Christen Ager-Hanssen, co-conspirators and COPA: The failed nChain takeover

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As the dust settles from Christen Ager-Hanssen’s failed takeover of blockchain technology hub nChain, attention is turning to his co-conspirators—some of whom might not have been aware of what they were doing at the time.

There’s a story Christen Ager-Hanssen loves to tell of an episode from his youth when he waterskied from Norway to Denmark on a single ski. Given everything that followed that aquatic endeavor, we assume Ager-Hanssen was being hotly pursued by fraud investigators or debt collectors (possibly both).

As we speak, Ager-Hanssen is reportedly hiding out at his mom’s house in Norway rather than pay the judgment issued in January by a U.K. court. The judgment was issued on behalf of nChain Holding AG, the blockchain research firm at which Ager-Hanssen was formerly employed.

🚨BREAKING🚨 nChain have filed a bankruptcy petition against Christen Ager-Hanssen 👀Interesting that he's choosing to represent himself. Definitely not what you'd expect from somebody who claims to be one of Norway's richest men 🤔 pic.twitter.com/XWXVBj7DIz

— Startup Defender (@startupdefence) March 12, 2024

Ager-Hanssen’s unwillingness/inability to pay this debt is the latest blow to his public image as a freewheeling billionaire investor who never loses a bet, a fight, or the spring in his step.

The reality is that Ager-Hanssen was never a billionaire. He is, however, a born loser with a string of bankruptcies, failed business ventures and public humiliations to his name.

This would be a lot funnier had so many small-time investors, employees and old-age pensioners not suffered so greatly as a result of Ager-Hanssen’s follies. Given the scale of some of his business deceptions, Ager-Hanssen’s greatest accomplishment might be staying out of prison.

Ager-Hanssen’s attempted boardroom coup of nChain last September was very nearly his biggest score to date. The fact that he so dramatically flubbed his shot clearly frustrates Ager-Hanssen, as he has since waged an obsessive one-man public relations war against his former employer.

This includes doing whatever he can to assist the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) in its legal fight against nChain’s former chief science officer Dr. Craig Wright. COPA is trying to convince a U.K. court that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, and Ager-Hanssen appears eager to do anything that assists COPA in their quest to bring Wright down.

That is, assuming Ager-Hanssen wasn’t already on Team COPA before he was fired from nChain on September 29, 2023 for conducting himself “in a serious and inappropriate manner.” This suggestion was raised by nChain chairman/CEO Stefan Matthews during his second day of testimony in the COPA v Wright affair.

Forbes quoted Matthews telling COPA’s attorney that he believes “Ager-Hanssen is working with you guys.” Ager-Hanssen was sufficiently triggered by Matthews’ comment that he felt the need to issue a public denial of working for COPA.

That denial must be weighed against Ager-Hanssen’s well-documented struggles with the truth. As a former colleague said in 2017, “I have yet to come across anyone else in business that I consider equally full of sh*t.”

So, for the purposes of this article, we thought we’d examine the likelihood of Ager-Hanssen’s potential involvement in a COPA plot, as well as examining those who may have helped him—wittingly or otherwise—attempt this unsuccessful plot.

But first, context

Ager-Hanssen’s history of failed ventures is notable not only for its length but also its adherence to a well-worn strategy: target a company or individual, achieve some influence by buying a small stake or offering some personal assistance on a delicate matter, replace management/directors with cronies/co-conspirators, then strip out value by selling off pieces of the company or issuing new equity.

As a Swedish lawyer put it way back in 2007, Ager-Hanssen “is happy to enter with a minority stake in a limited company. Then he creates pure hell, complains about all the lack of formality. Eventually everyone gets so tired of him and wants to throw him out. Then he offers to sell his share at a huge premium, or he offers to buy the others’ shares at a discount.”

Ager-Hanssen’s initial claim to fame was Cognition VC, which during the dot-com bubble of the late-1990s used cash provided by the Swedish pension fund AP-Fonden to buy local software firm NetSys. It is from this episode that Ager-Hanssen’s grandiose claims of being a billionaire are based.

