Fighting Back Against Crypto Scams and Loss

He's the securities fraud and investment loss attorney. He represents clients who have lost money bendy fraud, at etcetera. He's not a couple of really big cases that we get into. One is this big sim swapping that has been a big problem. People are getting their cryptocurrencies hacked into install in because of this, and so we talk about sim swapping,

what the case is looking like. We get into how you can protect yourself from sim swapping if it does happen to you, what you should do, And we also get into some other stuff with coin base and the Burke Versus coin based case, talking about the Bitcoin cash fork and what happened there, as well as a bunch of other legal issues that you should be aware of ramifications that you may have if you've had a loss, and so much more good stuff. Let's go ahead and

just jump right into it with David. All Right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Market Disruptors podcast. Today, I am sitting down with David Silver and he's an attorney working on the securities fraud, investment loss, et cetera. And um it's h He's got a couple of exciting things that he's working on we want to talk about. So let's just go ahead and just jump right into it. Hey, David, Hey Mark, how are you. Hey? I'm doing good. Thanks,

Thanks for taking the time to come on. Um, I know we've worked together a little bit, kind of had a relationship for a while, but uh, really just kind of excited to talk to you and hear about some of the bigger stuff that's going on in the market today that people should be aware of. But for a little bit of background, why don't you just kind of tell everybody who you are, where you're from, and how

you got to crypto, what you're doing. Sure, my name is David Silver, I'm a founding partner or at Silver Miller. Um I got to crypto like most people accidentally. Um. I was sitting in a bar in two thousand and twelve in Utah and some guy was trying to impress. We were on a board of directors for a philanthropical organization and some guy was trying to impress the other four guys at the table and started talking about bitcoin and the US. The four of us kind of did

what everyone did, especially back then. We shook our heads. We were like, this is nothing, I mean, come on, and he took all of our cell phones and he gave us And at the time I thought he gave us all the equal amount of bitcoin, but he gave me five bitcoin. He opened up a coin based account of gave me five bitcoin in two thousand twelve, which at the time was worth about two hundred bucks. So I was like, yeah, cool, some guya gave me a thousand bucks. He's going to jail. I'm never gonna touch

this stuff. I've never got anything to do with it. And then I ended up doing a case for someone about crypto against a company called Crypsy into that some fifteen and then when the ship hit the fan in two thousand seventeen, I logged back into that account, the coin based account for the first time in about five years, and those five bitcoin were worth about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. I was like, I was like, that's crazy. And the guy never went to jail, which was a

good side. Um. It turns out that the other four guys at the table, he only gave them one bitcoin each and he was trying to impress me, and I thank him. At work, I sent them some very nice follows of wine when things were peaking. I still hold those five bitcoins, so I while I'm not necessarily a I have never I can honestly say I have never bought a cryptocurrency. I have only received them. So I still I guess if by accident, I'm a bitcoin maximalist

because I basically hold bitcoin through my lawsuits. I do now hold others by almost what I would call accident or you know, the malfians of others, because I do take paim in. You know, I do take payment and contingency fee. I represent lots of people. Some of my big loss suits are I've got the only class action against coin base. Uh that's called like delve coin Base. I've got a big case against I've got a couple of big cases against cracking. The biggest one relates to

a flash crash in May two thousand seventeen. Got it's been a while now, May two thousand seventeen, when the price of Eve went from nine to twenty six over about two hours. That case is actually set to be tried soon. I got some class actions. I was part of originally the class action against Teza's I've got the class action against Gigawatt to connect one Coin, Nano Monkey Capital, and I guess we're gonna talk about today. I also

do a lot of SIM swapping cases. I got about forty SIM swapping cases where people cell phones are hija act in one one way or another and they lose a lot of their crypto. Yeah. Wow, that's a that's a lot of cases. You sound like a pretty busy guy. Yeah. This is good for me, it's bad for other people. Yeah right. Yeah. So I want to talk about the SIM swapping because that's a hot topic and and it really relates to a lot of people. We should all be aware of it because it's a major security issue

for sure. Um, but just kind of overall, Um, it seems like, I mean, with a lot of these cases that you mentioned, you know, with the flash crash for example. I mean really it's about um holding these businesses, whether they're exchanges or whatever, accountable for what they're doing, right, I mean that kind of sums it up so um. In in the cracking flash cash for example, people were uh subject to losses because they couldn't get in and

