In 2023, AssangeDAO raised over $55 million to finance Julian Assange’s legal and public relations campaigns. Over $10 million in ETH remain, held by the German non-profit Wau Holland Foundation. Earlier this week, one of AssangeDAO’s organizers made accusations that the DAO was a rug pull. The next day, Bitfinex announced that they would be adding AssangeDAO’s JUSTICE token to their listings.
On Monday, Amir Taaki, who is known for being one of Bitcoin’s main developers and one of the original organizers and multi-sigs for AssangeDAO, alleged that AssangeDAO had been rugged (more on that below). This was not the first time that Amir accused the DAO of being rugged. At the end of July, he called it a rug and explained that it was why he wanted to leave the project. In another trio of messages three days later, he expanded.
The Assange campaign rugged the DAO sending 100% of the treasury to a shitty german foundation despite us all saying it was a bad fucking idea.
Then the treasury was mismanaged. We told them to put it in stables but they didn’t listen and lost most of it in the crash. Then they cashed it out in a shit way losing more money. And then it was stuck in an illiquid german foundation, and they had to do more fundraising cos it couldnt be spent properly.
All stuff that we predicted would happen and we weren’t listened to.
At the beginning of the month, things suddenly went downhill as Wau Holland Foundation, which received and has been administering the funds raised by AssangeDAO, suddenly stopped communicating with AssangeDAO and Silke Noa, the German lawyer who had helped establish the DAO, on the advice of their lawyers after she emailed the Wau Holland Foundation’s board. (Wau Holland Foundation has declined to answer third parties’ questions, as well.) Amir explained in another series of posts that,
Silke tried to speak with Wau Holland but they cut off all contact and refused her calls.
They said they have NO obligation to talk with her, but we heard they are discussing with Harry and his employee Alexis what to do with the funds.
So we are deliberately excluded from all discussions.
After another member of AssangeDAO shared Amir’s messages, Harry Halpin responded by clarifying his assistant Alexis’ role in liquidating the ETH raised by the DAO and held by the Wau Holland Foundation. He added that the Wau Holland Foundation had no obligation to talk to any of them, and that their only obligation was to give the remaining money to either Pak or Julian Assange.
I went to talk to Wau in person because, to be frank, everyone else was too lazy to do so. Due to Nym, I will not have another chance anytime soon to fly to Berlin. Also note Alexis is also president of Bity that was used to convert ETH to money, which was falsely reported by Slow Myst. I did recommend that Wau do conversion of eth to cash earlier before market collapse and offered them contacts to do so.
In general, the money was a donation from Pak to Wau. Wau and Julian are under no legal obligation to talk to anyone (including me and AssangeDAO), and Wau is legally obligated to either return money to Pak or to Julian by German law. If they tried to return the ETH to AssangeDAO they would be punished by the German state. So again, it will come down to the AssangeDAO being considered a good thing to Julian for him to send it any funds.
Interestingly after I reported on it, Harry Halpin directly contradicted his statement that “Wau is legally obligated to either return money to Pak or to Julian by German law.” In a tweet to me, he wrote that “due to tax law I don’t think the funds can go straight to Julian either as one can’t just ship money around that was a donation without proper care as Wau is strictly regulated.”
Amir then implied that Harry hadn’t been fully honest with the AssangeDAO community, and that he’d been trying to control the funds with the Wau Holland Foundation and Alexis.
@harryhalpin you should be honest and direct with the people here. You believe the money should be kept in a foundation controlled by your people with Julian. You do not respect the community or believe in the DAO.
you never advocated for the DAO to have a voice or rights in what happens to the funds. Instead you’ve been creating a foundation and working with Wau. Silke tried to speak with Wau but they refuse her all contact, but they are conspiring with you and Alexis. You should be honest about your beliefs instead of saying one thing and doing another.
Then this Monday, Amir made a series of posts in one of the public AssangeDAO chats alleging that AssangeDAO had been rugged.
they got greedy and rugged the DAO, not even leaving 5%. Then we told them to buy stablecoin but they are anti-crypto and ignored us. They lost 50% of the value in market crash from mismanagement. They didn’t listen to us and cashed it out poorly paying huge fees for conversion. I said during maxbid to keep some crypto in the DAO because it has advantages like being liquid. But they sent it to an illiquid foundation where they couldn’t even spend it properly and had to do more fundraising.
The next day, Bitfinex announced that it would adding AssangeDAO’s JUSTICE token to its listings, and according to Gabriel Shipton the liquidity requirements were met. Later the same day, the allegations of fraud within the DAO’s community escalated to a call for violence on the AssangeDAO forum. Trading of JUSTICE on Bitfinex began late last night.
AssangeDAO denies the allegations of a rug pull. The Wau Holland Foundation is only communicating with Harry Halpin about AssangeDAO matters and has not commented except that they are complying with German tax requirements.