After licensing Canadian tech firm OpenText’s LiveLink software, Ager-Hanssen went around telling clients that NetSys owned the source code. According to a former NetSys exec, this was part of a bid to drive down OpenText’s stock and buy the distressed company on the cheap.

Annoyed by these antics, OpenText took NetSys to court and won. An embarrassed AP-Fonden soon kicked Ager-Hanssen to the curb. NetSys filed for bankruptcy in September 2000 after failing to find a white-knight buyer. According to AP-Fonden’s CEO: “No one was interested. There was too much bad will connected to NetSys and Christen Ager-Hanssen.” Swedish pensioners lost millions as a result.

Cognition limped on a while longer but its IPO plans were scrapped after Ager-Hanssen was found to have sold off most of the entity’s liquid shares to fund his ‘luxurious’ lifestyle. His billionaire claims were later rubbished by a Norwegian publication that insisted the reality was that “Ager-Hanssen is worth 10 kroner.”

In 2005, a Swedish court declared Ager-Hanssen insolvent due to unpaid taxes. Ager-Hanssen vowed he was “never, ever going to pay” this bill but in 2009 his villa in Kullavik was seized and sold at auction. Ager-Hanssen sat in on the auction, telling bidders the place was overrun with mice but trying very hard to win the auction himself.  When a young woman outbid him, Ager-Hanssen got in her face, yelling “f*ck you” in full view of the 20-odd people present.

In 2005, Ager-Hanssen/Cognition led a group that acquired control of low-cost airline FlyMe Europe AB and installed a Cognition director as chairman. FlyMe then issued a bunch of new equity but Cognition never anted up the millions for the shares it was supposed to guarantee.

In 2007, following some questionable acquisitions of companies linked to Ager-Hanssen’s partners, FlyMe declared bankruptcy. A director of the Swedish Shareholders’ Association described the process that led to the bankruptcy as “not a formal corporate looting, but in practice it has that effect.”

In 2014, Ager-Hanssen got involved with the Custos Group, a respected investment company formed in 1937 but by the 1990s it was selling pieces of itself to stave off liquidation. Ager-Hanssen revamped the company into his new venture capital group, trading heavily on the original Custos name recognition. 

Ager-Hanssen’s Custos has invested in all sorts of tech start-ups, none of which appear to have lasted very long or made any money. Its most public investments were the 2017 acquisition of the Metro media company (later filed for restructuring and never recovered) and the failed bid for the UK’s Johnston Press Plc that same year.

After acquiring a 12.6% stake in Johnston, Ager-Hanssen tried to very publicly sack its entire board of directors. This failed because Ager-Hanssen neglected to read the clause in Johnston’s bond agreements that would have required immediate repayment of over £200 million in debt if the board was ousted. 

Undeterred, Ager-Hanssen proposed sacking just two directors, but failed to call for an extraordinary general meeting of Johnston shareholders. As a post-mortem of this debacle observed: “The Norwegian never even handed the company an official proposal to address its problems. Instead, he simply kept generating publicity for himself—while actively seeking investors in Custos.”

Believe it or not, the above is only a partial summary of Ager-Hanssen’s reign of error. But we think it offers a glimpse of the kind of corporate carnage the man has left in his wake over the past quarter-century.

Inspector Loseau

Ager-Hanssen’s penchant for secretly recording individuals over whom he wished to have leverage began well over a decade ago. One memorable instance occurred in 2014 when he volunteered his detective services to Mats Qviberg, co-founder of Sweden’s HQ Bank.

A few years earlier, HQ bank had its license revoked following some sketchy derivatives activity and Qviberg became the subject of both a criminal fraud trial and a civil suit filed against him by the bank.

Ager-Hanssen secretly recorded 50 hours of talks with HQ chairman Christer Sandberg, ostensibly to negotiate a settlement of the civil suit, but in reality looking for dirt that would help Qviberg win. Utterly mercenary, Ager-Hanssen later admitted that, had Qviberg not accepted his offer of assistance, “it is not unlikely that I would have started working with HQ AB.”

