‼️ Update: Kucoin and IDEX delisted HAT token ‼️
No ICO but an airdrop instead.
HAT.Exchange (formerly Hawala.Today, HAT)
Other Website
- Bynary, Inc. is supposedly the holding company of HAT.Exchange.
Team
Refused to provide any LinkedIn profiles for the "team" members instead preferring absurd excuses and non-answers:
Googling around, you can find some of them
Zeeshan Masood (CEO/CTO) | LinkedIn
From CorporationWiki:
LinkedIn profile in April left much to be desired:
It's recently been suspiciously spruced up with debatable info:
He claims to have been CEO of Bynary since March 2017 even though it didn't exist until March 2018 and also claims he was working for TekSystems at the same time he was supposedly working for Reach Communications Inc. as seen in the old profile. Both companies have been contacted to confirm links but are yet to respond.
As to the part that has been suspiciously left out of the revamped profile, he was the founder of ToggleWave, a company which was terminated by the authorities because of tax issues:
He and Navaid Yusuf were also involved in WorldTradeCorp as Treasurer and President respectively, yet another company that met its demise at the hands of the law:
Omer Masood (Board Director) | No proof that he exists ‼️
Navaid Yusuf (Board Director) | No LinkedIn ‼️
In addition to the failed WorldTradeCorp above, he was also the president of Micronix which is yet another company taken down by the law:
- Sean Pettersen (Board Director) | LinkedIn
This one went from knowing nothing about blockchain and being just another guy that works at TekSystems:
...to being the CIO of Bynary and having a "specialization" in blockchain within weeks despite the fact that there's nothing in his prior professional history to support that:
Mario Suwandy (Head of Design) | LinkedIn ‼️
This one claims to have been working for Bynary, Inc. since 2015 even though the company didn't exist until 3 months ago:
Advisors
Rhys Parry | LinkedIn - Does not mention Bynary, Inc. or HAT.Exchange
Recently, one of the HAT telegram members noticed that Rhys had taken up a job with a potentially competing project:
Rhys has updated his profile to reflect this new job at VLabs but there is still nothing about Bynary:
Even more interestingly, he's now been silently removed from the Bynary site:
Keep in mind that neither Rhys nor Yash below has ever confirmed any relationship with this project. Rhys has been contacted to confirm if he ever knew about his position on Bynary's site but is yet to respond.
Updated by admin August 6th 2018: In a youtube post dated 25th of July 2018 Rhys Parry confirmed that he was an advisor to HAT.EXCHANGE
Yash Rachakonda | LinkedIn profile - Does not mention Bynary, Inc. or HAT.Exchange
Curiously, most of the identifiable faces on this page are or were employees of TekSystems which is an IT staffing and services company.
Updated by admin August 6th 2018: In a linkedin post dated 6th of August 2018 Yash Rachakonda confirmed that he has been involved as an advisor to HAT.EXCHANGE
I have been involved as an advisor on a very interesting product which will make crypto currencies accessible to virtually everyone.
Yash Rachakonda is using the past tense by saying that he has been involved as an advisor but is he still involved today?
PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV) is anonymous - His identity is unknwon. ‼️
Company
Claimed to be a company since last year:
But actually incorporated, not their actual company, but a whole new holding company 3 months ago:
Bynary, Inc.
File Number: 6805550
Incorporation Date: 3 March 2018
Entity Kind: Corporation
Entity Type: General
Residency: Domestic
State: Delaware
Office Address: N/A
Registered Agent Information
Name: Cogency Global Inc.
Address: 850 New Burton Road Suite 201
City: Dover
County: Kent
State: DE 19904
Phone: 302-734-1450
Source: Delaware entity search
Smart contract
https://etherscan.io/address/0x9002d4485b7594e3e850f0a206713b305113f69e#code
Github
Closed source with no intention of open-sourcing:
Update: August 2nd 2018 - PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) shared the Hat exchange github link
3 repositories
HAT.Exchange_Windows_Build
Product
Actual exchange yet to be released in any form. Various beta clients of a staking wallet is available for multiple platforms.
Vesting
They claimed tokens were locked under contract numerous times and even held a telegram poll to recalculate the then circulating supply based on that premise:
But that turned out to be a bold-faced lie admitted to by the team after this document (pdf) was released highlighting shady business going on behind the scenes. That forced them to seemingly become more "transparent" without actually being so.
