Is Federal Prosecutor Turned-Crypto VC and Luxury Real Estate Connoisseur Katie Haun Just Another Charles McGonigal?

If crypto is the future why do all these crypto people buy luxury property?

Katie Haun: Are you sure those are flowers you are smelling?

A few days ago I began tweeting about Katie Haun. Today she’s in the Wall Street Journal writing about crypto regulation. We don’t link to Murdoch properties here — no, we worked for them once upon a time, for our sins — so you’ll have to search around for it.

To save you the search Haun argues that elected officials (who can be bribed with campaign contributions) should make decisions about crypto rather than bureaucrats (who are insulated from monetary contributions).

A friend rightly says this:

Genocide Trading Partners Hate Secondary Sanctions @RussellSieg

@JohnsonThought1 Did you see op-ed today in Rupert's WSJ by Katie Haun, the ex-DOJ Prosecutor, ex-a16z VC turned Coinbase board member who now runs some kind of self-titled Crypto firm? Who does that?!? She prosecuted Mt. Gox & Silk Road & now JOINED the crypto fraudsters

wsj.comOpinion | How U.S. Regulators Are Choking CryptoThe effort would stifle American innovation and competition—and that seems to be the objective.

There are only two real options when you consider the career of Katie Haun, federal prosecutor-turned-crypto VC-and-real estate mogul.

She’s either a federal asset running an extremely sophisticated op—or she’s another Charles McGonigal, the disgraced indicted FBI counterintelligence officer.

Mattathias Schwartz @Schwartzesque

NEW: My 4,000-word profile Charlie McGonigal. McGonigal used to be the FBI's top NYC spy-hunter. He had top-level access to classified intel. Now he's accused of illicitly taking Russian money, among other things... /1

businessinsider.comExclusive: The FBI’s McGonigal labyrinthA bag of cash, mystery friends, an encrypted app, and manila envelopes: The FBI is rushing to figure out how deep McGonigal’s alleged deceit might go.

I’ve spent a lot of time poking around on Katie Haun and I have to say that I find the McGonigal angle a lot more plausible. She’s equal parts Elizabeth Holmes (who Andreessen also praised) and McGonigal. Why she’s a trailblazing female VC! Bow down! You’re not a sexist or something are you? Can’t handle a female tech person can you, Charles? Can you?

I was, in fact, introduced to her — at the Battery (where else?) — where I was regaled with tales about all the criminals she brought down. Now having brought down a few criminals/spies in my day I found the whole saga of derring do a bit much but whatever.

The McGonigal story makes us believe that bribery of federal officials takes place with sacks of cash. I suppose it does. Yeah, I’ve seen Training Day—one of the most seditious movies ever shot.

And yes, there are lots of ex-federal law enforcement people who freelance by working for multiple intelligence agencies, sometimes even wittingly.

But there’s another far more menacing way corruption takes place: the purchasing of a federal prosecutor while still in office. I’ve seen a lot of that too. And sometimes it’s quite subtle.

Disgraced lobbyist and foreign spy Jack Abramoff said that the fastest way to own a federal official was to say that after his time in government was up that he could come work for him.

I suspect something very similar happened with Haun and Coinbase, where Haun is still a board member despite dumping a lot of her shares on retail.

In her interview with Tim Ferriss she goes on at some length about how Brian Armstrong recruited her to serve on the board.

Haun has emerged as a sort of “respectable face” for crypto. But what if — gasp!— there’s no respectable way to do crypto?

Why she studied with Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents! She went to Stanford. She even clerked for Justice Kennedy, who, as you know, has no problems whatsoever!

The problem is whether or not there really is any innovation at all to speak of at all.

At the height of the pandemic Marc Andreessen wrote a piece called “It’s Time To Build” but spent hundreds of millions on beachfront luxury real estate.

As Andreessen does, so, too does Haun apparently. She bought a $41 million pad in Silicon Valley real estate and manages $1.5B in crypto funds.

Haun, 47, had an unlikely path to fame and fortune. The Stanford Law alum spent a decade as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice. Among other things, she was tasked with creating the government’s cryptocurrency task force, which tracked criminals engaging in blockchain fraud and Bitcoin-related felonies.

That tangential experience with crypto led Haun down a whole new career path. Today, she serves on the board of Coinbase and teaches a class on cryptocurrencies at Stanford Business School. In 2018, she became the first female General Partner at venture capital behemoth Andreessen Horowitz, where she co-led the firm’s $2.2 billion crypto fund.

Oh, and even despite the crypto market downturn, Haun likely won’t have to worry about affording this home. According to an analysis of her public stock holdings, her current net worth still exceeds $100 million. Last year, she sold 204,000 shares of Coinbase stock, a move that netted her more than $73 million in cash. And earlier this year, her debut venture fund raised a whopping $1.5 billion from investors in record time. No wonder she’s been called the “credible face of crypto.”

“Credibility” is a funny thing. One moment you have it and then you don’t.

At the very least a lot of the criminals that Haun put away should demand a review of the evidence presented against them.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently bought a $133 million luxury real estate property in Bel Air.

No, this isn’t the crypto future you were promised. This is just good old fashioned money laundering into real estate. Maybe they got the memo that real estate was “safe as houses.”

Yes, I do want to crack down on this “innovation.”

If this analysis is correct -- and I suspect it very much is -- you should do everything you can to short COIN 0.00%↑ . Yes, I believe Coinbase will go to zero.

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