But karma is indeed a bitch. Ager-Hanssen had negotiated a hefty payday for himself if his underhanded actions resulted in Qviberg prevailing in his civil suit, and for a while it seemed his skullduggery would tip the balance. But Qviberg chose instead to settle the suit pre-trial in May 2018, thereby denying our self-described modern-day Viking his due.

Far from a random act, this appears to have been revenge served ice cold. In 2017, Qviberg had been the majority partner in Ager-Hanssen’s Metro acquisition but within months Ager-Hanssen forced him out and took his shares. Seems Qviberg never forgot this slight and waited for just the right moment to exact revenge on this dollar-store Loki.

The nChain plot

Ager-Hanssen was hired as nChain’s CEO in November 2022 but his scheme to secure this role began much earlier. As Ager-Hanssen admitted to Norway’s premier business media outlet Dagens Næringsliv last October, he went to the Ascot Racecourse on June 15, 2022 because he “had done my research and knew [Dr. Wright] was there.”

Ager-Hanssen cornered Wright and the pair ended up talking for hours, with Ager-Hanssen apparently saying what he needed to say to win Wright’s confidence. Ager-Hanssen’s motivation was clear, telling DN: “I thought there was 100 million dollars in the pot for me.”

nChain has declined multiple requests for comment from CoinGeek, but insights into Ager-Hanssen’s plot to infiltrate and assume control of nChain were revealed on March 8 via a new article, Insider Ager-Hanssen’s Failed nChain Coup, posted by an anonymous antagonist known only as Truth Teller. (The site was taken down, but an archived version of the article can be seen here.)

🚨NEWS🚨 As you may have noticed, our little website was taken down yesterday. It seems *somebody* didn't like the truth so went to extraordinary lengths to silence it. New link will be live shortly, but archive is here https://t.co/NcM0fSKfkL

— Startup Defender (@startupdefence) March 11, 2024

According to Truth Teller’s sources, Ager-Hanssen’s pitch to Wright had two components: the promise of “middle-eastern investors lined up and ready to ‘invest’ a billion dollars into the right blockchain company,” and Ager-Hanssen’s willingness to employ his ‘dark arts’  to assist Wright’s various legal fights.

Wright subsequently introduced Ager-Hanssen to this site’s founder Calvin Ayre, who at the time was a minority shareholder in Wright’s employer nChain. Having wrangled an invitation to a party at Ayre’s London residence, Ager-Hanssen instructed his son Henrik Casper Ager-Hanssen to “get Ayre drunk.” Evidently, the plan was to loosen Ayre’s tongue and hopefully garner information that Ager-Hanssen Sr. could turn to his advantage.

(If you still have doubts regarding Ager-Hanssen’s true financial situation, consider his wide-eyed wonder that Ayre carried “two large bundles of £50 notes in his inside pocket” when the party later shifted to a London nightclub. You get the sense that if they’d been £100 notes, Ager-Hanssen might have abandoned his larger plot, clubbed Ayre over the head with the nearest bottle of bubbly and done a runner.)

Next came the lynchpin of Ager-Hanssen’s plan: the release of the ‘CryptoLeaks’ videos exposing the dirty dealings of former Roche Freedman attorney Kyle Roche. Long story short: Ager-Hanssen secretly recorded Roche discussing the legally sketchy actions his firm allegedly used to sandbag blockchain projects that competed with projects that employed Roche Freedman.

Although the videos were recorded in January 2022, they weren’t made public until June of that year. But the first videos showing Roche confessing his unethical attacks on Wright and the BSV blockchain didn’t appear until late August, i.e. shortly after Ager-Hanssen had made his initial overtures to both Wright and Ayre.

