Monthly Archives: February 2021

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Stefan Qin was just 19 when he claimed to have the secret to cryptocurrency trading.Buoyed with youthful confidence, Qin, a self-proclaimed math prodigy from Australia, dropped out of college in 2016 to start a hedge fund in New York he called Virgil Capital. He told potential clients he had developed an algorithm called Tenjin to monitor cryptocurrency exchanges around the world to seize on price fluctuations. A little more than a year after it started, he bragged the fund had returned 500%, a claim that produced a flurry of new money from investors.He became so flush with cash, Qin signed a lease in September 2019 for a $23,000-a-month apartment in 50 West, a 64-story luxury condo building in the financial district with expansive views of lower Manhattan as well as a pool, sauna, steam room, hot tub and golf simulator.In reality, federal prosecutors said, the operation was a lie, essentially a Ponzi scheme that stole about $90 million from more than 100 investors to help pay for Qins lavish lifestyle and personal investments in such high-risk bets as initial coin offerings. At one point, facing client demands for their money, he variously blamed poor cash flow management and loan sharks in China for his troubles. Last week, Qin, now 24 and expressing remorse, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to a single count of securities fraud.I knew that what I was doing was wrong and illegal, he told U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who could sentence him to more than 15 years in prison. I deeply regret my actions and will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I did. I am profoundly sorry for the harm my selfish behavior has caused to my investors who trusted in me, my employees and my family.Eager InvestorsThe case echoes similar cryptocurrency frauds, such as that of BitConnect, promising people double-and triple-digit returns and costing investors billions. Ponzi schemes like that show how investors eager to cash in on a hot market can easily be led astray by promises of large returns. Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX collapsed in 2019 as a result of fraud, causing at least $125 million in losses for 76,000 investors.While regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency industry is tightening, the sector is littered with inexperienced participants. A number of the 800 or so crypto funds worldwide are run by people with no knowledge of Wall Street or finance, including some college students and recent graduates who launched funds a few years ago.Qins path started in college, too. He had been a math whiz who planned on becoming a physicist, he told a website, DigFin, in a profile published in December, just a week before regulators closed in on him. He described himself on his LinkedIn page as a quant with a deep interest and understanding in blockchain technology.In 2016, he won acceptance into a program for high-potential entrepreneurs at the University of New South Wales in Sydney with a proposal to use blockchain technology to speed up foreign exchange transactions. He also attended the Minerva Schools, a mostly online college based in San Francisco, from August 2016 through December 2017, the school confirmed.Crypto BugHe got the crypto bug after an internship with a firm in China, he told DigFin. His task had been to build a platform between two venues, one in China and the other in the U.S., to allow the firm to arbitrage cryptocurrencies.Convinced he had happened upon a business, Qin moved to New York to found Virgil Capital. His strategy, he told investors, would be to exploit the tendency of cryptocurrencies to trade at different prices at various exchanges. He would be market-neutral, meaning that the firms funds wouldnt be exposed to price movements.And unlike other hedge funds, he told DigFin, Virgil wouldnt charge management fees, taking only fees based on the firms performance. We never try to make easy money, Qin said.By his telling, Virgil got off to a fast start, claiming 500% returns in 2017, which brought in more investors eager to participate. A marketing brochure boasted of 10% monthly returns -- or 2,811% over a three-year period ending in August 2019, legal filings show.His assets got an extra jolt after the Wall Street Journal profiled him in a February 2018 story that touted his skill at arbitraging cryptocurrency. Virgil experienced substantial growth as new investors flocked to the fund, prosecutors said.Missing AssetsThe first cracks appeared last summer. Some investors were becoming increasingly upset about missing assets and incomplete transfers, the former head of investor relations, Melissa Fox Murphy, said in a court declaration. (She left the firm in December.) The complaints grew.It is now MID DECEMBER and my MILLION DOLLARS IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN, wrote one investor, whose name was blacked out in court documents. Its a disgrace the way you guys are treating one of your earliest and largest investors.Around the same time, nine investors with $3.5 million in funds asked for redemptions from the firms flagship Virgil Sigma Fund LP, according to prosecutors. But there was no money to transfer. Qin had drained the Sigma Fund of its assets. The funds balances were fabricated.Instead of trading at 39 exchanges around the world, as he had claimed, Qin spent investor money on personal expenses and to invest in other undisclosed high-risk investments, including initial coin offerings, prosecutors said.So Qin tried to stall. He convinced investors instead to transfer their interests into his VQR Multistrategy Fund, another cryptocurrency fund he started in February 2020 that used a variety of trading strategies -- and still had assets.Loan SharksHe also sought to withdraw $1.7 million from the VQR fund, but that aroused suspicions from the head trader, Antonio Hallak. In a phone call Hallak recorded in December, Qin said he needed the money to repay loan sharks in China that he had borrowed from to start his business, according to court filings in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the loan sharks might do anything to collect on the debt and that he had a liquidity issue that prevented him from repaying them.I just had such poor cash flow management to be honest with you, Qin told Hallak. I dont have money right now dude. Its so sad.When the trader balked at the withdrawal, Qin attempted to take over the reins of VQRs accounts. But by now the SEC was involved. It got cryptocurrency exchanges to put a hold on VQRs remaining assets and, a week later, filed suit.Asset RecoveryBy the end, Qin had drained virtually all of the money that was in the Sigma Fund. A court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the fund is looking to recover assets for investors, said Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. About $24 million in assets in the VQR fund was frozen and should be available to disperse, he said.Stefan He Qin drained almost all of the assets from the $90 million cryptocurrency fund he owned, stealing investors money, spending it on indulgences and speculative personal investments, and lying to investors about the performance of the fund and what he had done with their money, Strauss said in a statement.In South Korea when he learned of the probe, Qin agreed to fly back to the U.S., prosecutors said. He surrendered to authorities on Feb. 4, pleaded guilty the same day before Caproni, and was freed on a $50,000 bond pending his sentencing, scheduled for May 20. While the maximum statutory penalty calls for 20 years in prison, as part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed that he should get 151 to 188 months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines and a fine of up to $350,000.That fate is a far cry from the career his parents had envisioned for him -- a physicist, he had told DigFin. They werent too happy when I told them I had quit uni to do this crypto thing. Who knows, maybe someday Ill complete my degree. But what I really want to do is trade crypto.The case is U.S. v Qin, 21-cr-75, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)(Updates with comment from prosecutor and case caption)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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COFACE SA: Governance evolution Bernardo Sanchez Incera appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors - Yahoo Finance

