Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576852

Points: 8

# Comments: 2

Among the crazy things that Kontigo did, was that they allowed Venezuelans to open an US bank account, without any check or anything, you just had to put random "passport number" on a field (no kyc or anything) and they would issue you a chase checkings account number.

heres the ig advertising for that service: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DMljYtUsrDI/

anyways, they got shut down by chase few days ago:

https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2025/jpmorgan-chase-fr...

On the surface, Kontigo presents itself as a neobank for "Global Citizens" registered in Delaware (Kontigo Inc). However, a look at their operations suggests a structure designed to bypass OFAC sanctions while collaborating with the current Venezuelan regime.

If you look at Kontigo’s Terms and Conditions[2], they contain standard "Liability Shield" clauses explicitly prohibiting users from sanctioned countries (including Venezuela) from using the service, if you actually look at their footer, there is a list of countries, venezuela is nowhere to be seen there.

However, their entire public presence contradicts this. Their Instagram [3] is exclusively targeted at Venezuelans, is full of venezuelans influencers, talking about how to use kontigo in venezuela, all the posts i.e this one [4] are about their "venezuelan launch", Their allegaly 1 million user base is mostly Venezuelan. They are aggressively growing in a market their own legal documents claim to ban and all their numbers comes from this country.

There is a "Mirror" Structure and a Irregular License, Kontigo Inc (Delaware) operates in Venezuela through a local entity called Oha Technology C.A. There is a document[5] showing that Oha Technology was granted a crypto exchange license (No: LFCI-SUNA-001-2025) on Jan 9, 2025. however, this license was issued by Sunacrip (the National Superintendency of Cryptoassets). Sunacrip has been officially "intervened" and under a restructuring board since 2023 due to a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal ("PDVSA-Cripto") [6][7][8] and noone has access to this Superintendency.

So now, we got this question: How does a US-backed startup obtain license #001 in 2025 from a frozen, government-controlled regulator that isn't issuing licenses to anyone else? This implies a direct arrangement with the venezuelan corrupt regime, I would like to read some explanations from YC here.

Also, according to a recent report by Transparencia Venezuela (an NGO), this structure allows for dangerous arbitrage. The platform allows users to deposit cash (USD) at local Venezuelan banks, which is then converted to USDC in the app. This creates a massive blind spot for AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks, potentially allowing illicit capital from a sanctioned government to be "washed" into clean USDC, backed by US investors.

The Questions for the Community:

Are VCs like YC, DST Global, Coinbase VC, etc, actually auditing the source of revenue for their fintech portfolio companies?

Is "Growth at all costs" allowing startups to operate in gray zones that actively facilitate sanctions evasion?

Why is a company that explicitly bans Venezuelans in its English legal docs allowed to operate exclusively in Venezuela in practice?

I believe this deserves scrutiny. Kontigo looks like building a bridge for a dictatorship to access the US financial system, please help me understand this, if someone from YC can answer this officially, or make some statement, would be good, because the damage done to our country by situations like this is huge, they are giving "air" to a corrupt dictatorship

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kontigo

[2] https://www.kontigo.com/es/termsAndConditions

[3] https://www.instagram.com/kontigo.app/

[4] https://www.instagram.com/p/DSQaWPZEZcV/

[5] https://imgur.com/a/yWxqt5F

[6] https://transparenciave.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/PDVSA-CRYPTO-An-precedented-Fraud-with-Tremendous-Economic-and-Social-Impact-_OCT2023.pdf

[7] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caso_PDVSA-Cripto

[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/04/20/bitcoin-miners-trapped-in-alleged-20-billion-corruption-scheme-in-venezuela/

[9] https://transparenciave.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Nuevas-formas-de-corrupcion-y-lavado-de-dinero.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459710

Points: 11

# Comments: 3

Sire thing your links will be right and all my years suffering here are BS

In venezuela right now, there's a YC startup (2023), "Kontigo" [1], who's part of it, they went all in with this "stablecoin" bullsh*t and manage to get a license to operate in US (stripe) and with Venezuelans users with absolutely NO KYC, fully connected and "licensed" by the venezuelan "National Superintendence of Cryptoassets and Related Activities" a.k.a SUNACRIP

