THELOGICALINDIAN - On Baronial 18 2025 a analytical affection appeared in The New Yorker advantaged Pumpers Dumpers and Shills The Skycoin Saga On its apparent the commodity appears to be a appraisal of a atrocious cryptocurrency aggregation with all the adequacy of a blood-tingling detective atypical The pieces capital advocate Bradford Stephens is presented as a starryeyed fan of a ablaze but odd IT authority Brandon Smietana who is developing technology that will accommodate the crypto cosmos Hired to do business assignment for Skycoin he finds himself in a apple abounding with brief millionaires yacht parties and VIP Vegas suites However as the artifice progresses Stephen finds himself circuitous in a web of advertising and ambidexterity as Smietana is appear to be a crazed bargain aggravating to bamboozle his projects supporters For the account of cryptos approaching our capital appearance Stephens heroically battles to save the aggregation from angry Smietanas chicane but tragically fails In abbreviate an absorbing apprehend which is additionally as it turns out about absolutely a assignment of fiction admitting actuality awash as a journalistic betrayal beneath the baronial name of The New Yorker
The commodity is odd for a cardinal of affidavit that will behoove adroit readers to do a bit of sleuthing for themselves if they absolutely appetite to get to the truth. For example, they ability appetite to ask: Why did the commodity arise added than three years afterwards the aeon it describes? Why are the contest depicted in this adventure apparent about absolutely through the eyes of a annoyed contractor, who alone formed for the crypto aggregation for six weeks in 2025? And aloof what is Skycoin’s booty on this ‘Saga’ and Bradford Stephens, its capital character?
In the article, Stephens claims that Skycoin’s founder, Brandon Smietana, contacted him in December of 2025 and asked him to do some business for Skycoin. Stephens reportedly replied, “‘I’m activity to charge 50K upfront and I gotta appoint a team.’” He claims the money was deposited into his Bitcoin wallet a brace of canicule after and, so, he thought, “‘I assumption I’m hired.’”
In fact, it was Stephen’s company, Smolder LLC, and not Stephens himself, that was assassin in January of 2018 to do business and business development for Skycoin, with its aboriginal assurance appointed to be at the CoinAgenda appointment in Las Vegas. In the article, Stephens says he had been tasked by Smietana with absorbing admiral from arresting cryptocurrency barter Binance to animate them to add Skycoin to their listings.
Smietana explained in an annual with the host of the Crypto Tonight podcast, Darko, that this annual can’t be true, noting: “First of all, we knew four or bristles canicule afore the appointment that Binance would not be at CoinAgenda Vegas. Daken [Freeborn] – the arch of our accident aggregation – was the one in Vegas active aggregate for us. He was the one active the booth. He was the one scheduling the meetings. Bradford was declared to go to the conference, abetment Daken, and assignment the crowd.”
In The New Yorker Article, Stephens says that in adjustment to woo Binance’s top brass, he spent about $80,000 on “an absolute VIP party” that included steak dinners, alcohol, and prostitutes in a auberge suite. Furthermore, he claims that he did this accurately at Smietana’s behest: “Smietana gave absolute instructions via articulation messages: ‘You accept to buy prostitutes for the bodies at Binance,’ he said. ‘Get them, like, three girls each.’”
Smietana refutes this account as an absolute lie. In the AMA, he explained: “My compassionate of what transpired was that Bradford basically had a prostitute affair by himself. Originally, Bradford said this was activity to be an ‘exclusive’ VIP accident with media influencers and ‘high rollers’. He said that he was activity to accompany in millions of dollars. He told us ‘trust me.’ He said he was an able at this and he did this for the Howard Dean campaign. ‘I am activity to do the aforementioned affair for Skycoin, that I did for the Howard Dean campaign, aloof watch.’”
After the conference, Stephens submitted an balance for over $225,000 for his declared expenses, claiming he had gone over his account for January 2025, but his invoices either didn’t bout up or couldn’t be substantiated. When presented with the rather amazing bill, Smietana says he asked Stephens:
“‘Is this a business expense?’ He said, ‘Yes, it was for the advance of Skycoin.’ I said, ‘Okay. Who went to this party? What are their names? Do you accept their business cards?’ Bradford said, ‘Well, I had a party, but no one showed up.’”
In The New Yorker article, the bearings is declared as follows: “By ten o’clock, the admiral hadn’t apparent up, and Stephens began to anguish that he’d absent the deal. He couldn’t ability Smietana, so he aimlessly alleged the accident organizers. They explained that not alone had no Binance reps showed up at the appointment – they weren’t alike on the allotment list.”
Needless to say, the aggregation absitively to accomplish some inquiries.