By September 1, 2022, Ager-Hanssen was publicly declaring himself “a big fan of BSV.” By the end of that month, Ager-Hanssen was in Switzerland meeting the nChain team. Through October, Ager-Hanssen kept up a steady drumbeat of pro-BSV/Wright social media posts. By November, Ager-Hanssen had been named nChain’s new CEO and he formally assumed the role the following month.

As for why Ager-Hanssen went so hard after the nChain job, he may have tipped his hand way back in 2004 during his failed takeover of Software Innovation. In an interview detailing his interest in the company, Ager-Hanssen stressed the attractiveness of “patent rights.” Given that nChain’s blockchain patent library has no equal, Ager-Hanssen’s interest seems obvious.

Spoiling the party

Once installed as nChain’s CEO, Ager-Hanssen appointed a number of cronies to executive positions. His team fanned out, looking for ‘deals’ that were of less use to nChain than they would be to companies in which Ager-Hanssen’s Custos held an ownership stake.

But as the months ticked by, nChain’s board grew increasingly skeptical regarding Ager-Hanssen’s ability to deliver on those promised investor millions. In the spring of 2023, as Ayre Group was doing due diligence ahead of its agreement to take a controlling interest in nChain, concerns mounted over Ager-Hanssen’s lack of results, particularly given the bills he was running up.

Both the Ayre Group and the nChain board were also expressing doubts over Ager-Hanssen’s abrasive management style, which caused no shortage of friction among nChain’s rank-and-file. In May 2023, Ayre rescinded Ager-Hanssen’s invitation to Ayre’s birthday party in Scotland, with the birthday boy telling Ager-Hanssen he didn’t want the event spoiled by “whatever this issue is that you have with the team.”

It appears that this was the moment that Ager-Hanssen realized everyone was on to him, so he shifted to Plan B. If Ager-Hanssen wasn’t already working to further COPA’s mission of destroying Wright, this is where their shared interests aligned. 

Mock concern

One of Ager-Hanssen’s first official acts as nChain CEO was the formation of a ‘litigation steering committee’ with himself as its head. This committee gave him both insight into and influence over Wright’s various legal entanglements, including the COPA suit. Ager-Hanssen also dismissed Wright’s existing legal representation and hired new attorneys of his own choosing.

On September 22, 2023, Ager-Hanssen organized a ‘mock trial’ allegedly intended to test Wright’s responses to questions he’d likely be asked in the real COPA trial. As someone on the autism spectrum who has previously spoken of his “severe deficit in social skills,” Wright—who only learned of this exercise the day he showed up at the nChain office—didn’t react well to participating in what nChain chairman Stefan Matthews later called “an ambush.”

Following these proceedings at nChain’s London office, Wright claims Ager-Hanssen warned him that “I would lose the case and that I should admit that I did not create Bitcoin and was not Satoshi Nakamoto.” Wright refused.

Ager-Hanssen also approached Matthews following the mock trial, warning him not to testify on Wright’s behalf in the real trial. Matthews testified that when he refused this demand, Ager-Hanssen began “consistently harassing me, threatening me, and insisting I withdraw as a witness in this matter and making statements to me that he would destroy me if I didn’t withdraw.”

These two interactions beg some obvious questions. Why was Ager-Hanssen so intent on Wright effectively surrendering and handing COPA victory months before the trial was scheduled to start? And why was Ager-Hanssen equally determined to keep Matthews off the stand, thereby depriving Wright of a key witness who could corroborate Wright’s Satoshi claims?

Anyone who doesn’t see a significant alignment of goals between Ager-Hanssen and COPA should probably book an ophthalmologist appointment ASAP. But that doesn’t necessarily prove that this alignment was conscious. After all, Ager-Hanssen’s disregard for anything other than his own desires is well documented.

Something blows here, and it ain’t a whistle

With Wright and Matthews refusing to play ball, Ager-Hanssen moved to dismiss Wright from nChain on September 24. Once Wright was gone, Ager-Hanssen then played what he thought would be his ace in the hole—a ‘whistleblower’ report alleging improprieties in Ayre Group’s nChain deal that August.

