Organized FUD - How The "FUD Mafia" Is Plaguing This Industry (Part 2)

Disclaimer: I'm not for sale. I don't take on services and I don't take on personal requests. I don't accept payments nor donations. I'm not a shill, and I will speak my mind. Opinions are my own, and I will not reply to comments. I'm here to expose the truth, what's behind the organized "crypto-mafia" tasked to disrupt what the crypto-community is building.

It's no surprise that fraudsters and scammers plague this industry. It's no surprise that shilling services are a profitable business. In this article, we're going to tap into the world of "Organized FUD".

What does "FUD" mean?

“FUD” stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", it's a well-known disinformation strategy that plagues all industries, but specifically the crypto-industry as a whole, for its volatile nature. Taken from Wikipedia, "FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear".

There are some notorious players in the industry who operate on a larger scale and that are specifically tasked with guaranteeing that you are misinformed. I'll introduce one of them in this serious of investigations in trying to uncover the truth being "FUD", their "Modus Operandi", “Sensationalist Journalism”, their “vectors of distribution” and “active agents” that help disseminate the "FUD" throughout the industry.

Soleil Du Soir The Critic Exposed – Report’d

After revealing the recent events on our latest article Organized FUD - How The "FUD Mafia" Is Plaguing This Industry (Part 1), we wanted to reach deeper and understand the dynamics behind the propagation of ProofOfResearch recent allegations and the “active agents” behind him.

One such “active agent” that supports his narrative(s), among many, goes by the name of Soleil Du Soir on the social media platform twitter.

Upon reading his twitter profile and tweets , it’s clear that a majority of his coverage is negative sentiment regarding tether and bitfinex, almost exclusively. And someone tweeting with such enthusiasm and about something that they are not related to or a part of, always brings the inner investigator in me.

source: https://twitter.com/soleil_dusoir9/with_replies

Who is Soleil Du Soil?

Soleil Du Soil is a twitter profile “critic” that has little to no information about who he is. So, we decided to use some basic, (and public) reconnaissance to try to see if we get more information.

source: https://twitter.com/account/begin_password_reset

Now, knowing that we possibly have his email soleild[-----]9@gmail.com, we are going to use a very ingenious, sophisticated technique called database cross-referencing from popular Data Breach Search Engines. For security reasons, we’re not going to link, list, promote or mention any particular “DBSE”. You should also take this last bit of investigation technique with a pinch of salt, as database cross-referencing isn’t always 100% reliable. It is, however, 99% of the times.

source: Data Breach Search Engines (Censored for privacy reasons, results are from database leak(s) from dating website(s))

From cross-referencing his primary email with existing data on multiple “DBSE”s, we got an additional (2) email addresses (censored for security reasons):

Original: soleild[-----]9@gmail.com
Alternative (1st): amin[--]soleil@gmail.com
Alternative (2nd): amin.sh[--]s.m@gmail.com

And it’s one of the alternative emails, namely the (2nd), that brought my attention.

Who is Amin Shams?
Known as:
Soleil Du Soir

source: https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/Directory/Profiles/Shams%20Moorkani-Amin

source: https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/AminShams

The name “Amin Shams” paired with “University of Texas” sounds oddly familiar, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.

source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3195066

Amin Shams is the co-author of “Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered?”, a paper that investigated tether’s relation with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices during its rise. It was an extremely biased paper made by someone who is an anonymous avid critic (Soleil Du Soir), borderline with obsession, over spreading negative sentiment over Tether and Bitfinex.

This paper was embarrassingly debunked by a recent paper called “The Impact of Tether Grants on Bitcoin” made by Wang Chun Wei of University of Queensland.

I believe that both Tether and Bitfinex have definitely something to hide. And I’m surely going to cover extensive pieces investigating both companies, but I’ll do it in a more realistic, fair way. There has been a lot of evidence pointing out that they are operating under a very unorthodox business plan, but I’m also sure (and have debunked) that FUDsters are amplifying their content with narrative manipulation and sensational journalism. We will get to the bottom of it, but not that way. Don’t play dirty.

You should always investigate your sources thoughtfully, and take your conclusions from your own investigations.

(We will Continue Our Work in Part 3)

Think!