Investors lost $1.3 billion when the company collapsed and its founders fled.
The CEO of HyperVerse was caught in Thailand after escaping with at least $1.3 billion that thousands of small savers were convinced they had invested in cryptocurrencies.
The latest news about the HyperVerse scam risks damaging the trust people have in cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin precisely in the momentous days when the (grudging) go-ahead from the SEC finally allows them to be bought on Wall Street as common stocks or traditional funds.
The only thing that is cryptographic, or rather, cryptic, is the HyperVerse affair is the way in which a scam of still undefined contours was managed – Chainalysis estimates the stolen amount at $1.3 billion in 2022 alone – to the detriment of thousands and thousands of small savers.
Max Hyperverse Scam
A very un-4.0 and high-tech scam, which as the hours go by seems designed according to the traditional Ponzi scheme, where the only certainty is that those responsible have disappeared with the savings of those who wanted to create savings.
The HyperVerse name began to recover immediately after the pandemic, when cryptocurrencies experienced a second youth. At first it seemed like the umpteenth decadence of an already widely dissected concept, but whoever organized the project for marketing purposes merged the possibility of getting rich by investing in virtual currencies with the narrative of a metaverse in which, sooner or later, everyone ends up living.
HyperVerse will not be the first or the last scam created on the Web. What sets it apart, however, is its clever storytelling, because to make it credible, whoever planned it not only hired at a certain time Chuck Norris, the Walker Texas Ranger who captivated millions of Voghera housewives around the world, but also outlined the charismatic figure of a magnetic CEO and lovely: Reece Lewis.
He looks like the classic American white collar: clean face, tidy hair and nice suit. A Michael Gary Scott for The Office who really made it and knows what he’s talking about, so overwhelming that he has become a guru, a teacher of life. A little bit of Steve Jobs with advice not only on how to invest but also on how to live better. After all, Lewis had a career that began at Goldman Sachs, then his first startup sold to Adobe and finally his arrival, since 2016, in Blockchain technology as a pioneer.
Did the CEO of HyperVerse Ever Exist?
The problem is that just as Michael Scott was actually an empty simulacrum, filled with the acting ability and extraordinary facial expressions of Steve Carell, in the same way Reece Lewis was the creation of a good screenwriter and the acting ability of whoever played him.
According to an investigation carried out by the British media The Guardian, Adobe “has never recorded the acquisition of a company owned by Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public documents before the SEC” and “Goldman Sachs does not find any reference to whether Reece Lewis worked for the company.”
What Will Happen to AI and Deepfakes?
In the age of deepfakes and artificial intelligence that allow even pimply children to create incredibly realistic videos, the artisanal nature of this mega scam dating back just a couple of years is surprising and perhaps somewhat reassuring. Meanwhile, the world has changed again, not for the better, and new technologies will allow anyone to create even more credible movie scams, and the scam that no longer smells rotten underneath is very scary.
By Audy Castaneda