(Ager-Hanssen had played this whistleblower card before. In 2016, his Custos group bought a minority stake in Swedish digital media outlet Realtid Media, tried to oust founder/CEO Jonas Wiwen-Nilsson and its board while threatening to “crush” those who stood in his way. When these threats failed, Ager-Hanssen produced ‘whistleblower’ claims of alleged shoddy business practices. Wiwen-Nilsson responded by saying the fact “that [Ager-Hanssen] continues to blackmail me comes like a letter in the mail.”)

The claims in Ager-Hanssen’s nChain report were ultimately found to be without merit following an investigation by a third-party Swiss law firm but Ager-Hanssen appears to have believed they would be accepted at face value by nChain’s board. A lifetime of worming his way into companies and pushing out their owners/managers seems to have led him to conclude that nChain’s board would simply roll over and give him what he wanted.

But while Ager-Hanssen was counting his chickens, Matthews got a message from nChain’s desk office support team alerting him that it had received ‘unusual’ instructions from Ager-Hanssen. As Matthews testified at the COPA trial, Ager-Hanssen wanted to access email accounts belonging to eight nChain staffers, including Matthews, who replied to the support team—and CC’d Ager-Hanssen—that this was not authorized.

Following this email, Matthews testified that Ager-Hanssen “took over nChain in London, escorted a number of people out, taped up the CCTV cameras, shredded documents, physically broke into the server room and removed CCTV footage.” Under the circumstances, Matthews felt justified in terminating Ager-Hanssen “that night.”

nChain declined to offer specifics regarding these events but several other nChain senior execs/directors who were either in on the plot or simply took Ager-Hanssen’s bogus report as gospel appear to have been similarly escorted out of the building.

Plan C

After his expulsion, Ager-Hanssen issued a series of increasingly desperate claims he appeared to believe would bring down nChain, Wright, Matthews, Ayre and anyone else who’d disrupted his best laid plans. 

This included tweeting a photo from the mock trial, which was immediately seized upon by COPA’s attorneys, who demanded answers from Wright’s legal team regarding the level of coaching Wright may have received. (Unlike in the U.S., the U.K. legal community imposes “severe restrictions” on this type of proceeding.)

Ager-Hanssen is clearly doing whatever he can to help COPA now, but is this simply a coping (pun intended) mechanism? Or was he on their side from the start as part of a plot to hobble the sector’s leading intellectual property holder?

It’s worth remembering that Wright testified that Ager-Hanssen approached Wright’s wife Ramona following the mock trial to inquire about making “a deal” that Wright inferred involved Ager-Hanssen “acquiring the shares and/or intellectual property of nChain.”

If nothing else, Ager-Hanssen’s brief tenure at nChain has certainly been disruptive, which definitely served COPA’s purpose. Having lost the race to develop, document and patent so many aspects of blockchain technology, COPA members’ only remaining hope is to sandbag nChain/Wright while denigrating BSV in the minds of the public. Meanwhile, junior nChain sources are reportedly saying the global blockchain firm has quickly regrouped and is in the best shape of its life.

Meet the co-conspirators

A number of individuals played roles in Ager-Hanssen’s failed coup. Some of them are obvious co-conspirators, while others appear more unwitting (and unwise) accomplices. We’ll walk you through each of these individuals to get a sense of which side of that divide they might land.

DAVID BROOKES:

One of Ager-Hanssen’s first actions after becoming nChain CEO was to appoint David Brookes as the company’s new general counsel. Brookes has served a similar role for Ager-Hanssen’s Custos Group since June 2018. He was also a director for both Custos and some Custos-invested entities. So we can safely assume where David Brookes’ loyalties lie.

ZAFAR ALI (KC):

Another individual brought on board by Ager-Hanssen in January 2023, Zafar Ali served as a ‘consultant’ but it wasn’t nChain picking up his tab, as Ager-Hanssen needed to be fully in control of Ali’s actions. The COPA v Wright witness list called Ali “a consultant for Mr Ager-Hanssen” while the Norwegian outlet DN referred to Ali as Ager-Hanssen’s lawyer.