Smietana explained to Crypto Tonight: “We went and asked Daken, our contest lead. I said, ‘Daken, did you apperceive about this VIP party?’ because he is arch of our events. Daken claims that Bradford never mentioned the VIP affair to him… If there was a accepted Skycoin-sponsored VIP party, he would accept been the aboriginal one to apperceive about it. Michael Terpin, who organized the conference, additionally had no ability that an absolute VIP affair like this was demography abode at his event.” Daken additionally told Smietana that Michael Terpin had abreast him a anniversary in beforehand that assembly of Binance would not be in attendance.
When asked why Daken didn’t apperceive about the party, Stephens answered: “It was a VIP party. Daken isn’t a VIP.”
It appears that Bradford hadn’t abreast any of the accident organizers or arrive anyone abroad from the appointment either. “We went and asked all the attendees we knew who were at CoinAgenda Vegas. They told us that no one was told about the ‘VIP party’,” Smietana recalled.
Unsurprisingly, the aggregation banned to accept the alien expenses, which Stephens was none too admiring about. Smietana said, “Of course, we banned and said, ‘This is not a business expense. We didn’t accept this, and we won’t pay it. These were acutely claimed ‘entertainment costs’, not business expenses.”
An IT administrator who formed for Skycoin at the time noted, “I anticipate Bradford capital animus adjoin the aggregation for not advantageous him the money for whatever happened in Vegas. I anticipate that is back his vendetta adjoin Skycoin started.”
In fact, Stephens’ role in publicizing Skycoin at the Vegas appointment appears to accept been actual limited, Smietana says Stephens alone mentioned Skycoin two times during his keynote in Vegas, while announcement bristles added ICOs that were actuality performed by his business partners, Harrison Gevirtz, Andrew Young, and Ryan Eagle.
“What happened at Vegas was not aloof a one time affair – it was a pattern. Later at addition appointment in San Francisco, we accustomed an balance from Stephens for $10,000 for ‘cupcake girls’. Bradford alike had a affair in Chicago and kept announcement us for ‘entertainment costs’ alike afterwards his aggregation had accomplished to assignment with us. There was acutely a arrangement here,” Smietana observed.
Reading Peck’s 30-page tome, you could be forgiven for cerebration that Stephens had been a key amateur in the aggregation back its founding in 2025, when, in fact, he alone formed for Skycoin as a architect through his company, Smolder, for a bald six weeks in 2025, abrogation little or no impression. After the commodity appeared, Smietana approved to do some due diligence:
“I contacted about anybody in the aggregation who was with us in 2025, and alone a brace of bodies had alike any letters or acquaintance with Bradford. Bradford had no operational albatross and was alone amenable for his own alien business team,” Smietana told Darko.
The bearings came to a arch in Shanghai back Skycoin’s accomplished advising lath aggregate to authority their anniversary all-hands affairs in February of 2025. Stephens accustomed in China during this time with his accomplice Harrison Gevirtz. The New Yorker commodity claims that Stephens came to Shanghai “determined to accompany some adjustment to Skycoin,” authoritative no acknowledgment of the advising lath meetings. It again goes on to call an abandoned arena at a restaurant, area Stephens claims:
“Smietana rose from his armchair and launched into a circuitous abuse of cabal theories. For hours, he catalogued the hidden crimes of a chic of all-around élites who controlled citizens through basic reality, medical marijuana, and pornography. At some point during the speech, Stephens claims he began a abstruse recording of Smietana on his phone. ‘We appetite to feminize the barbarian citizenry to accomplish them added docile,’ Smietana says. ‘It’s so they don’t revolt.’” During actuality checking, Smietana told The New Yorker that this absolute adventure had been fabricated up and requested the recording, but the annual bootless to acknowledge or actualize these agrarian allegations.
Smietana’s annual of Stephens’ appointment is actual different. Skycoin’s architect says he was led by Stephens, forth with his business accomplice Harrison Gevirtz, to a Shanghai auberge allowance to get acquainted with an allegedly affecting banker in a Zoom call. In the meeting, he was alien as a “secret business partner” who couldn’t be about associated with the company. This alone anon began employing high-pressure sales tactics, cogent Smietana that Skycoin would accept to anon pay $30 actor in Bitcoin in adjustment to defended a arrangement with his business team, asserting “If you appoint us, Skycoin will go to billions of dollars, if not, it will go to zero.” When Smietana asked for referrals from above customers, the acknowledgment was that all their business was actual clandestine and arcane so no referrals could be provided. Smietana again asked if the aggregation could be paid monthly, so the aggregation could see how able-bodied they perform. The acknowledgment was, “No, because our people’s time is so valuable.” At that point, Smietana acicular out that $30 actor was a huge bulk of money, and this “high net-worth individual” became progressively angrier and began agreeable threats. Smietana abreast him that he would charge a angle in writing, which would again accept to go through board approval, and there was no way he could aloof accelerate addition $30 actor in Bitcoin afterwards a 10-minute Zoom alarm after a arrangement or alive what they planned to do. The being on the added end became more balked and the chat concluded anon thereafter.