No tokens were or are locked under contract, the vast majority of the supply currently sits in team-controlled wallets subject to their whims:
"bound to what we have stated in the whitepaper" while simultaneously admitting to breaking it (and of course calling the document that exposed it "FUD"). Impressive!
As if that wasn't bad enough, they continue to mislead naive token holders by claiming, in their new whitepaper, that tokens will be "unlocked" at some future time even though they were never locked in the first place:
Additional info
Lying About Token Distribution
Directly following their lie about locked tokens, they also lied about airdropping and paying bounties to the tune of 1M+ HAT tokens. Numerous times they claimed to have airdropped 1M HAT and extra for bounties:
But after that document came out, it turned out to be yet another bold-faced lie which they tried to excuse with silly accusations, handwaves and back-pedaling on earlier statements:
Clear contradiction pointed out when they attempted to rewrite history:
As should be clear by now, this project and its administrators/team have a penchant for back-pedaling on their earlier statements when trying to get out of a hard spot. This is just the beginning.
Lying About Applying for an MSB License
Prior to the release of the document and the events thereafter, they claimed they were anonymous because of their pending MSB License which was supposedly applied for in November, 2017:
You guessed it, that was yet another lie. They never applied for an MSB license, how could they? There was no company up until 2 months ago (which coincidentally was the 6th month since they supposedly applied)! While you can easily find the MSB applications of somewhat similar exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Robinhood and even the obscure CryptocurrencyMarket at FINCEN's MSB Registrant Search Database:
There is absolutely nothing for Bynary, Hawala.Today or Hat.Exchange:
Searching by state in Texas (where they were supposedly based) and Delaware (where the "holding" company, Bynary, was incorporated) instead of company name also comes up empty. If you're thinking it's not showing up because they've not yet been granted the license then see FINCEN's FAQ (pdf) that suggests otherwise:
The only reason there's nothing about Hawala.Today, Hat.Exchange or Bynary in FINCEN's MSB database is simple: they've not even bothered to file for an MSB license. They continue to mislead token holders and any request for information of said license and other info is met with pseudo-legalistic hand-waves, embarrassing vagueness, sidestepping of the question and even asking you to go through KYC (yes, you read that right) administered by a team whose identities are in question:
Tangent: Anyone who has followed this project long enough knows for a fact that the MSB was the de facto excuse as to why the devs were anonymous, for example:
Basically yet another attempt at rewriting history
If that's not enough, then their recent backpedaling on the MSB requirement in this newsletter should be enough:
The author of that newsletter would have us believe all references to an MSB license prior to this point were "unofficial", simply "sharing thinking" and misinterpreted as "set in stone" by the community. All the screenshots above show the disingenuity of such an embarrassing claim, it would take serious mental gymnastics to translate the above comments in the screenshots as anything but official or simply "sharing thinking". Here's more, by the second in command:
"need", "needed", "require", "waiting for", "like Coinbase [which has an MSB]"... if such comments are to be interpreted as "unofficial", "sharing thinking", "[not] set in stone", what on earth is official?
The next paragraph in the newsletter says:
But not too long ago it was:
Their whitepaper and comments in the telegram channel advertise a "wallet" to store and link your bank account/credit cards to. The previous whitepaper even going as far as promising insurance for those funds (that has of course been magicked away in the latest version):
If the "these funds do not belong to Hawala.Today" make you think "aha! It's different", realize that's exactly the same lingo Coinbase employs:
But there really is no shortage of complaints about Coinbase blocking people from accessing those funds they supposedly don't own, so much so that they're being sued. But at least they have an MSB license. Does the second in command offer any explanation as to why this 180 degree change occured? Perhaps an admission that they've never actually bothered to apply for an MSB? Nope:
From "we need the license [...] we're on schedule to get the MSB license" to "we dont need license for [fiat] now". I am sure the authorities are going to take very kindly with an MSB claiming it's not using vague arguments that don't particularly line up with reality.
Lying About Holding Trademarks to Hawala.Today & Hawala Token, and the Company's Location
That's what you would've been greeted with if you scrolled to the bottom of their previous and now offline hawala.today site. Of course it was yet another lie exposed in the document mentioned earlier. Right off the bat there is and was never any Hawala.Today company to which such trademark rights would've been granted. There's no trademarks for either of those brands in the USPTO database. This was, at least one version, of the excuse the second in command gave when asked about it:
Laced with three lies:
- there was a Hawala.Today company as at February 13th, a lie as has been established above
- said company was not in the US but actually in Estonia/Singapore/Switzerland, another lie
- the trademarks are actually held there, yet another lie
There's no trademark for either hawala.today or hawala token in the Estonian database, general Swiss database, Singaporean database or the entirety of Europe for that matter.