sell their coins or whatever. Um, and so holding them accountable. Right. So basically, and you know mine, I'll share my screen for a second. Um, So basically we're gonna walk through. Just make sure I got the right one which who which screen of my sharing? I see? Yeah, I see, I see your SIM swap fraud. Um. So this is a podcast f So for the podcast, I'll go ahead and a link to this uh link to this image

for you guys. Yeah. So basically the image is showing, you know, it's the walking through for whether sim swap

is and sim swapping effectively. Um. There's I have my telephone, I have my cell phone service with a T and T and all right, about one o'clock in the morning on a Friday night, SIM swappers will call a T and T and they will sim swap and they will ask for a T and T to swap the SIM card from my iPhone to another phone, and effectively what ends up happening is my phone I lose the network access to a T and T and the hacker gets to take over the network access on their phone, So

all of my phone calls, my text messages, everything goes to the hackers phone instead of mind is that like porting your number over? It's so there are two types of There are two types of hacks. The porting is a little more complicated and hackers have stayed away from it. About two three years ago, it was more popular for the hackers to port your number, but porting takes a day or two. The SIM swap is instantaneous, so they actually moved to the SIM swapping over the SIM over

the porting. Uh. They're actually after the consensus in May of two thousand nineteen, the last main consensus in New York. Sim porting on Verizon became a problem again. And there are a lot of UH, simports, but for the most part right now, where we're seeing or sims swaps, not some imports alright, So they're they're effectively the same, I mean, the same outcome and the same risk to the user.

It's the same risk to the user, you actually lose your cell phone number on the sim port, so that usually they'll move it from like a T and T to a smaller provider and it comes more complicated. Uh, with a SIMS swap. The moment you realize you've been swapped, you can walk into an a T and T store and they can fix it instantaneously. Unfortunately, the hackers are so good it takes them about an hour to clean out all of your email and all of your crypto accounts. Literally,

we've seen it as quickly as six minutes. So let's so let's walk through that. So, um, the hacker gets into a T and T S database or convinces a store employee to swap over the sim for example, and now they have access to my phone, uh, text messages, et cetera. And then what do they do with that?

So what ends up happening is when the hacker gets access to your phone, a lot of your accounts and we found especially your Gmail accounts and your iCloud accounts are being are able to be reset on two factor authentication through SMS confirmation. So what the hacker does is he logs into your Gmail clicks I forgot my password. Then Gmail will send him an SMS two factor authentication back to the cell phone, which the hacker now controls.

They'll reset your Gmail account and then use your Gmail account. He'll look for what emails you're getting. They'll look for, you know, if you have a coin based account, you know, he'll know you have a coin based will go the coin base, will then try and reset your coin base.

The problem we've seen is a lot of people think they're protected because they have two factor authentication with Google authenticator or author and it turns out most people's accounts, even the Google authenticator or the author are still tied as back up too there to SMS authentication and can be reset by having control of the cell phone. Hmm.

And the second thing is a lot of people on their Gmail account keep their seed information so they can reset accounts, or they keep there, or they keep their backup for their authie or they're Authie or their Google authenticator on their Gmail or eye cloud and i Cloud for instance. You can't even un attached two factor authentication with SMS right now, It's virtually impossible. Anyone who keeps anything store on eye cloud is the easiest hack out there. Mhmm, yeah, interesting.

I know, I know with with Gmail, it does obviously keeps your phone number as well. Um, what about you know, what about people that have their two factor authentication on a like a separate device, so it's not on their phone. Are you saying that that may not adder because if they get access to their phone number, they might not even need to have access to the to f A. So let's use something like treasure, you know where Treaser

is its own backup. There are a lot of people who keep their seed information in their email, right and some of the so in some of the lawsuits at and T, T Mobile, Verizon, they're blaming the user for not securing their crypto assets to the best of their ability. And you know, it's it is a defense. So in theory, you should be protected if you're you know, third party secure wallet is truly secure. Unfortunately, what the hackers have found is they are most people use a backup for

their security. That backup is usually stored in their email, whether it be their Gmail or their eye cloud. And they come in and they sit and they basically come in and they get through the back door of the security measure because most people are lazy and keep everything in their email accout right. So yeah, always a bad idea to keep your seed in your computer anywhere. I think we saw Ian Billina said that he kept his in his ever note account, which I use every note

like crazy. Um, I think if you put it in Google Drive or uh job box, anywhere that's digital, you have the risk of a hacker getting access to that. So, um I keeping your backup seed on paper is something that I've always done, but I am concerned. Um as you say, like if they get access to the email that you log into your exchange with and then they're able to reset your exchange with just your cell phone number and not needing the two f a. Um. So here's where you know a lot of people have a

