Taiwan’s authorities have launched legal action against stakers as they operate unauthorized crypto investment schemes. According to the report, authorities accused founder Huang Weixuan of participating in the investment scheme along with other executives.
Authorities say the quartet was involved in raising approximately $45.8 billion through unauthorized crypto investment schemes using the Steaker platform. The Taipei Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the charges Thursday, noting that their actions violated the rules of the Banking Act, which raised eyebrows for taking deposits without a license.
Apart from founder Huang Weixuan, the platform’s chief technology officer Xiu Minje, chief marketing officer Lu Tianxin, and chief executive Pan Yiting will be charged in connection with these allegations.
The prosecutors also urged the court to move forward and punish the company under the Banking Act, but it is still unclear what will happen as the case still remains in the court.
Taiwanese authorities drag staker platforms into court
According to the submission, Huang is a Taiwanese blockchain legend, trading Bitcoin while the founder of Steaker was at the National Taiwan University. He developed crypto wallets before working as a software engineer at Yahoo. After leaving Yahoo, he founded Steaker in 2019, noting that in two years he had accumulated about $55 million in managed assets. He is also considered one of the leaders of the domestic blockchain space.
Taiwan’s prosecutors say Steaker has been running multiple digital asset investment plans since its establishment. The company began operations in 2019 and sold investors. We sold large revenue promises ranging from 3.5% to 88% per year. The company raised funds from several digital assets, including USDT, Bitcoin and Ethereum. The platform also claims that the assets deposited by users are protected by security funds and are working with Cybavo.
According to the Chargesheet, prosecutors allege that Steaker ensured investors protected their principal and profits. Over the next three years, the company raised hundreds of millions of dollars in Taiwan through various plans.
The collapse of FTX in 2022 caused stakers issues
Investigators also said that once the investor’s funds reach a certain amount, they had specific instructions to move them to a wallet under Huang’s control on FTX, a collapsed cryptocurrency exchange. According to prosecutors, Huang and his team used money for profit transactions and used high-return loans to capture differences in prices.
After FTX collapsed in 2022, issues with Steaker and its executives came. In 2022, the platform filed for bankruptcy, leading to funds belonging to individuals and businesses locked to the platform. With funds locked to FTX, Steaker was unable to meet investor withdrawal obligations, which led to collapse. Prosecutors also said some of the collected digital assets may be used to cover salaries from FTX wallets held by Huang to wallets belonging to private currency traders.
Huang responds to the charges, noting that Steaker uses multi-chain asset flows and operations, which prevents prosecutors from categorizing it as money laundering. The company also opposed the ways prosecutors chose to interpret the banking law, particularly the way they decided to equalize digital assets and fiat currency under the law.
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