In honor of Black History Month, the Alamo is hosting a virtual event discussing how slavery evolved in Mexico, Texas, and the U.S. during the early 19th century.

The event, called "The Alamo Addresses: Slavery in Texas, Mexico, and the U.S. from 1820 - 1846 - An Interactive Discussion," will allow participants to learn about how slavery factored into the time period before and after the Texas Revolution.

Carey Latimore, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Trinity University and author of the Alamo's report on Civil Rights in San Antonio: WWII to 1960s, will discuss how slavery changed during the early 1800s.

News from around the state of Texas.

"The impact of slavery continues to leave its mark on our nation," Carey Latimore said. "I am honored to have this opportunity to engage in this most important topic at the Alamo. There is so much more to discuss than I can possibly fit into a single event. Knowing that, we will focus on how Texas fits into the broader context of slavery's evolution in the region during this period."

The virtual event will be hosted by Texas Representative Babara Gervin-Hawkins, and it will feature an interactive Q&A session with participants in real-time.

The event is free, and it will be available via Zoom at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Spots for live participants are limited, so viewers must reserve a spot on theAlamo.org.

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The Alamo Hosts Virtual Event Discussing the Evolution of Slavery in Early 1800s Texas - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Scientists have cracked the world's largest animal genome to better understand the evolution of life on land.

Researchers say the Australian lungfish, native to the Burnett and Mary Rivers, is the closest living fish relative to humans and other land dwellers.

A group of European scientists, led by evolutionary biologist professor Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz in Germany, sequenced 43 billion DNA building blocks, 14 times larger than the human genome.

The sequencing was only made possible through recent technological advancements.

Through analysis of the genetic mapping, the scientists linked the emergence of fish onto land 400 million years ago by observing the lungfish's physical characteristics, including its ability to breathe air and use its fins like limbs.

"Among the fishes, they are our closest living relatives, we are sure about this now," Professor Meyer said.

"We can see a lot in the genome and in the biology of the lungfish that helps us understand what the features must have been important for the conquest of land."

Finding the link between fish and life on land has been a lifetime passion and journey for Professor Meyer.

As a child, he read Old Fourlegs, a book about a prehistoric fish known as a coelacanth being caught in a South African fishing net.

Professor Meyer has spent the last three decades studying evolutionary biology and genetics, but the lungfish's DNA sequence was too complicated to code until now.

Assembling a team from laboratories in Konstanz, Wurzburg and Hamburg in Germany and Vienna in Austria, Professor Meyer was finally able to crack the animal world's longest DNA code.

