Share this article
Australian Treasury to Question Regulator Over HyperVerse Crypto Scheme: Report
"It seemed pretty clear that there should have been concerns raised about… this operation,” Stephen Jones said.
Updated Mar 8, 2024, 7:23 p.m. Published Jan 5, 2024, 8:45 a.m.
Australia's Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones has said he would be asking the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) why it didn't warn consumers about the HyperVerse crypto scheme like other nations did, according to the Guardian.
The United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and Hungary, among others, issued warnings about the scheme as early as 2021, the report said.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
“This type of scheme works by convincing innocent people to invest their money into a product that might not exist, with the only source of income being money from new investors,” Jones reportedly said. "I simply don’t know why a warning wasn’t issued. It seemed pretty clear that there should have been concerns raised about… this operation.”
The HyperVerse crypto scheme resulted in thousands of people losing millions of dollars, according to an investigation by Guardian Australia last month. The scheme was run by an entity called HyperTech and was promoted and run by CEO Steven Reece Lewis who does not appear to exist.
The founders of HyperTech, Australian entrepreneur Sam Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu, also founded the collapsed Australian bitcoin company Blockchain Global which owes creditors $58m. The liquidators alerted ASIC about Lee and Xu for breaking the law but the regulator said it does not intend to take action at this time, the Guardian reported.
ASIC did not immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for comment. HyperTech could not be reached for comment.
Read More: Australia Proposes New Licensing Regime for Crypto Exchanges, Aims for Draft Legislation by 2024
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
U.S. Senate's Crypto Market Structure Bill Gets Messy as Calendar Weighs Down
The White House has shut down proposals, and lawmakers are circulating the Democrats' asks in what had been a close negotiation, revealing 11th-hour pressure.
What to know:
- Democrats shared a response to Republicans outlining their continuing priorities for a crypto market structure bill, which they said was intended to "reach an agreement and proceed towards a mark-up."
- The document laid out concerns with financial stability, market integrity and public officials' ability to trade and profit off of crypto, echoing concerns laid out in a framework Democrats shared in September.
- The Senate is running out of time in the Congressional calendar to hold a markup hearing — a key step toward progressing the bill — before 2025 ends.
Top Stories
