Australia’s Financial Services Minister to question ASIC over HyperVerse crypto scam

Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said he would ask the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) why it did not warn consumers about the HyperVerse crypto scam as other countries have done, while countries such as the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and Hungary Warnings were raised about the plan as early as 2021. "The way this scam works is to convince innocent people to invest their money in a product that may not exist and whose only source of income is the new investors' money," Jones said. "I just don't know why (ASIC) hasn't issued the Warning. Clearly, people should be concerned about this operation." (CoinDesk) Previously, an investigation last month revealed that thousands of people lost millions of dollars to crypto fund HyperVerse, a scheme promoted by Australian entrepreneur Sam Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu, both of whom went bankrupt. Founder of Australian Bitcoin company Blockchain Global. Blockchain Global owes creditors $58 million and its liquidator has charged Xu and Lee with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) for possible breaches of the Corporations Act. ASIC said it did not plan to take action at this time. The HyperVerse investment scheme appears to have escaped scrutiny in Australia, despite being flagged by overseas regulators as a possible "scam" and "suspected pyramid scheme". The Chainalysis report estimates that consumer losses on HyperVerse will reach approximately US$1.3 billion (AU$1.92 billion) in 2022. In December 2021, at an online global launch event, a man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the CEO of HyperVerse. The Guardian was unable to verify his identity or contact him for comment.