"If you want to leave water, you have to be able to breathe air and not continue to rely on breathing through your gills, so you have to have lungs," Professor Meyer said.

"Then you have to be able to walk on land, and that's a different thing to accomplish for a fish that is used to being neutrally buoyant and paddling with their fins.

"Lungfish, if they moved on land, would have to crawl like a salamander and they already do that underwater."

The Australian lungfish is a protected species that was first described in 1870 by zoologist Gerard Krefft.

It is a common sight in the Burnett and Mary River with people fishing or canoeing often receiving a fright after mistaking the nearly 2-metre fish for a crocodile.

The fish rises to the surface and makes a large gasping noise as it breathes air.

There is still much to learn from the fish that hasn't changed in 100 million years and has been popularly described as a "living fossil".

Scientists still don't know how long the species live for, with the oldest lungfish dying in captivity in 2017 after being taken from the wild in 1933.

And while the ability to use its single lung to stay alive out of water makes it quite unique in the fish world, Professor Meyer understands it's the bone structures of its fins, including finger bones, that sets it apart from the other species of lungfish.

It can also help explain the evolution of animal life on land.

"The Australian lungfish has a bone structure that is similar in the basic arrangements of the bones to our upper arms or to our legs," he said.

"There is one strong humerus, the upper arm bone, and then two bones that branch off like our lower arm, then come the digits.

"That makes the Australian lungfish much more interesting than the South American or African lungfish."

Professor Meyer and the European science laboratories involved in the sequencing will continue their research and focus on the other species of lungfish DNA.

Professor Meyer hopes to visit the Wide Bay region in Queensland to study the Australian lungfish in its natural environment. He feels they are an important living link to the past we can continue to learn from.

"Both the coelacanths and lungfish are really, really important," he said.

"They are the only lineages still alive that tell us something that might have happened 400 million years ago.

"Of course, paleontologists have found fossils that are even closer to us, that show features of limbs and other aspects of their body. But these creatures are no longer alive. You are only dealing with rocks."

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Ancient Queensland fish 'close living relative' to humans, scientists believe - ABC News

Durban-based tech company, immedia has invested R10-million to help African media entrepreneurs to build sustainable community radio by using Fabrik (www.Fabrik.cloud), a set of cloud-enabled digital tools that empower media entities to live-stream shows, grow and engage with audiences around the world, and benefit financially by monetising their audiences.

The 25-year-old company, which has the backing of Microsoft and the Industrial Development Corporation, has been developing their Fabrik technology since 2017. Fabrik allows media entrepreneurs to upend the traditional notion of we broadcast and you receive, by creating a feedback loop that directly helps the stations and listeners that use it to leapfrog old technology, to become citizen journalists, and find their strategic space in a digitally transformed world. It is already being used by 15 commercial clients, including radio stations Gagasi FM, Smile 90.4FM and YFM.

As part of its Digital Leap programme (https://bit.ly/2Z8oQme), immedia will be giving its platform to qualifying media entrepreneurs across Africa for free for a year. This includes consultation, training and support to help monetize the technology, cumulatively valued at R10 million.

Phil Molefe, a veteran of broadcast radio in South Africa, Fabriks Head of Business Development & Strategy, says the programme was key to the companys vision to spearhead media transformation. He says the uptake of Fabrik by energetic entrepreneurs at community radio stations showed how empowering the suite of digital tools is. It enables them to deepen their relationship with their audience and monetise it sustainably because the quality of their engagement with listeners is meaningful.

Building stable, sustainable community radio across Africa

Molefe points out that while community media is often under-resourced and struggles to retain skills, the companys case studies have shown that it is more than possible for them to thrive and that the Digital Leap programme is the kind of opportunity they need, and can succeed on. Fabrik helps media entrepreneurs by solving key challenges for them, including:

Fabrik has a range of users, and about 60% of their listeners have an opt-in relationship with their broadcasters. By building and growing owned communities, stations then stand to benefit financially by serving highly relevant ads to their digital listeners. In addition, where sales conversions on social media are around 2%, Fabrik users enjoy 8%.

According to Tamie Mbombo, head of Marketing and PR at Izwi loMzansi, one of the largest community radio stations in South Africa, says that the platform has revolutionised the stations engagement with its listeners, and has led the digital charge with featured podcasts and integrated advertising campaigns on the Izwi mobile app. Community medias aim is to provide trusted information and expression, and Fabrik has helped do that, he says.

