Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Out of Cycle Update.
[00:00:03] You knew you'd be found eventually, right? CryptoTalk FM. My name is Leister, I'm your host. We found it. We might, but I think we found it. At least we found one of them for sure.
[00:00:15] I am not going to share deep details because I'm not trying to dox the guy simply to say that we found at least one of them. We found at least one of the members and likely two members of the Block Dag group. And again, I'm not going to be. This is not a doxing, that's not what it's for.
[00:00:35] Simply to take a victory lap that you were going to be found, right? It was obvious you're going to be found.
[00:00:40] So what I can tell you for sure, and this from what I can tell is is a real thing. Just here's the background. Some photos were shared on CoinMarketCap's community and the photos I found interesting that somebody would do that. But it's fine, right? There was a little bit of. They were fuzzy photos, very low quality photos and as we all know, iPhones and androids, they record at pretty high quality and you'd have to be a numb nuts to degrade the quality because obviously you'd want to be able to see faces and make out stuff, right? So it's just unusual that you would want to degrade the quality of any photos that you take. Unless you're trying to hide something. I don't know for sure, but it just seemed kind of weird. But I saw it was way less than 1080p. It was just a garbage quality photo. Even when I tried to upscale it to try to see what the heck is this. It's just garbage quality, but it's out there on Core Market Cap's community. The person who posted that photo apparently is somebody who works with Block Dag. I found this person. Then this is how deep it goes for a technologist like myself. And some of this is correlation, not necessarily proof.
[00:01:52] But I followed this person back and I found a Twitter account, X account B a p t Dr. Underscore Dr. This isn't doxing because that's on his X account.
[00:02:02] B A P T underscore doctor and says he's a graphic designer and visual strategist, building brand identity, hackathon campaigns and community experiences. Ambassador, early investor at Block Dag Network and says he's out of France.
[00:02:17] Now it's obvious this person is associated with Block Dag. Again, it's on the X account. His X account is public. This is not Doxing the guy. I haven't given a name. I haven't done any of that stuff somebody else might do, but I don't think so because he. I know what it is, but I'm not going to do that. I'm simply sharing. This person is. Was sharing photos of an event and so I'm then connecting the dots of what's going on. And the fact that he says he's out of France, which I didn't realize, okay, was, was a real thing. But up he seems to be associated with the project by his own admission. You might be wondering what do I mean by his own admission? Well, I dug a little bit deeper onto this gentleman and apparently he's been a busy, busy, busy camper because he put up a post on a LinkedIn and it's his write up. This is his stuff. So he put it out there. I didn't. And of course the LinkedIn has his name. That's why I said I'm not doxing him, but somebody else might care. I'm not going to. But he put this out there, okay? He put out where he is, he put out who he is. He put out. He's associated with Block. That quote. The dream born from a white paper. I'm going to be honest with you. When I discovered Block Dag, I was at rock bottom. My life had lost its meaning. Everything around me was falling apart. My bearings, my plans, my spirit. I was done. Lost in my thoughts. One night I stumbled upon this project by chance. There was nothing spectacular at first glance, just a white paper, a vision, a dream laid out over a few pages. But I. I saw something in it. I saw a chance. I saw a light. I saw a dream to hold on to. And everything else was slipping away.
[00:03:56] So I gave it everything.
[00:03:57] Not just my money, my heart, my energy, my belief. I clung to this idea, this revolution in motion. I studied, I shared, I supported, I stood by Block Dag when no one else was talking about it. I gave my time, even in marketing, to make this voice heard. Because this project, it wasn't just technology. To me, it was a rebirth. There were hard times, nights full of doubt, heavy silences. Days when I almost gave up. But I stayed. Because deep down, I believe that what we were building meant something. Because every dream deserves to be defended. Especially when it's born from pain. Today, I'm still here. And I've never been more certain of my choice. Blocked Ag is no longer just a project. It's my story, my fight, my message. If you're reading These words today. I want you to know one thing. Never doubt your dreams. Even if no one understands, even if the world's crumbling around you. Hold on. Believe, fight. Because sometimes all it takes is a dream, white paper and a heart that refuses to give up, to change everything. Stop. He wrote this three months ago.
[00:04:57] I'm not ridiculing what he wrote. It's how he felt, it's what he believes, and that's fine. And he was pretty confident about it because he has his own, what appears to be his photo and he's working on a laptop, presumably on some code or something on design side because he calls himself a visual strategist and brand identity type person.
[00:05:17] That would seem to imply that he might be the one that's responsible for the artwork on the site, or at least the director of the artwork on the site. To which I would be critical. I'm not going to beat on the guy. He has a dream that's. It's his dream. I'm not going to trash him.
[00:05:32] But going back to then these photos, right? So he shared this, he shared these three photos and the photos didn't make any sense to me. Nicholas Vandenberg, who's the CMO guy, he's in the photo. Liza Vendenberg, who's the HR person, she's in the photo. So I know it's Block Dag somehow, but I'm not clicking the dots. It's not making any sense. Going a little bit deeper, it turns out this was some sort of a hackathon that was sponsored by, and I don't think it was sponsored by blocked act specifically, but sponsored by people that are associated with Block Dag because one of the people that was part of this, who's a treasurer apparently, and she's studying in college right now, did another post on LinkedIn talking about attending the hackathon and got a webinar about the Block DAG architecture and decentralized applications and worked with a couple other people and they built a wallet out, privacy focused wallet using pretty modern technology standards. A week of coding, debugging, tweaks and smart contract testing and then they got a web application going, allegedly. And then Liza responded and gave them kudos. So we know Liza's a real person because Liza responded to this.