Take note that this SUNACRIP had closed operations since 2020 when a huge corruption scandal hit the govt, they used crypto to run corruption operations and money laundering [2][3][4] and somehow SUNACRIP, an organization that is not even working or functioning, this january licensed "Kontigo" to operated in the country, the founders themselves made a bragging video on instagram about "noone expecting it", wich is hillarious, you can find the video at https://www.instagram.com/p/DFd8ouoNKuI/

Anyways, the corrupted govt, approved a YC startup to exchange instantly USDC to VEF using venezuelans banks APIs and USA banking system (plaid, stripe, etc), without any KYC, without any sanctions screening, nothing, the reason for this approval is pretty simple, they doing the money laundering process super easy for them lol, they helping venezuelan corrupts officials bypass sanctions and easy money laundering.

I'm absolutely baffled at the situation and wondering how the fuck this happened, I myself know lower/mid size venezuelan corrupt officials using Kontigo to instantly wash money into USDC, and all of this is backed by YC itself.

And inbefore any user comes here telling me that "venezuela is sanctioned" and whatever other random thing, this company absolutely doesnt help venezuelans, it only helps corruption and launder money from corruption and drugs

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kontigo [2] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caso_PDVSA-Cripto [3] https://news.bitcoin.com/how-crypto-ended-up-at-the-center-o... [4] https://www.criptonoticias.com/judicial/fiscal-venezuela-con...

bitcoin wont be real till tether dissapears

i think the whole crypto narrative it's slowly dying, okay its ATH now, but yeah, we still got this huge elephant in the room called tether and well u know

https://x.com/vesinfiltro/status/1821780041652388295

https://x.com/vesinfiltro/status/1821672026626785580

fun fact, Maduro's announcement of X blocking, was made on X

https://x.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1821711329536663936

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41199198

Points: 2

# Comments: 5

now, more than 72 hours after elections, we still dont know the results and there is not a single place to check the acts or the numbers by pooling center.

it was all fraud.

These elections determined whether Maduro or Edmundo Gonzalez would be president of the country.

The official government results were presented by the National Electoral Council A.k.a. (CNE) on television during the night of July 28 and have not been published elsewhere.

The results announced were as follows:

Nicolas Maduro with 5,150,092 votes for a 51.20 %.

Edmundo González with 4,445,978 for a 44.20 %.

Others with a total of 462,704 for a 4,60 %.

Note that the decimals of these results add up perfectly, as if they had been calculated with excel. as explained on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123155

The site https://resultadosconvzla.com/ allows you to view the results of 24,576 (81.85%) of the 30,026 polling stations available and has been put together in a collective effort to avoid fraud.

The actual results, so far are:

Edmundo Gonzalez 7,173,152 votes for a 67%.

Nicolás Maduro 3,250,424 votes for a 30%.

Others 251,446 votes with a 2%

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41126119

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

lets remember after all, games and virtuals worlds, are that, games and virtuals worlds, so players have pretty much nothing to lose in trying to exploit whatever system you put in place

so if you are a gamemaster/game dev/etc, noone cares how much time or resources you invest in thinking how to solve the land crisis or housing crisis, you wont solve it and at the end if you put the most complex system or the most punisheable on you will most likely end up with your player base actually quitting or not interested in playing your game or following your rules.

so its actually just about to just accepting that there will be a land crisis or housing crisis and that you will just have to look the other way and let it be, cause at the end you might just end up killing your own game by going with the full try hard way.

theres actually silly solutions that have been proven to be good, like for example, adding new areas with the updates thus rendering the old areas useless and having people repeat the cycle of trying to be the new ones in those areas

or the favourite of all the game publishers, just tax with ingame credits that can only be purchased with $$$, so everyone is happy haha

btw, most of games end up failing trying to solve this land crisis or housing crisis cause while the focus so much on that, they have bigger problems that affect direct on it like currency inflation, RMT, gold farming and even more deep problems like cheating/botting