A change of mindset is required

The Fabrik team made some interesting observations based on the experiences of early adopters of the technology, including around community radio, where many advertisers and business decision makers are often dismissive of the audience. For example, one of our clients is a station with an audience in the LSM 4-6 range. That audience is typically regarded as too poor or too marginalised to go digital and yet our clients are proving that they are taking to it like ducks to water, Molefe says.

He says that the take up by media entrepreneurs, either regarded as on the fringes or as outliers, is the best showcase for Fabrik. They are doing what they do because nobody told them they couldnt and it is proving to be a great leveller. Weve seen how powerful this platform is in the community media space, which is why we are looking at boosting the rate of transformation.

Applications for the Fabrik Digital Leap programme are now open. For more information visit the website (https://bit.ly/2MXxy4e) or contact Jonathan Lumley at jonathan@fabrik.cloud.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Fabrik.

About Fabrik:The Fabrik (www.Fabrik.cloud) platform helps broadcast entities build independent, valuable and trusted communities in a safe space that you own and manage. Fabrik gives you progressively deeper data insights into your own community through real-time, human engagement. With the Fabrik platform and its impressive suite of services including customer data and insights and a powerful mobile application, you can grow audiences, increase customer engagement, gain valuable audience insights and statistics to help optimise content, and ultimately monetise your radio station.

For more information visit http://www.Fabrik.cloud.

Phil Molefe, Business Development and Strategy Lead at Fabrik, is a veteran journalist and Media Executive with a wealth of experience in both the print and electronic media that spans nearly 40 years.

Jonathan Lumley, Clients, Channels and Markets Lead at Fabrik, is a radio promotions veteran who now empowers stations to bring new value to their audiences and advertisers through innovative technology-enabled workflows and campaigns.

Africanews provides content from APO Group as a service to its readers, but does not edit the articles it publishes.

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Community radio gets a R10m boost to accelerate the digital evolution in Africa - Africanews English

Five nights into the NBA season, when the Pacers dismantled the Chicago Bulls, a number of Indiana players left their imprint on the contest.

Former Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon finished with 18 points and six assists. Two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo caught fire, going 5-for-5 from deep en route to 22 points. Domantas Sabonis, an All-Star himself, logged 22 points of his own and had a triple-double. Swingman T.J. Warren, continuing his NBA bubble-based flamethrowing, managed to outscore everyone, logging a game-high 23 points.

Far less distinguishable in the lopsided box score that evening was center Myles Turner, who tallied 9 points, five rebounds and one assist on 4-for-8 shooting a performance that wasnt all that far off from his seasonlong averages of 13.7 points, 6.7 boards and 1.1 assists on 51 percent shooting from the field. And a closer look at Turners metrics shows that his statistics this year are near-carbon copies of his four prior seasons, a span in which he averaged 13.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.3 dimes on 49 percent shooting.

[The Best NBA Players, According To RAPTOR]

The 24-year-olds numbers havent budged, showing a Gorilla Glue-style consistency from one year to the next. While that could be spun as a negative teams clearly prefer when young players improve their scoring by leaps and bounds, like Jerami Grant or Christian Wood theres evidence that Turners game has evolved immensely, even as his counting statistics have hardened in historic fashion.

Among NBA players who had logged at least five seasons by the age of 25, Turners total year-over-year movement in points, rebounds and assists per game is tied with Greg Monroe for the second-lowest of any player in a five-year span in modern NBA history. (We measured a players movement by adding together the absolute value of change in each per-game statistic from year to year.)

Smallest year-over-year movement in points, rebounds and assists per game over a five-year period for players age 25 or younger, since 1977

Movement is calculated by summing the absolute value of change in each per-game statistic from year to year. Players had to average at least 10 points per game each season.

Source: Basketball-Reference.com

In that sense, Turner is a bit like basketballs version of Khris Davis, the Texas Rangers slugger who once hit exactly .247 in four consecutive seasons. But while Daviss reaction to his lack of year-to-year change was largely sanguine, Turner objects to the implication that his game hasnt evolved.

If people are going to judge me on my numbers and not watch how Im performing on the floor, I think theyre doing themselves a disservice. You can deep-dive all you want, but it doesnt fully translate, Turner said. Ive grown on both ends, year in, year out.

[2020-21 NBA Predictions]

Turners claim that hes more than just his box score is undeniable. Take that blowout win over the Bulls back in December. He managed to swat four shots, including two in the first five minutes of the game, but the full story went deeper. Chicago, which shot a season-worst 37.4 percent from the field that evening, never found a rhythm from close range when Turner was nearby.