Other Fumbles
- Banning People For Pointing Out Blatant Contradictions
Then:
Now:
Tangent: There is not a single shred of evidence of a VC backing this company, not one. Following the document that was released (linked earlier), you can see the "funds" actually came from people buying their tokens on EtherDelta and IDEX
Pointing it out:
Banned:
- Claiming to be fully compliant with all the laws
Then:
Now:
Their reason for the change? FINRA
This became particularly problematic when people had their tokens locked in their smart contract with no recourse for action while they were waiting for the beta staking wallet to be released which would then require KYC. Instructions to directly unlock them using the smart contract was discouraged by the team:
They effectively banned a user for trying to help one such individual out because it's apparently "illegal" to interact directly with their smart contracts:
Edited by admin on 26 Jul 2018: 3 private conversation screenshots of PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) removed
A company that claims to be "globally" compliant makes the absurd claim that PII is not "valuable", processes people's very personal and valuable data without a DPO data and expects to retain the data indefinitely. Their second in command didn't even realize a name was PII:
The GDPR regulators will surely love that.
The "Advisor"
The "yawn" above is by the advisor, whether of Bynary, HATE or both going he can't seem to get straight. He also doesn't seem sure if he's on or off the team but as earlier screenshots show, he sure loves to attack people in public and especially in PMs:
Edited by admin on 26 Jul 2018: 5 private conversation screenshots of PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) removed
Flags
Real Team: ➖ More proof needed to verify all team members. Core team member / founder must be director of the company. Omer Masood - No proof that he exists. Navaid Yusuf - No LinkedIn. PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV) is anonymous - His identity is unknwon. ‼️
Github: ✅ Update August 2nd 2018 - PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) shared the Hat exchange github link
Smart Contract: ✅
Working Product: ➖ Staking wallet only, actual exchange yet to launch
Vesting: ❌ Lied about token lock and continue to mislead token holders
Have a Company: ❌ No team member is listed as the director of Bynary, Inc.
Transparent: ❌
No ICO but an airdrop instead.
HAT.Exchange (formerly Hawala.Today, HAT)
Other Website
Bynary
Team
Refused to provide any LinkedIn profiles for the "team" members instead preferring absurd excuses and non-answers:
Googling around, you can find some of them
Zeeshan Masood (CEO/CTO) | LinkedIn
From CorporationWiki:
LinkedIn profile in April left much to be desired:
It's recently been suspiciously spruced up with debatable info:
He claims to have been CEO of Bynary since March 2017 even though it didn't exist until March 2018 and also claims he was working for TekSystems at the same time he was supposedly working for Reach Communications Inc. as seen in the old profile. Both companies have been contacted to confirm links but are yet to respond.
As to the part that has been suspiciously left out of the revamped profile, he was the founder of ToggleWave, a company which was terminated by the authorities because of tax issues:
He and Navaid Yusuf were also involved in WorldTradeCorp as Treasurer and President respectively, yet another company that met its demise at the hands of the law:
Omer Masood (Board Director) | No proof that he exists‼️
Navaid Yusuf (Board Director) | No LinkedIn‼️
In addition to the failed WorldTradeCorp above, he was also the president of Micronix which is yet another company taken down by the law:
This one went from knowing nothing about blockchain and being just another guy that works at TekSystems:
...to being the CIO of Bynary and having a "specialization" in blockchain within weeks despite the fact that there's nothing in his prior professional history to support that:
Mario Suwandy (Head of Design) | LinkedIn‼️
This one claims to have been working for Bynary, Inc. since 2015 even though the company didn't exist until 3 months ago:
Advisors
Rhys Parry | LinkedIn - Does not mention Bynary, Inc. or HAT.Exchange
Recently, one of the HAT telegram members noticed that Rhys had taken up a job with a potentially competing project:
Rhys has updated his profile to reflect this new job at VLabs but there is still nothing about Bynary:
Even more interestingly, he's now been silently removed from the Bynary site:
Keep in mind that neither Rhys nor Yash below has ever confirmed any relationship with this project.Rhys has been contacted to confirm if he ever knew about his position on Bynary's site but is yet to respond.Updated by admin August 6th 2018: In a youtube post dated 25th of July 2018 Rhys Parry confirmed that he was an advisor to HAT.EXCHANGE
Source: Youtube
Yash Rachakonda | LinkedIn profile - Does not mention Bynary, Inc. or HAT.Exchange
Curiously, most of the identifiable faces on this page are or were employees of TekSystems which is an IT staffing and services company.