false sense of security. Where do they use coin based cracking, Gemini, bit Trux coloniacs. They'll think that they're safe because they're using Google two factor authentication or off the the log into those as their second factor. So on coin based or cry can you can use SMS two factory authentication. If you're using SMS and your phones compromise, you're gonna be compromised, right you use Google authenticator or off the

you can still be compromised if the hacker. The first thing the hacker looks for is the Google Authenticator or AF the emails in your Gmail account so they are able to replicate out of your If they can, they will change that and they will immediately then go after your exchange accounts and they are and they have been quite successful at it. Interesting, So that frames up the let's that frames up the overall issue. Um, the big one that's super popular right now. I know you said

you have thirty or so that you're working on. But the one that's really taken kind of media headlines is this Turpin versus A T and T um. Some of that looks like, I mean, it came out. I think maybe they brought it up where like actually a T and T kind of has a history of being hacked and people getting access to it. Is that kind of what framed it up? And are they trying to show like negligence on A T and T s part there?

So the problem with the A T and T and Michael Turpin's case, and I you know, at the end of the day talking about Michael's case, I am not Michael's lawyer. I don't represent Michael. I have no inside knowledge about Michael's case. I want to make that clear. Um I did said, I did sit next to Michael at consensus on the panel where we both talked about

sim swapping cases. But effectively, what makes Michael's case unique is that Michael had his second fact, he had an enhanced security pen for his A T and T account. So most people when they log into when they go there with an A T and T store, they get a four to Japan. Michael had a six or eight to Japan. I personally had a six or eight to Japan, and I also was a victim of sim swapping. Uh So A T and T is offering you an enhanced mechanism to uh secure your account because they are aware

this is a problem. So ironically, what ends up happening is that after we have these type of you know, false sense of security measures, a T and T employee simply bypassed your security when someone calls in and anyone can bypass by, you know, whether it's telling your birthday

or giving some other personal information. Now we've learned through Michael's lawsuit and other criminal indictments that A T and T employees or contractors, along with Horizon and T Mobile, we're selling the consumer protected information that was used to access the accounts. So again, you know, there's there's federal law play here, state law play here, and there's also the terms of service of a T and T a play here, because a T and T when you sign

up with them. And this is just about Michael's case, but this is the same for any major carrier, not just talking about Michael's case exclusively. You waive your rights to a class action. How many people have been hurt unlike Michael. So Michael lost about twenty four million dollars and tokens at the peak of the market. Um, now he's doing punitive damages of an extra two hundred million dollars. Really, the only people who get punitive damages are on TV.

You've ever you very rarely see that in real life. Um. But what's interesting here is of even like the thirty and forty people I represent, those are the people who have damages in excess of twenty fifty hundred thousand, a million, two million dollars and damages. I speak to so many people who have been hit and compromised, who lost half a bitcoin, you know, a thousand dollars worth of ripple

because there's a class action waiver. None of those people are able to get representation by you know, a contingency fee lawyer. I mean I get yelled and screamed out all the why won't you take my case? This is horrible. I've got this, I've got that. So for every case I do take, I have to turn down four or five. But the hackers are doing in mass and then are successful on a couple like Turpin, like you know some of my clients. But for everyone, they're successful, and they

also probably fail on five to ten. You know, people they're hacking, But what do they do. They walk around Consensus, They walk around every cryptoconference. They take everyone's business cards. Your business card has your email on it, your cell phone number on it, your name on it. Even if they're not working with insiders, they try. They can, some

of them socially engineered backwards. But they are looking for you know, most people at Consensus are trying to sound more important than they are, so they're gonna be like I hold this token and I use coin base, I do X, I have my money here. And for the hackers, it's just you know, sometimes people are the Rome Wars enemies. They are trying to show off, they're trying to do things, and they're losing their own money. Yeah, wow, how how how easy that could be once you get that that

key information, I can see that. Um, it's interesting you talk about how a T and T gives you an extra security measure, um, which which tricks you into or kind of gives you this false sense of security. I guess, um, when you have that that extra measures that you've put in place, showing that you have been proactive to be more secure, does that put more damage or claim unto them?

