When the Bloomberg news popped up, Marcus Chen, a senior analyst in the Reuters Financial Analysis Department, was putting his second cup of Espresso to his mouth.
He has been in this industry for fifteen years and has seen too many "fund statements" submitted by offshore funds under regulatory pressure--
Most of them are just a few pages of vague information, with several untraceable intermediate accounts attached.
Then use the lawyer's carefully crafted wording to bypass all sensitive issues.
He put the coffee cup back on the table and clicked on the latest attachment submitted by Era Vanguard in EDGAR System.
Be mentally prepared to spend hours digging for clues from the words.
Four files, more than 200 pages.
When the file was loaded, he glanced at the directory--
Henglong pledge documents, Coinbase and Bitfinex institutional account statements,
Cross-border bank transfer voucher, Offshore SPV registration certificate, liquidation summary table, United States brokerage account opening record.
He put down his coffee cup, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and started reading page by page from the first file.
Phase One's Henglong pledge document was very standard, but when he turned to Phase Two--
His fingers paused on the touchpad when he was checking out institutional account statements for Coinbase and Bitfinex.
Each transaction is accompanied by a timestamp and transaction hash, which can be verified directly on the Blockchain browser.
It is not a general monthly summary, but a complete record of every purchase.
Details of all batches of positions listed in the time window from November 2016 to early 2017,
Price, quantity, handling fee, transaction time - all accurate to the minute level.
"They listed all the transaction hashes."
Marcus muttered to himself and began to scroll the page quickly.
In the middle of the process, there were additional purchases around Swing Trading and two thousand US Dollar, until the final stage--
In December 2017, all positions were cleared and sold within a few trading days after Bitcoin exceeded 17,000 US Dollar.
The net profit figure on the liquidation summary table is highlighted in bold - 7.94 billion US Dollar.
He leaned back in his chair and was silent for nearly ten seconds, then opened Excel and entered the core data disclosed in the attachment line by line:
The time window for opening a position, the average buying price is about 855 US Dollar, and the initial position is 355,000 pieces.
The peak position after Swing Trading is 550,000, the average clearance price is above 17,000 US Dollar, and the net profit is approximately 7.94 billion US Dollar.
He called up the historical price data of Coinbase and Bitfinex from the end of 2016 to the end of 2017.
The average transaction price of Era Vanguard was compared segment by segment with the weighted average price of the same period.
The buying window - the range of 800 to 900 US Dollar, consistent.
Swing Trading window--the price rose from 900 to 1,500 and then fell back to 1,200.
The time point of every sale and purchase falls on this curve and coincides with it.
Clearance window - the historical peak of more than 17,000 US Dollar lasted for less than a week.
Most of Era Vanguard's liquidation operations happen to be squeezed into these few days, which is consistent.
All match.
There are no traces of post-event adjustments, no ambiguous time intervals, and no vague "roughly around a certain price."
Each number is followed by a verifiable transaction hash and bank statement.
He saved the screenshot of the comparison results and started writing an analysis report.
The title is "Era Vanguard Bitcoin Transaction Records Comprehensive Verification: All Numbers Are Consistent with Historical Markets".
When writing the report, he noticed that there was another detail in the attachment that was ignored by most people--
During the same period when Bitcoin opened a position, there were not even a few Licensed-compliant Digital Currency exchanges in the Asia area.
The cross-border Crypto Asset settlement system is far less mature than it is today, let alone an institutional-level compliance certificate deposit system.
Zhao Chen completed such a huge layout in a gray area, technical limitations and high handling fees.
However, every paper and electronic statement is still retained, including transaction fees and intermediary bank deductions for cross-border fund transfers.
In the last paragraph of the report, he could not help but write:
"This is the most detailed and verifiable private offshore fund fund traceability document that this analyst Greater China has ever seen in his career, bar none."
Meanwhile, analysts at Bloomberg and Reuters are doing the same thing.
The Bloomberg team was the fastest. They sent out the first alert less than two hours after the attachment was uploaded.
But until the analysts complete the preliminary cross-reference of numbers and confirm that the transaction prices in the attachment are consistent with the historical market conditions,
The official in-depth report title was finalized - "From 500 million Hong Kong Dollar to 8 billion US Dollar: Era Vanguard's Bitcoin path to wealth revealed."
The lead of the report reads:
"Zhao Chen, the actual controller of this mysterious offshore fund, in about thirteen months from the end of 2016 to the end of 2017,
Through the Bitcoin transaction, the seed capital of approximately 500 million Hong Kong Dollar was increased to approximately 7.94 billion US Dollar, with a return on investment of nearly 150 times.
This attachment Era Vanguard submitted to the SEC today,
This is the first time in the history of Wall Street that a private offshore fund has proactively disclosed such complete Crypto Asset transaction documents to the regulatory agency."
Less than half an hour after the article was posted, Bloomberg added another follow-up comment.
The commentator wrote in the article:
"The most impressive thing about this document is not how precise the timing of Zhao Chen's entry was--
A large-scale position was opened at Bitcoin 800 US Dollar, and the position was accurately cleared above seventeen thousand US Dollar--
But he actually kept all the proof of every transaction.
From institutional account statements at Coinbase and Bitfinex to bank cross-border transfer records,
From the registration documents of Offshore SPV to the tax compliance certificate after clearance, every page of documents can be independently verified.
In 2016, when Crypto Asset supervision was still in a gray area,
This kind of compliance awareness is extremely rare for a young investor who was only in his 20s at the time."
Manhattan In the Explorers Club in the lower city, there are three printouts on the coffee table in front of White-Haired Old Man--
Bloomberg's in-depth report, Reuters's verification analysis, and the complete attachment he asked analysts to download directly from EDGAR System.
He spent an entire afternoon flipping through more than two hundred pages of documents from beginning to end, reading every page very carefully.
After reading it, he took off his glasses and placed them on the coffee table, leaned back in the leather chair, closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time.
Several other people in the room were also looking through the documents in their hands, but no one spoke.
The room was quiet for a long time.
White-Haired Old Man opened his eyes, stacked the printouts together and placed them on the edge of the coffee table.
He said something that only those sitting in this room could understand--
"We've been wondering where his money comes from.
After guessing for so long, he spread out every statement on the table for us to see."
He paused, as if chewing on the image of an opponent he had never seriously examined before, and then added:
"He already knew that one day he would be investigated, and he already knew that one day he would have to give the truth.
So he started leaving evidence from day one.
He even scanned the paper statements from the year the exchange was delisted into PDF--
This is no longer a response to an investigation, this is a proactive disclosure."
At the same time, new follow-up comments are constantly being refreshed on Bloomberg Terminal.
An anonymous analyst wrote in the comment column of Bloomberg--
"This attachment of Era Vanguard may be the first time in history that a private offshore fund has handed over such a complete Crypto Asset investment document to global regulatory agencies.
It did not rush to add certification after being investigated, but was prepared for future regulatory scrutiny at the beginning of its establishment."
Another former SEC Enforcement Division official retweeted a Reuters follow-up report on Twitter and commented:
"The awareness of compliance with this document is extremely rare.
SEC examiners originally expected to find an offshore structure full of loopholes, but unexpectedly got a complete road map of the source of funds."