After the first two swats, players grew more mindful of Turners presence. Both Tom Satoransk and Coby White dished the ball off quickly to teammates mid-drive after seeing Turner step up to protect the paint. In another situation, Turners presence changed a shot from White, who lofted an awkward runner a tick or two earlier than he otherwise would have, prompting a miss from the second-year guard.

At 57.9 percent from inside the paint, the Bulls have been one of the NBAs most efficient teams from that part of the floor this season. But against Indiana, they connected on just 31.8 percent, or 7-for-22, of their shots from the paint with the rangy, hawk-like Turner on the court. (Further highlighting Turners impact: Chicago shot far better, 10-for-20, in the paint that night when Turner was off the floor.) Aside from making the close-range shots more challenging, he also forced players to make kick-out passes that took the Bulls out of prime scoring range. On some level, this explains how Turner finished that game as a plus-15 in plus-minus without having monster box-score stats.

The outing was far from an outlier. Much like they did with Roy Hibbert before, the Pacers guards funnel opposing ball-handlers into the lane, allowing them to challenge Turner at the rim. They arent shy about the strategy: Indiana allows more drives to the basket per 100 possessions and more close-range attempts than any team. Yet the Pacers are also the best at stopping those point-blank looks. And Turner, an early Defensive Player of the Year candidate who averages an NBA-best 3.6 blocks per game, can single-handedly take credit for the elite goalkeeping.

So far, Turner has held opponents 16.5 percentage points beneath their averages when shooting from within 6 feet of the rim, second among players who defend at least four such shots per game, according to NBA tracking data. And in a sign that points to his evolution, this is the third year in a row hes improved in the metric. After holding foes 4.5 percentage points below their normal shooting averages around the cup in 2017-18, he held them 8 points below their average in 2018-19, and then kept them 10.9 points under that threshold in 2019-20, per NBA Stats.

Taking advanced metrics like those into account, Turners defensive contributions stand out far more than his traditional offensive numbers do. FiveThirtyEights RAPTOR metric which leans on a high-level combination of box score metrics, tracking data and plus-minus has the Indiana big man rated as the leagues second-most impactful defender this season, behind center Clint Capela.

None of this even touches on the refinements Turner has made on the offensive side of the ball over time.

Most noteworthy: The 6-foot-11 big man, who used to take 97 percent of his shots from 2-point range, now takes almost half his attempts from behind the 3-point arc, giving his team more space to operate within. He appears to have a greater awareness of when to run from one rim to the other in transition, versus when its better to fan out to the corner in those situations. And heading into Wednesday nights games, he was taking a bigger chunk of his threes from the corner, where hes shooting a respectable 38 percent.

A mere box score wouldnt explain the context behind these shifts: That Turner has been a part of three largely different regimes, from the one with Paul George, to Oladipo, and now with Sabonis. Or that there have been serious questions about whether Turner and Sabonis fit together dating back to 2017-18, when the Pacers got drilled by 8.7 points per 100 possessions in the 270 minutes the duo shared on court together.

[Joel Embiid Changed His Offseason Conditioning. Now Hes Playing Like An MVP.]

First-year coach Nate Bjorkgren, who came over to the club as an assistant from the Toronto Raptors a team that frequently played two bigs at once has quickly altered the dynamics of the Pacers offense. Much of Bjorkgrens attack is predicated on being able to play the two bigs together. Where former coach Nate McMillan embraced taking quick, midrange shots if they were left open, Bjorkgren has encouraged his players to pull the trigger from outside far more often. And in Turners case, being more comfortable from the perimeter allows more breathing room for dribble-handoffs and playmaking chances with the ascendant Sabonis, a screen machine who operates from the same elbow area that Turner once occupied.

Even if box scores fail to capture the tweaks and triumphs Turner has made in his game, that doesnt mean there arent clear areas for improvement still. If Sabonis shines as a passer, Turners passing represents something far more dull, where logging a 1:1 assist-to-turnover ratio would be a positive development. At the same time, the Pacers certainly wont complain about his 62.2 percent true-shooting mark so far fueled by vastly improved 2-point shooting which is the best of Turners career by a sizable margin.

From where Turner sits, he doesnt mind if the most widely used numbers paint him as static. He sees a downside in trying to change them. If you start looking at your numbers and stuff as a player, you start getting in your own head and maybe start doing things that are out of character that your team doesnt need you to do, he said. As long as my numbers translate to winning, thats all I care about.

Neil Paine contributed research.

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Myles Turners Game Has Evolved. The Box Score Doesnt Know It Yet. - FiveThirtyEight