So unfortunately, the answer is called comparative negligence. And while every while we're all trying to get a T and T to be fully responsible, a T and T s defense and I'm not saying I agree with it, but their defenses. They're not an insurance company for you for your assets. And then they are not a and they're not a security company for you for your assets. So

they're not responsible. First, let's say the fact that you turned around decided to put your coins on an exchange that you know had extra security measures that you yourself did not avail yourself to. Yeah, they're responsible. You're responsible because there's a third party intervening act i e. That hacker of the criminal, and you're responsible because you yourself had your seat information for your treasure wallet in your Gmail account, right. You know your Gmail account wasn't backed

up with two factor authentication. You could have stopped them getting your access. But the simpswap itself is the first step of many steps, and if you were taking better protection in steps two, three, and four, you would have lost any money. Yeah, I was curious. I'm with T Mobile. Um, it seems like it's all around a T and T. But you did mention there's stuff going on in T Mobile when this had gotten hot, and maybe back in they had contacted me and said, hey, we can lock

your account. Do you want to like enable this where, um, you know no what he can change it unless you come into the store. I said yes, But I think I've heard of the case where even people had done that but it still was getting swapped. Is that? Yes? So the reason why people to talk about Turpin Turpins

and federal court in California, it's public. My forty cases are all in arbitration and not public, So that's why those are all getting talked about, right, now I would say mostly I the large percentage of people I speak to are A T and T. The next is T Mobile, the next is Horizon, and last is Sprint. I guess since they're gonna be emerging soon, Sprint and T Mobile will be one. Yeah. Wow, Yeah, I could see how they could say. I mean, hey, we can't be responsible

for your whole life. I mean, we can be responsible for damages to your cell phone, but not twenty five million dollars in in crypto. Um. I kind of get that. But I mean, given their size and negligence, I guess something. I mean, you wouldn't be taking these cases on if you didn't think there was an outcome coming. Right, Well, let's think it back, because you're using a word a lot of people use when they call me up. They're like, well, A T T is negligent and what they did, they're

responsible there. The problem is, when you sign your cell phone contract, it's basically like signing a mortgage. It's probably thirty pages long their terms and conditions. You actually specifically agree that they're not responsible for any negligence on your account. You also specifically agree that your damages are limited, so you know it's When I tell people, you know, what the value of their cases are worth, they're like, well, that's not fair, and I'm like, well, I understand that,

but I don't make the law. You know. You you know, you know, be very like I get to look at your Twitter account, you know, nowadays, and I'm like, look, all the people that you want to vote for, you want to have an office, those are the people who are protecting the big companies, not you. You know, if you want to vote with your pocket book, then you know you should vote for people who want to give

you access to the courts. You know. You may not like liberal Democrats for instance, like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but they are the ones who would allow you to sue. You know, if you vote for, you know, a Republican, you know, Republicans tend to say you shouldn't have access to courts. And I'm not meaning to make this political either way. I'm just saying that, you know, you can't have the both ways. You can't say that the terms

of conditions don't matter, the law doesn't matter. I got robbed. I want my money back, you know. And it's especially we're in the crypto community. We have so many libertarians and anarchists. You know, it's one of my most favorite quotes that I've had in my path. Everyone's an anarchist until they lose their money. Then they want a lawyer. Yeah, that's true, and and uh I agree with that statement. I I tend to fall on that that side of the of the line, I guess. But I'm I'm willing

to accept that responsibility. You know, I grew up. Um I see, uh, you know all these personal injury cases and uh, you know, I see it's like people access to land and they want to be able to go do these things, and but then they get hurt there and then they want somebody responsible. So it's like, we want the freedom, but we don't want to we don't want the responsibility that comes with the freedom, right. I

guess that's kind of what you're saying. Well, it's think of someone who you know, wants to jump out of a plane and have a parachute on. You know, statistically you're pretty safe if the parachute works and you know how the skydive. But now you decide to take it

one step further. You want to jump off of a bridge with a with a skydiving pack on your because you think you're an outdoor adventure of you know, sportsman, and all of a sudden, when you know something goes wrong because you only you're supposed to have twenty tho fet you only have five thousand feet. You want to see the guy who told you about going on the

bridge here. If your money was at you know, Morgan Stanley Wells, far Ago, Goldman Sacks and your cell phone was swapped, the hacker would take three days to get your money and you would get your money back. The fact that it's crypto and it happens instant enviously is the problem. For instance, I'll give another great example. A lot of clients who lost their money in the US on bit max. Use bit max and when you're in US, so now they're like, well, I want my money back.

