German billionaire Christian Angermayer, who helped introduce Tether to Northern Data, has reportedly moved from the UK to Switzerland due to changing offshore wealth taxes.

Bloomberg reports Angermayer was considered a ‘non-dom’ while living in the UK, meaning his permanent home or ‘domicile’ was outside the country. This allowed the billionaire to avoid paying UK taxes on his overseas income and earnings for up to 15 years.

As of last March, non-doms have been required to pay taxes on overseas income after four years instead of the original 15. The new UK government reportedly wants to remove inheritance tax breaks on assets in overseas trusts as well.

Because of this, Angermayer told Bloomberg, “The planned changes to the non-dom framework are a huge mistake.” He claimed it would be “a bigger act of national self-harm than Brexit,” and said, “Every non-dom I know has left or is about to leave.”

He was recently revealed to have introduced Tether to various investments, including Northern Data, a firm in which he owns a stake. He was paid a 5% fee for transactions that followed this referral. He also invested in Block.One, a blockchain firm founded by Tether co-founder Brock Pierce. 

Read more: FTX used former Wirecard partner to process Chinese payments

He often charges client firms to connect them to investors. On top of this, he generates income through investments made with entities under his family office, Apeiron Investment Group.

Angermayer is moving to the city of Lugano, where bills can reportedly be paid using bitcoin and tether. An annual Bitcoin conference has also been held in the town every year since 2022 by Tether.

During his time in the UK, Angermayer reportedly lived in a London penthouse that housed a triceratops skull and various Egyptian god statues. He will continue to have a London office.

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The Zurich MoneyMuseum has removed references implying Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, calling them outdated and aggravating for some readers.

The Swiss museum’s founder, former Dow Banking Corporation manager Jürg R. Conzett, wrote an essay (archived in 2021) on the journey of money since the Middle Ages and its impacts on wider society.

However, Bitcoin proponent @bitnorbert posted on August 1, 2024, that the MoneyMuseum removed a body of text implying Wright was Nakamoto before removing a further reference to Wright’s book, Satoshi’s Vision: The Art of Bitcoin, last weekend.

Speaking to Protos, Conzett said the wording of the Satoshi Vision segment was removed “because it is outdated news and seemed to aggravate some readers, for whatever reason.” He stressed, “We never supported Craig Wright in any venture.”

Conzett originally wrote that 10 years after Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared, “Craig Wright came out to the public and explained why he chose a pseudonym at that time, why he disappeared and why he came back now,” before referencing his book.

Nobody cares who Nakamoto is anymore

Conzett remarked that nobody in the past five years has been interested in the question “who is Satoshi?” He said, “It is of no interest and I consider the issue as being dead,” adding “It is not important for BTC, nor for BCH, and is a nuisance for bsv. And the rest of the community could not care less.”

This year, the UK judicial system found Wright lied extensively and that he was demonstrably not Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Wright has since failed to appeal his rulings, despite claiming he would, and has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over possible perjury charges.

Read more: UK courts still don’t know where Craig Wright is

Clarifying his position, Conzett noted that he’s been a Bitcoin fan since 2015 and has personally invested in the Bitcoin ecosystem. He claimed to be a shareholder of the Swiss crypto exchange Bitcoin Suisse and believes that Bitcoin will help keep Central Bank Digital Currencies in check.

He said, “About five or six years ago, we invited Craig Wright to Zurich to give a speech at the MoneyMuseum. I found it interesting, without taking sides, of course.”

The MoneyMuseum held a two-year show on Bitcoin. He said, “We educated visitors on the merits of blockchain. As an institution, we did more than many others to help foster interest in bitcoin at a crucial time.”

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FlowBank, a Swiss bank that has historically been friendly to crypto firms, has been forced into bankruptcy by FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.

The press release issued by FINMA claims that FlowBank “no longer has sufficient capital for its operations as a bank” and further claims that it’s worried that the bank is “over-indebted.”

Furthermore, the regulators are concerned that the “bank entered into numerous higher-risk business relationships and processed large transactions without properly investigating.”

FINMA previously ordered the bank’s license to be withdrawn, but that ruling has been held up during appeal. 

The press release also notes that it intends to “repay deposits up to CHF 100,000” out of the bank’s remaining assets.