[00:06:42] Nick Vandenberg is depicted here. So we know they're real people. This is going out to the crypto, mother, father and idiot. These are real people. Okay, so at least we've confirmed that much. We know they're real.
[00:06:55] We know the block that Exists because they apparently hosted this block, this hackathon thing. Okay, no problem. I took a look at the source code because the GitHub package for the app they wrote is out on GitHub. I took a look at it.
[00:07:08] Pretty standard par for the course. Nothing overly special about it. Hasn't been touched in a while. So they only did it for the purposes of this one. The hackathon footage then looks like it took place in some sort of a cafe or deli. And I was curious about that because that might help us understand what we're dealing with in terms of the. The structure and the stature and where they were filming, etc. Took me a while, but I was able to track it down. Jane's Emporium is in Cape Town, South Africa. That's where this hackathon apparently was taking place at, is Jane's Emporium. Jane's Emporium seems like it's a rather newish type of cafe. It just launched a website not that long ago. It doesn't have very much presence. It doesn't have many followers. However, if you go to their Facebook page, right on the head banner, Nick Vandenberg is on the header.
[00:07:55] Doesn't really mean anything. But I thought that was kind of weird that he's right there on the header for this restaurant, because usually they only do that if it's somebody that's associated with the restaurant, because you can't use somebody else's likeness without paying them normally. So usually you would not see somebody's likeness depicted unless they had signed some sort of a release. And maybe he did. There's another photo then on the Facebook site, and it's Nick Vandenberg. And he's. I don't know what he's doing. He's gesturing to some artwork. It looks like maybe it's a weird photo. I'm not sure what it's supposed to sell because it doesn't show any food, it doesn't show anything of any note or use. But the point here is the other gentleman, he's out in France. Vandenberg is here in South Africa. The hackathon was taking place in South Africa.
[00:08:44] It would seem to me perhaps. It would seem to me that perhaps the black DAG folks are indeed out of South Africa, which some people called out that they're out of Cape Town. So that seems to confirm that to be the truth.
[00:08:58] But also it seems to confirm that they are interacting at least with local colleges and local technical people. I found another gentleman. This one's kind of threw me as A curveball.
[00:09:10] And please, if anybody from the blockback folks want to be curious how I know this, please don't ask that question. This is leister@CryptoTalks FM. I'm a technologist. I've been touching tech since I was a toddler. This is easy work for me.
[00:09:23] I'm not going to dox the guy because it's not my business. However, one of the gentlemen in this hackathon allegedly is associated with a member group called University of Code. University of code is under school s k-o o l dot com. I'm not going to say anything further, but I think, and this is a theory, I don't know for sure, I think that perhaps the Block Deck people put out some sort of an outreach local in Cape Town to find various nerds and people that felt like they wanted to participate in this hackathon, to just come and, and hang out and have a good time, possibly to poach some talent, maybe, maybe to screen and see who's really the brilliant of the bunch. Well, why would they do that?
[00:10:04] Serious, why would they do that if they weren't doing anything right? If they wanted to rip people off, why would they put expose themselves like that? Why would they put their face and their name. Liza Vandenberg. Right. Why would they put their face and name associated to something that was going to be a scam? Why would they associate with all these legitimate and I, I know they're legitimate technical college kids out in Cape Town. Why would they expose themselves? Why would they expose this cafe who would be complicit in the scam? You got to understand that I'm going to maintain, and this is my close, I'm going to maintain. It would be extremely unlikely to be an outright scam at this point. Unless, unless, here's my curve. Unless it's a, it's a front, right? It's a front for backend operations that they're using funds for other things not directly related to BlockDag. However, the other gal indicated that they were given a webinar specifically about block dag and specifically around decentralized applications. Given the opportunity to build and code something and block that was mentioned and block dag top pieces and everything else. And you got to think why would they do that if they intended to rip people off? Because that would be hyper exposure. Unless Cape Town just didn't care. The other question is why is it that they're not registered in Cape Town? Why is it that they're not registered in South Africa? Maybe they don't want to be. I'm just asking the question, why not there? Because you're doing so much. You're exposing yourself in South Africa, Cape Town, and yet you didn't want to get registered there. And you're trying to get registered in either Belize or Samoa, one of the two. What, what about South Africa? Because you're, you're, you're conducting business there. So I, my point is there's so many questions around this one. It is fascinating. That's all I'm saying. I'm fascinated. I continue to be fascinated as I learn more and I see they're doing something, I just don't really understand what it is that they're doing. And if it is a scam, they doing a hell of a job at exposing themselves to, to the cops to get arrested. If it's truly a scam, I don't know. But anyway, I thought it was really good. Check that stuff out. It's on CoinMarketcaps Community if you want to see the photos. Everything else is just basic trace. There's some stuff that you'd have to be a little bit more advanced to be able to find.
[00:12:22] You know, that's, that's me, right? You're not on my level. But I'm just saying that most, you can find most of the basic stuff out there. And I gave you the, the shorts of it. There was a hackathon. I don't know why this isn't on their site. It's kind of a celebratory thing. Maybe they didn't care. And then the messaging of the site doesn't match this hackathon at all. You don't see any of this marketing anywhere in the photo. You don't see any of this kind of astronauts and shit. You don't see none of that in some of these photos. The photos actually look like grown adults trying to do grown adult stuff, just like some of the other videos that Anthony Turner has been in. This is what seems to affirm to me at least that it's just an incompetent marketing arm that's killing the reputation of the business.
[00:13:03] I don't know what it is. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to be launched or if something will launch. What it's going to be. I have no idea. I'm simply fascinated by what I see and continue to see. Out of Block Dagger.