Someone stole my money. Well where is your money? Well, I can't give you that information. May mean you can't give me that information, Well, it's it's it was I was using bit max, you know, and bit max and the money was stolen. But what the email addressed were you using? How are you logging in? Well? I had a proton email account that you know, the hacker guy

that I can't get back. Now. Well, if you can't prove your damages, you can't see And that's become an interesting twist in this, you know, just it's kind of like you know too, It's kind of like to mafios is. The first guy steals the money, the second guy steals the money from the first guy. The first guy wants to go to the cops. The cops say, where did you get the money? It goes, well, I stole it from individual number one. You know. It's it's a real

problem because this doesn't happen even on these halts. It they don't get your legacy bank accounts for that. And you know, you got to conchoose your poisons. And that's part of the telecoms defenses. If you were more secure, if you put your money in the banks, none of this would happen to you. Yeah, use crypto, live by crypto. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious, Um, I'm curious. You're talking about like proving this, so, like I would imagine there

has to be some proof that there was damages. I saw in Turpin's case, for example, he had to show that proved that the sim swap led to loss. So I've been hacked. I had a I had a hot wallet, an app on my phone, and one day I logged in and all my money was gone. But how can I prove that was hacked? All you see is a is a debit out of the account. Again, I still to this day don't know how that happened. I have really good security and it was just gone. How do

I prove that was stolen and hacked? And I didn't just transfer it somewhere. So that's another good reason why p bull you know, aren't getting a hundred cents on their dollar in these cases because that is virtually impossible to prove given the nature. So what we've some sort of things that we're doing. We do what we call

it an anatomy of the hack. We show how the hacker gets in instantaneously goes hacks your accounts in you know, the US exchanges use the information from the I P addresses on the US exchanges, and there's just a mechanical way. But you're making a valid point, and points to telecoms are making. But how do we know that just wasn't you? Then you're not thinking it. I had a guy who claims he lost five million dollars, and when we kept having him for proof, he couldn't even provide the simple

proof we asked for. I look him, I said, you know, we can't. If you can't prove the damages and you can't get me the lawyer you're a lawyer to believe that your damages are legitimate, I will never be able to convince the other side. I guess, um, if we could show that a T and T or whatever carrier did sup WoT the swift um sim unauthorized, and then you could see these uh you know, the trail of of of the Gmail or whatever, and then the accounts emptied out and it all happened within an hour. I

guess that's kind of compelling. Yes, but it's also something you can fake nowadays. I couldn't fake. I couldn't fake a T and T having an unauthorized sim swab. Well, no, you couldn't, but you can do. You can get give me your personal information. I can call a T and T and say I am I'm Mark Morris, here's my number, and then you saw, I mean, and it's it's a legitimate. It's a legitimate, and started the telephone companies I'm not giving them a new defense that they've never heard of

talking to you about this. This is something they're well aware of. And it's another reason why you know, it's hard to prove these cases. There's a reason why David Silver has most of them because you can only do this in math. To do this one off without people paying you is problematic. Yeah. So, um, then just real quick, I mean, since you've been seeing this so much, then kind of wrap up this talk. Um, what can the average person do to protect themselves against this one? You

should be have enhanced security on your phone. You should tell with the carriers. You should have enhanced pins. You should know what it is. You should store those pins now in you're you know, email accounts. UH. Two. You should use second to two factor authentication with Google Authenticator and authe again not storing the reset account information or the information in your Gmail accounts. You should make sure your Gmail and your email accounts are secured by something

other than SMS UH password protection. That's really the key thing. You don't want to use SMS for any form of your second factor authentication, and that's really the starting point. The other things are you shouldn't not leave your crypto on an exchange that is not protected. I'll use coin base for instance. You can now use coin based vault, which requires two email addresses and two days before money moves right. You can use bit tracks. You can white list and only allow certain I P s access to

your account. There are measures, and if you have more than a hundred thousand, whatever the number in your mind, that's too much to lose. Those are extra security precautions you should be taken. And I'll say this, and I say it all the time. What exchange you use matters, um, so don't be don't be a fool, and you know, use exchanges that aren't in the US and aren't the

more legitimate ones. I think it's also a good point that exchanges are not bank accounts, and um, they're not meant to be bank account They're not meant to secure and instore your coins. And some of them a as you mentioned like coin Base, does provide like a vault, which is pretty cool, but most exchanges are not bank accounts,

are not meant to be that way. And you make an absolutely valid point that I want to reiterate, which is just the more money you have, the more serious you need to take your security and I got I got some swapped. I didn't lose I didn't lose money. My personal data was compromised if I didn't lose any crypto. And you know, at the end of the day, I creep most of my crypto on exchanges because if something goes wrong, I want to hold people accountable, and there

are certain security measures that I take. I use coin based vault, and people say to me all the time, but David, you're a suing coin base, you're you're you say how bad they are? First of all, I would sue Goldman Sacks every day and twice on Sunday if I had legitimate cases against Goldman Sacks. What crypto exchanges were in two thousand, fourteen fifteen are not what they