Updated by admin August 6th 2018: In a linkedin post dated 6th of August 2018 Yash Rachakonda confirmed that he has been involved as an advisor to HAT.EXCHANGE
Yash Rachakonda is using the past tense by saying that he has been involved as an advisor but is he still involved today?
PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV) is anonymous - His identity is unknwon.‼️
Company
Claimed to be a company since last year:
But actually incorporated, not their actual company, but a whole new holding company 3 months ago:
Bynary, Inc.
File Number: 6805550
Incorporation Date: 3 March 2018
Entity Kind: Corporation
Entity Type: General
Residency: Domestic
State: Delaware
Office Address: N/A
Registered Agent Information
Name: Cogency Global Inc.
Address: 850 New Burton Road Suite 201
City: Dover
County: Kent
State: DE 19904
Phone: 302-734-1450
Source: Delaware entity search
Smart contract
https://etherscan.io/address/0x9002d4485b7594e3e850f0a206713b305113f69e#code
Github
Closed source with no intention of open-sourcing:
Update: August 2nd 2018 - PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) shared the Hat exchange github link
1 contributor adminhatexchange
3 repositories
SellerEscrow
HAT.Exchange_Windows_Build
https://github.com/adminhatexchange/HAT.Exchange_Android_Build
Product
Actual exchange yet to be released in any form. Various beta clients of a staking wallet is available for multiple platforms.
Vesting
They claimed tokens were locked under contract numerous times and even held a telegram poll to recalculate the then circulating supply based on that premise:
But that turned out to be a bold-faced lie admitted to by the team after this document (pdf) was released highlighting shady business going on behind the scenes. That forced them to seemingly become more "transparent" without actually being so.
No tokens were or are locked under contract, the vast majority of the supply currently sits in team-controlled wallets subject to their whims:
"bound to what we have stated in the whitepaper" while simultaneously admitting to breaking it (and of course calling the document that exposed it "FUD"). Impressive!
As if that wasn't bad enough, they continue to mislead naive token holders by claiming, in their new whitepaper, that tokens will be "unlocked" at some future time even though they were never locked in the first place:
Additional info
Lying About Token Distribution
Directly following their lie about locked tokens, they also lied about airdropping and paying bounties to the tune of 1M+ HAT tokens. Numerous times they claimed to have airdropped 1M HAT and extra for bounties:
But after that document came out, it turned out to be yet another bold-faced lie which they tried to excuse with silly accusations, handwaves and back-pedaling on earlier statements:
Clear contradiction pointed out when they attempted to rewrite history:
As should be clear by now, this project and its administrators/team have a penchant for back-pedaling on their earlier statements when trying to get out of a hard spot. This is just the beginning.
Lying About Applying for an MSB License
Prior to the release of the document and the events thereafter, they claimed they were anonymous because of their pending MSB License which was supposedly applied for in November, 2017:
You guessed it, that was yet another lie. They never applied for an MSB license, how could they? There was no company up until 2 months ago (which coincidentally was the 6th month since they supposedly applied)! While you can easily find the MSB applications of somewhat similar exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Robinhood and even the obscure CryptocurrencyMarket at FINCEN's MSB Registrant Search Database:
There is absolutely nothing for Bynary, Hawala.Today or Hat.Exchange:
Searching by state in Texas (where they were supposedly based) and Delaware (where the "holding" company, Bynary, was incorporated) instead of company name also comes up empty. If you're thinking it's not showing up because they've not yet been granted the license then see FINCEN's FAQ (pdf) that suggests otherwise:
The only reason there's nothing about Hawala.Today, Hat.Exchange or Bynary in FINCEN's MSB database is simple: they've not even bothered to file for an MSB license. They continue to mislead token holders and any request for information of said license and other info is met with pseudo-legalistic hand-waves, embarrassing vagueness, sidestepping of the question and even asking you to go through KYC (yes, you read that right) administered by a team whose identities are in question:
Tangent: Anyone who has followed this project long enough knows for a fact that the MSB was the de facto excuse as to why the devs were anonymous, for example:
Basically yet another attempt at rewriting history
If that's not enough, then their recent backpedaling on the MSB requirement in this newsletter should be enough:
The author of that newsletter would have us believe all references to an MSB license prior to this point were "unofficial", simply "sharing thinking" and misinterpreted as "set in stone" by the community. All the screenshots above show the disingenuity of such an embarrassing claim, it would take serious mental gymnastics to translate the above comments in the screenshots as anything but official or simply "sharing thinking". Here's more, by the second in command:
"need", "needed", "require", "waiting for", "like Coinbase [which has an MSB]"... if such comments are to be interpreted as "unofficial", "sharing thinking", "[not] set in stone", what on earth is official?