TrueUSD

Among the businesses that FlowBank was involved in was TrueUSD, a controversial stablecoin with links to crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. 

Sun has admitted he was a partner market maker for this stablecoin, but others have alleged that he owns or at least tried to purchase it. 

TrueUSD used to disclose that FlowBank was where it stored a significant portion of its assets but eventually stopped these disclosures. As of today, its attestations still describe a ‘Swiss Depository Institution’ where funds are held.

Read more: TrueUSD attestations paused again, this time for improper ‘balances’

This attestation also gives us some insight into the roughly $503 million in assets supposedly backing this stablecoin. The vast majority of this is currently held at First Digital Trust in Hong Kong, with only ~$1.1 million currently held at the other depository institutions.

Protos has reached out to TrueUSD to determine how this bankruptcy will affect its operations, but at time of publication, it has yet to respond. 

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Approximately $26 million in bitcoin and crypto assets belonging to Terraform Labs executives, including founder Do Kwon, have reportedly been frozen by authorities in Switzerland.

South Korean news outlet Digital Asset reported that the funds were taken from Zurich-based digital asset bank Sygnum at the request of US federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Sygnum made headlines back in 2017 when it announced it was the world’s first regulated digital asset bank. In February this year, the SEC said that 10,000 bitcoins were transferred from Terraform Labs and the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) to personal wallets belonging to top execs.

“Since May 2022, defendants have sent the bitcoins in this wallet to Swiss financial institutions and turned it into fiat currency, withdrawing more than $100 million by the time of filing the lawsuit,” the SEC said.

In April this year, Digital Asset reported that the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office’s Financial Securities Crime Joint Investigation Division tracked down $100 million of bitcoin owned by LFG that had been converted into cash and deposited to Sygnum accounts.

Prosecutors in both the US and South Korea then requested that Sygnum freeze the assets. In response, Sygnum told Finbold in April that it had previously transferred “more than 70% of the Bitcoin-sale fiat proceeds into the escrow account of an international and to other reputable law firms.”

Indeed, Protos reported earlier that month that South Korean prosecutors accused Kwon of sending millions to a prominent law firm in the country right before the Terra/Luna ecosystem collapsed — suggesting the founder knew things were going awry.

Read more: Do Kwon registered company in Serbia weeks after Interpol arrest warrant

Along with Kwon, the recently frozen crypto assets are said to belong to former head of research at Terraform Labs, Nicholas Platias, and former Chai Corporation chief Han Chang-joon.

The latter was arrested with Kwon in Montenegro attempting to flee to Dubai. Last week, both were sentenced to four months in prison for document forgery.

The US and South Korea are both battling for Kwon to be extradited in order to face charges of fraud. According to the lead South Korean prosecutor working on the disgraced crypto founder’s case, Kwon will spend most of the rest of his life behind bars.

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Switzerland’s government will hold a national vote on whether to enshrine the availability of cash in the constitution amid concerns about the rise in digital currency, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

A group called the Swiss Freedom Movement collected over 100,000 signatures in support of a plebiscite to safeguard cash at a higher level — under Swiss democracy, a referendum must be held if more than 100,000 citizens sign.

“We need to change the constitution so we can retain cash as freedom for the next generation,” Richard Koller, president of the Swiss Freedom Movement, said in February.

Neither the Swiss government or the central bank have intentions to abandon cash. The European country holds the most cash per capita according to data from 2021.

Meanwhile, officials are worried that the rise in digital payments will cause a ‘downward spiral’ on cash use. Swiss National Bank vice president Martin Schlegel said in a speech in November 2022 that “cash is a well-functioning system, but it is not to be taken for granted.”

“We do also see risks in a strong shift towards cashless payment methods. Declining cash usage puts economic pressure on the cash infrastructure,” he said.

Read more: UK lobbyists slam gov’t report, deny crypto is like gambling

The Swiss government has therefore responded positively towards this new cash referendum. “The Federal Council recognizes the importance of cash for the economy and society,” it said in a statement. The government “is prepared to raise these concerns from the legal to the constitutional level in order to underline their importance.”

Finance and Justice ministries will draw up a draft referendum by the end of August, the government said — yet it remains unclear when a vote will take place.

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