are today. I constantly praise Brian Armstrong and the winkle Bights, you know, for what they're doing, working with regulators and trying to transparent. And the more transparent and you know, the better these exchanges come become, the more likely it is the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies go up and value and mainstream people will be able to use that because they feel secure about it. Yeah, that's a great point. So um as a as as as a builder in

the space. So let's say that I'm running an exchange, or I have an app or some dapt that manages things like, um, what should I be if I'm a builder? What should we be aware of to keep ourselves out of trouble? I mean, I guess just making sure we were not negligent. I mean we do our best. I mean it seems like it's just kind of like a

pretty dangerous space to be in. So there are people who have written interesting articles on you know, medium about people like themselves who are in this space who have been hacked and what they did wrong, and most of it boiled down to, uh, it was it do as I say, not as I do. The amount of laziness and protecting their crypto assets was staggering. Whether it was Turpin who's I mean, Michael had more you know I

c O S tokens than probably anyone in the space. Um, you know, there are other people who have posted and talked about how yep they had Gmail accounts with you know, just SMS two factor authentication. I think people are learning. I think that people are starting to talk about this more. But it's you know, as much as you want to blame others. Especially in crypto where everything is somewhat masked and somewhat instantaneous, you are responsible for yourself, no one else.

You know, it's your keys, your coins, it's your coins, your money. No one else is out there looking for you. They want to take it. Yeah. Yeah, And and one of the things that we love about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is finality. Right, So when the transaction happens, it's final.

But that works in two ways. It's bad. So UM, as a as a user of the ecosystem, as a user of coins, exchanges and things like that, Um, what kinds of things should I, um be aware of that might happen to me that that possibly I could have

a claim on, right? I mean, so, um, I was on an exchange and you mentioned like, uh, all of a sudden, I can't trade on it or obviously hacks are easy, right, But like, what are some other things that we might be seen or people might be aware of, have have happened to them that maybe they should think about having a claim on. So this and this is a nice segue to brokeby coin base that we were going to talk about, because brokeby coin Base is my news.

It's my new favorite case of my new favorite case of the week. Um. Effectively, everyone should be talking about everyone in crypto should be talking about brokeby coin Base because at the end of the day, this just changed the law. I mean it is cases caseflow has built one case to the time, and a court in California came out and just they said something crazy. They said that at the end of the day, crypto exchanges are

responsible for maintaining functional marketplaces and dysfunctional. A dysfunctional marketplace is a liability for the exchange. What does that mean? So let's use a hypothetical situation. There's an exchange that has a flash crash and the price of bitcoins right now dropped from I know it's trading out right now twelve thousand bucks a couple within a couple hundred bucks

of that. If the price of bitcoin on coin base went from twelve hundred to three and coin Base allowed training to go on but locked everyone out of their accounts except for insiders, I be insane that you know, they would say there's something wrong, but we're gonna allow people you know who have back to who are trading on who had professional institutional accounts to come in and buy everyone's, you know, sell orders that we're going to

cascading effects. That would be a dysfunctional marketplace because the coin base would know something's wrong, they would allow that something wrong to continue, and they wouldn't stop the market. And what Burke said was they didn't make a judgment call about whether the bc H being sold at the time, whether that is the definition of a dysfunctional marketplace, because in that lawsuit, the accusation is that during the first couple of minutes of trading price fight, some people couldn't

get in, some market orders replaced some warrant. The court didn't say that is by definition of dysfunctional marketplace. The court's tympically said, as it reads the law and as it believes, and it actually says it in the opinion, this is what we believe the California Supreme Court would decide.

We are sitting because it's a federal court case. There's a federal court judge interpreting what California law would say, and it said that we believe the California Supreme Court wouldn't believe the cryptocurrency exchanges are responsible for maintaining functional marketplaces. By the way, that's what they sell. That's what they're advertising is look at Krakens advertising, coin bases advertising. Gemini is advertising. They are selling to you use our exchange.

We are safe, we are secure, and we serve a functional marketplace. So that the word dysfunctional sounds a little confusing. I mean when you put it in those terms in your example, it sounds more insider kind of fraudulent activity, like hey, everyone's locked out, but are few people are able to take advantage of this market? Um. Dysfunctional to me sounds more like, um, something eltside of our control happens.