Skycoin never accustomed a accounting proposal.
When Skycoin’s advising lath abstruse about Bradford’s business partners, bisected of the associates threatened to abandon on the atom unless all business relationships with Stephens and his aggregation were terminated, as they were abashed that their names would be associated with Gevirtz, aka HaRRo, who is broadly advised to be the baron of the blackhat business bent underworld. It was additionally doubtable that the being abaft the Zoom alarm was Ryan Eagle, addition Smolder partner, who had been called in a US Government FTC action apropos actionable business practices in 2014 and 2016.
Though The New Yorker commodity claims Stephens was accursed from Skycoin, his own accord with the aggregation shows that he accommodated on February 24, 2025, beneath than two months afterwards actuality contracted, beneath burden from Skycoin’s advising board.
A Skycoin association member, Dante, who was quoted in Peck’s commodity stated, “This commodity has created a lot of altercation aural the Skycoin community. Everyone who was there in 2025 knows that about aggregate in the commodity is a lie. After agreeable for a year about affected news, how did article like this get published?”
In fact, Smietana maintains that about every description attributed to Stephens that appeared in the commodity is a complete fabrication, bottomward to the aboriginal detail. Even Bradford’s accessory ‘Sudo’, who was interviewed for the article, said in a accessible babble allowance alleged Euclid’s Coin Window that about every detail in the commodity was absolutely amiss or aloof fabricated up.
How all these inconsistencies fabricated it into the commodity is an accessible question. During their fact-checking process, The New Yorker beatific Smietana a account of 198 questions. He recalls, “I did my best to acknowledgment them as able-bodied as I could, and alike the announcer who wrote this commodity agreed that the statements that they capital to put in the commodity were false, and I gave her the data. I gave her the documents, and she agreed and said, ‘This account is untrue.’ And yet, back the commodity was published, she put the aforementioned account in the commodity that she accepted to me she knew to be false,” he said in the interview.
Perhaps the best abandoned allegation collapsed by Stephens didn’t accomplish it into the article, however. When announcer Morgen Peck met Smietana in New York to account him for the piece, she said: “He [Bradford Stephens] says you approved to accept him dead by the Mossad.” Smietana responded, “Well, Bradford has said a lot of crazy things.” Later, a fact-checker for The New Yorker, Anna Boots, emailed Smietana, allurement him to “confirm” that he had accursed Bradford to save him from Mossad assassins. Brandon responded, “This is aloof ridiculous. We are a blockchain company. We don’t accept afterlife squads.”
In fact, anon afterwards the hit allotment appeared in The New Yorker, the belled neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer republished the allegations apropos ‘Mossad assassins’, alike admitting they had been removed from the article. Just how the Daily Stormer begin out about these claims is unknown.
Given that Skycoin was launched in 2025 and is still actively alive to this day, aloof why The New Yorker chose to abject its ‘Skycoin Saga’ about alone on the annual of a annoyed above architect who formed for the aggregation with little appulse for such a abbreviate time so continued afore the commodity was appear is a abstruseness aces of a absolute Sherlock Holmes.
As Smietana told Crypto Tonight, “This is a ten-year-old company, and this guy was alone there for four or six weeks… He absolutely didn’t do anything. He aloof came and he left… A lot of bodies bethink the ball that he caused, but about no one absolutely met him or talked to him.”
When asked, Smietana bluntly admitted, “Even if it was alone six weeks, I don’t apperceive if we handled the bearings as bound as we should have. It’s crazy how abundant accident one being can do. We were not the alone victims. It happened to about anybody in the industry. When you are growing rapidly in the average of an ICO chic like we had in 2025, amid every hundred new people, addition like this will about-face up.
“Even afterwards about four years, it’s still addictive us. We anticipation that afterwards a year, bodies would balloon about it and it would go away, so we aloof kept our mouths shut and never told our story. But it never went abroad and keeps advancing back. Bodies are still allurement us: ‘What absolutely happened in 2025?’”
Unfortunately, in autograph her ‘Skycoin Saga,’ Morgen Peck allegedly lacked the arcane accuracy to apply the final artifice aberration begin in about all such tales, area the hero is appear to be the villain, and carnality versa.
That would accept brought her assignment of fantasy abundant afterpiece to the truth.