The next paragraph in the newsletter says:
But not too long ago it was:
Their whitepaper and comments in the telegram channel advertise a "wallet" to store and link your bank account/credit cards to. The previous whitepaper even going as far as promising insurance for those funds (that has of course been magicked away in the latest version):
If the "these funds do not belong to Hawala.Today" make you think "aha! It's different", realize that's exactly the same lingo Coinbase employs:
But there really is no shortage of complaints about Coinbase blocking people from accessing those funds they supposedly don't own, so much so that they're being sued. But at least they have an MSB license. Does the second in command offer any explanation as to why this 180 degree change occured? Perhaps an admission that they've never actually bothered to apply for an MSB? Nope:
From "we need the license [...] we're on schedule to get the MSB license" to "we dont need license for [fiat] now". I am sure the authorities are going to take very kindly with an MSB claiming it's not using vague arguments that don't particularly line up with reality.
Lying About Holding Trademarks to Hawala.Today & Hawala Token, and the Company's Location
That's what you would've been greeted with if you scrolled to the bottom of their previous and now offline hawala.today site. Of course it was yet another lie exposed in the document mentioned earlier. Right off the bat there is and was never any Hawala.Today company to which such trademark rights would've been granted. There's no trademarks for either of those brands in the USPTO database. This was, at least one version, of the excuse the second in command gave when asked about it:
Laced with three lies:
There's no trademark for either hawala.today or hawala token in the Estonian database, general Swiss database, Singaporean database or the entirety of Europe for that matter.
Other Fumbles
Then:
Now:
Tangent: There is not a single shred of evidence of a VC backing this company, not one. Following the document that was released (linked earlier), you can see the "funds" actually came from people buying their tokens on EtherDelta and IDEX
Pointing it out:
Banned:
Then:
Now:
Their reason for the change? FINRA
This became particularly problematic when people had their tokens locked in their smart contract with no recourse for action while they were waiting for the beta staking wallet to be released which would then require KYC. Instructions to directly unlock them using the smart contract was discouraged by the team:
They effectively banned a user for trying to help one such individual out because it's apparently "illegal" to interact directly with their smart contracts:
Edited by admin on 26 Jul 2018: 3 private conversation screenshots of PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) removed
A company that claims to be "globally" compliant makes the absurd claim that PII is not "valuable", processes people's very personal and valuable data without a DPO data and expects to retain the data indefinitely. Their second in command didn't even realize a name was PII:
The GDPR regulators will surely love that.
The "Advisor"
The "yawn" above is by the advisor, whether of Bynary, HATE or both going he can't seem to get straight. He also doesn't seem sure if he's on or off the team but as earlier screenshots show, he sure loves to attack people in public and especially in PMs:
Edited by admin on 26 Jul 2018: 5 private conversation screenshots of PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) removed
Flags
Real Team: ➖ More proof needed to verify all team members. Core team member / founder must be director of the company. Omer Masood - No proof that he exists. Navaid Yusuf - No LinkedIn. PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV) is anonymous - His identity is unknwon.‼️
Github: ✅ Update August 2nd 2018 - PR / Marketing Advisor (Telegram display name: Edward IV - Anonymous - His identity is unknwon) shared the Hat exchange github link
Smart Contract: ✅
Working Product: ➖ Staking wallet only, actual exchange yet to launch
Vesting: ❌ Lied about token lock and continue to mislead token holders
Have a Company: ❌ No team member is listed as the director of Bynary, Inc.
Transparent: ❌