So let's say, for example, bitcoin shoots from twelve thousand to twenty thousand, everybody jumps in to buy it, and it's just too much volume and and exchange hand and the and the site crashes and that's like a legitimate problem. Would that be considered dysfunctional or it's kind of like, hey, we're locking you out, but we're allowing you in, which is kind of more insider. So I think that's gonna be what the courts. And that's why I say case law.

This didn't change the law. The laws builds one case at the time, which your jurisprudence. But what it says is, now we're gonna see what exactly you're asking. What is the line of dysfunctionality? Is it dysfunctional? If I put in in order and it takes point one second to go through, but the person behind me went through point in half of that time, the speed equal dysfunctionality, that's

gonna be a lining. It's kind of like, you know, uh, using a real world example, um someone who It used to be that you were allowed to drinks before you drive. Now you're allowed one and a half drinks before you drive. The lines constantly shifting and people are becoming more liable. The McDonald's case where someone stilled hot coffee in their laps. Before that happened, wasn't if someone gave you a cup of coffee. It wasn't necessarily illegal for McDonald's to hand

you a cup of coffee. And now you can get suit. Now McDonald's is still not illegal. It's still legal for them giving you a cup of coffee. But now if you're still it on yourself and it's degrees and you burn yourself, they're liable. Someone had to go to court and draw that line in that distinction. But if you pour a cup of coffee on your lap, it's only fifty degrees and you don't burn yourself. That's okay, people,

We're learning where the lines are gonna be drawn. UM. I personally believe that if an exchange knows of a problem and those there's this dysfunction in their marketplace, they have an obligation to shut that down, not look at users and say, no, this was dysfunctional, but we're gonna allow it to go because we're crypto cryptocurrency exchange and there are no rules. Uh, turns out there are rules in crypto and I'm proud of this judge. I think it did a great job. Yeah, it makes sense. It

makes sense. I you know, I would hate to see them being held responsible for things that were outside their control, but things that they could control and they allowed to go on. I mean, somebody has to be responsible that you have to run an honest business, right, So UM I get it from that perspective. So then overall, as a user in the ecosystem, UM, I guess at the end of the day, if I have um suffered damages that I believe are because of negligence or because of

purposeful wrongdoing. Then then I potentially might have some recourse right, and then that's where someone will contact you. So yeah, a lot of people reach out to me and about their cryptocurrency experiences, and the recourses is unique to each case. I very rarely do what I consider lost profit cases. That doesn't mean that no one's ever gonna win a loss profit case, but it's very hard. Most people who call me up saying I bought bitcoin and nine thousand,

I was gonna sell it at thirteen thousand. Coin Base was swamped a couple of weeks ago, and they went down for a little bit when it hit like thirteen when it went from like seven thousand to thirteen thousand in a couple of days, and they were like, well, I was gonna sell that exact peak, and I wanted that exact price I wasn't able to And now it's back to nine thousand, and you know, there are a lot of people who feel that should be a case. Look this what brokeby coin Base said, Maybe that is

a good case. I'm not saying that that's not a winner. But most of the cases I handled, we do our analysis on a cost basis out of pocket. How much money did you put in? How much money do you presently have? And we do our analysis based on that, because at the end of the day, this isn't new technology, this is a new asset class. You know, it's some there is some true truth that there is some limited predictability.

So um, you you you you, you take care of losses, but not lost opportunities, I guess would be a good way to something. Ask for lost opportunities. And somebody's in some of the lawsuits, but most of the complaints I've heard on exchange related matters or lost profit cases, someone magically knew when the peak was gonna be and they were gonna sell it the peak. Sure, alright, I know, we gotta start wrapping this up here. I'd like to just kind of ask you, though, where you sit, um

in this whole ecosystem. So um, I wonder if maybe being an attorney gets you a little bit jaded where you start to see all the bad. I'm curious what you think about bitcoin overall and cryptocurrencies. I mean, are you are you a believer in bitcoin? Do you see the future um with that? Or are you still more of a skeptic and you see all the problems. Yeah, uh, I could I see this cryptocurrency to point out, I'm a believer in the technology. I'm a believer in cryptology.

I'm a believer that this is moving in the right direction. But we're still at the same point of the Internet right now where everyone was just looking at porn and buying drugs. You know, we're building the more the more usable aspects, and when use cases are actually use cases is when crypto two point it will happen. I you, as far as I'm concerned, you can spin a becuse all twelve or two thousand cryptocurrencies on the wheel, spin the wheel, and that's gonna be the one that's successful

in the end. So you think bitcoin has as much of a chance as anyone else, Well, I think the leader in the house and the bigger the mode. You know, I'm a Wren Buffet fan. So the bigger the mode, the more likely you are to succeed. You know, I don't know. In the effect, the longer you've been around, the more likely you are to be around. Yeah, everyone's testing bitcoin more. There's more testing, there's more you know, people who are trying to show what bitcoin canny can't do.

