Why the arrest of Multichain's CEO shouldn’t come as a surprise
Last month, Multichain chief exec Zhao Jun was detained and ultimately arrested by Chinese law enforcement. His team avoided admitting to the dire straits for as long as they could, but eventually conceded that the man who basically controlled the DeFi protocol was in the hands of the Chinese authorities. Given the ‘decentralized’ protocol’s highly centralized nature, fellow executives have decided to shut down Multichain . But while many industry insiders were shocked by this turn of events, they shouldn’ t have been: it’s all happened before . Laundering, evasion, and overconfidence Back in 2018, one of the biggest names in Crypto currency in China was Zhao Dong, a Bitfinex shareholder, founder of the VC fund D Fund, and owner of a Crypto currency exchange called RenRenBit. From time to time, the wealthy executive had run-ins with foreign law enforcement, but there was no reason to foresee problems for Dong or his slew of high-profile investments — which i...