Torture
Mine ended a year ago. Arrested at 26, locked up in a high-security prison in Lisbon with murderers and drug lords ( and denied bail twice for being Russian ).
On the day of my arrest the judge said: 45 years in prison ( lost in translation, they dropped the word !maximum! ). 2 weeks with death on my mind, in a medieval dungeon, cut off from the outside world. After extradition, US prison felt like a five-star hotel.
Position of the !government! at my trial:
- first case of its kind in history
- Andriunin didn't know he was breaking US law
- one specific service broke the law, not the company's entire business
But they needed a precedent, and the execution of Gotbit (and me, personally) was supposed to clean up the crypto sector, make it safer for investors. That was the idea, anyway, back in the corridors of the Biden administration.
Did it help the industry?
It could all have been settled peacefully, with a deal with Gotbit, the market leader ( for example: a "warning" from the SEC -> FreedomFinance + a fine ). We would have dropped the volume service, leading by example, and introduced new rules together with the exchanges. The ENTIRE market would have quit inflating trading volumes and evolved
Instead, they destroyed Gotbit forever. I lost a 9-figure company, a ton of money, my closest friend, my health.
Was it worth it, and what did it do to the industry? Let's see:
1. Dozens of companies popped up on the ruins of Gotbit, and they don't just fake volume, they don't shy away from the real dirt. First they go on the same podcasts and talk about how they "paint the chart", and right after that they rug their own clients live during launches.
2. Hayden Davis and the entire Meteora team ran extraction on the most hyped memecoins using single-sided liquidity, literally moving traders' money into their own pockets.
3. And the main narrative of the season: Chinese crimes. They're even called "crimes", what else do you need to know about how these MMs work? Typical pump-and-dumps, fleecing whatever retail is left on CEXs after 10/10.
So the long arm of the Department of Justice ( DOJ ) killed the best company, only to clear the field for far more toxic players? And the price was paid, and is still being paid, by regular traders who have lost fortunes since October 2024.
Why did people buy Gotbit clients' tokens?
Because we built a social ladder in crypto: you could walk in dead broke and walk out with a Binance listing. That's not market manipulation, that's pure added value.
And an entire system, a company of 230 people ( at its peak ), worked to produce an outlier result. And the market ( and you, its participants ) priced our service.
All year, former clients kept writing to me: "it was the best service / MMs scammed us twice after you / your traders were top tier / help .. "
But I couldn't, didn't want to, and got a year of probation.
And I'm not coming back to MM, breathe easy, "successors".
We're launching a liquid fund. Crypto focus. 3 legendary GPs. The best brains from our companies. ( for your
resumes )
These brains were behind the biggest trends of recent years: from the rise of Avalanche and the IDO boom, to the Solana memecoin supercycle and P2E games you-know-where.
Beyond the fund, we'll be doing 0 to 1 with solid web3 founders. If you really want us to help your project, tap
here.
As for retail. I have nothing to offer you but pain, toil, research and discipline.
3 sigma left from being average or nothing