So I'm a believer in the space and the function aldi I believe. I went to all the conferences in sixteen and seventeen where everyone told me every I C O was going to change the world. I'm still waiting for the use cases. Until there's use case, there's really no reason why it's trading at these numbers. You don't think bitcoin has any use case at all today? I mean, I mean I would argue, like, obviously if you're in

an oppressive regime, even even China. Today we see a massive use case to bitcoin right where people need to get money out, people need to protect it. You you, you know, we look at like a list of activities, but that's also argued that's a use case. I mean, it's a listed but like it's proving its case that it's being able to be used against opposition or whatever. So there is use case. But I'll agree with you.

But I'll agree with you because I do believe the use case to replace gold, you know, the Winklevy that's their big argument. You know, it's goal to point out. So I don't disagree with what you're saying, but that doesn't give it the value it twelve that I believe it's heavily it's a heavily manipulated market. So we're talking about use case first value. Now, I would agree with

you that that's a use case in theory. If it works properly, censorship resistant, it's easily transportable, you know, it's got a lot of good value. But the problem is, I believe it's a heavily manipulated market on valuation, So I'm comparing valuation to use Yeah, I wasn't talking valuations. We could argue till the day, you know, to the day is over. I was just talking about just just

use cases. And where you saw it was, like I said, just curious because I would imagine seeing all the bad maybe contain to you and maybe you start to like lose sight of like how big this is or something. No, I think that I think that it's going to be. It's a disruptor. I do believe that you know, there's value in it. We're you know, and when I give my speeches to people who have never seen bitcoin and know what bitcoin is or cryptocurrency, I say, look, take

out a dollar bill, look at the serial number. This is an enhancement version of being able to prove that the money you have is real. That's a use case. I believe in that. So if that's the question, then yeah, it's absolutely And also I think also I'm curious on the just a differentiation because bitcoin was launched anonymously, decentralized UM obviously was not a scam, uh the coin itself.

Now we talk about the exchanges different but like now you deal with all these I c o s, right, and like a lot of them clearly are scams, and so like it seems like there's a huge divide, right Bitcoin over here and everything else kind of over here. Maybe well, anyone who's positive in the space, they have to make that differentiation. So I totally agree with you on that. UM So from the point of it being the aspect of yeah, the I c O over Bitcoin, Yes,

I completely agree with you. And I do think that the more use cases out of crypto, when we can show that there's no manipulation in the system is when the next moon will happen. You know, there's got to be they've got to remove. But for people like me, in order to remove that, you have to remove some of the things that the O G crowd loves. You can have to remove some of the anonymous factors in it.

But I would love to see I would love to see the manipulation of the gold and silver markets go away. And that's been a few thousand years so and that's my example when people ask me about you know, well, look, you know, you got all this fraud in you know, the marketplaces, yet the bank failures the Look look at how much regulation is there and how much fraud is still there. Almost the more regulations there, the worst it gets.

But at the end of the day, I feel more comfortable playing my money in the bank than I do on the cryptocurrency exchange. So I don't disagree with you that there that there is a ton of fraud under the regulation under regulated society, but in unregulated society, I think the fraud is gonna be even worse. Yeah, and we should always be up, we should always be optimizing for the risk. So just take that into consideration. I agree we're super early in this technology. It is not

I don't believe it's a store of value today. It's definitely not a money today. Um, it's a collectible. It's a speculative asset and uh manager risk accordingly, right, So yeah, good stuff I'd like to talk more a little bit about about some of that, the manipulation and whatnot, but but we're out of time. You gotta respect your time, um,

but I appreciate you coming on. So for anybody who thinks that they may have been taking advantage of or something like that, what's the best way to reach out to you or good with my website where they reach out to you. So go to the website Silver Miller Law dot com, follow me on Twitter DC silver is my Twitter handle, UM, and just look me up. Whatever you do, if someone takes advantage of you, find a lawyer who has experience, because someone out there can help you. Yeah. Great,

all right, David, thanks so much for your time. Thanks mat Hey. If you like this episode of the Market Disruptors Podcast, please help us take this to the top of the podcast charts. Just please do me a favor and rate review and subscribe. Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a quick review goes a long way and helping us reach more people and disrupt more markets. I really appreciate you listening and I'll see you next time on the Market Disruptors Podcast.