Zafar Ali’s own website declared that he was on “a sabbatical” in 2023, while public records show that he set up a consulting company with his wife. Ali tried to distance himself from the whistleblower report and made Ager-Hanssen redact his name and sign off on the report from the version he leaked online.

Ali reportedly played a key role in the formation of Ager-Hanssen’s litigation steering committee. As Zafar Ali began taking an active role in Wright’s legal cases, Wright himself “became concerned that Zafar was not following my instructions and that I was not being kept informed of the conduct and progress of the claims.”

Ali is thought to be the mastermind of the whole mock trial sting, and on the day played the prosecutor’s role in Wright’s mock trial, despite the fact that his website says he has “established himself as a leading defender” and “since being called the bar in 1994, Zafar has exclusively defended.”

Even COPA’s legal team found Zafar Ali’s participation in the mock trial alarming, saying the event appears to include “serious misconduct by a barrister.” They asked Wright’s lawyers to confirm “whether Mr Ali’s conduct has been referred to the [Bar Standards Board].” We understand other barristers involved in this illegal attempt to pervert the course of justice have gone to ground, and the mock trial’s judge is yet to be identified. This was a high-risk play for Ali and Ager-Hanssen, and they insisted that some of CCTV cameras were ripped out in their mock courtroom.

Matthews testified that he received a call from both Ali and Ager-Hanssen following the mock trial saying the pair had papers for him to sign indicating his intention to withdraw as a witness during the real COPA trial.

During his testimony, Matthews was asked by High Court Justice Mellor about Ager-Hanssen’s threats. Matthews quoted Ager-Hanssen saying “myself and Ali will destroy your life, destroy your reputation, of you and your family, if you attend court.”

Given that Ager-Hanssen’s post-expulsion tweets led to Ali’s ethics being publicly questioned by other members of the U.K. legal community, it’s possible Ali was in the dark as to Ager-Hanssen’s ulterior motives. But Matthews’ comments indicating Ali was privy to Ager-Hanssen’s threats aren’t a good look for a barrister. Ager-Hanssen’s promised riches to Ali to lure him away from his chambers and constraints of legal aid budgets might not be seeming quite promising from where he sits today. 

LARS JACOB BØ:

Ager-Hanssen’s close friend for the past 45 years and a partner at Custos, Lars Jacob Bø was for some reason present for the nChain senior management meeting at which Ager-Hanssen unveiled his ‘whistleblower’ report.

Lars Jacob Bø is currently head of financial services at the Oslo office of consultancy Bain & Co, but he was never an nChain employee. Truth Teller claims Bø was “moonlighting as Ager-Hanssen’s ‘deputy CEO.’” Without a formal title, Lars Jacob Bø’s presence at this incredibly sensitive meeting is a serious red flag.

ENDRI GJATA:

nChain’s former chief marketing officer, Endri Gjata also served as chief technology officer at Custos since 2018, as well as a director for Ager-Hanssen’s Addreax. Truth Teller claimed that Ager-Hanssen instructed Endri Gjata to “take control of [nChain’s] company data and IP” on the night that Ager-Hanssen’s team ransacked nChain’s London office.

HENRIK CASPER AGER-HANSSEN:

The junior Ager-Hanssen is currently the CEO of both Custos Ventures and one of its investment offshoots (Addreax Ventures), as well as head of ventures at the Ager-Hanssen family office, the website of which has been dead for years.

His father using him to try to get Ayre drunk suggests Henrik Casper Ager-Hanssen is the Fredo Corleone of this crime family, the guy they send out to entertain visiting dignitaries but don’t allow anywhere near any actual business. His failings aren’t apparently limited to business, as a reliable source claimed that Henrik Casper Ager-Hanssen has “the worst karaoke voice in Western Europe.”

ANDREW MOODY:

Unlike most on this list, chief financial officer Andy Moody was an nChain veteran, having joined in March 2018. Moody has gone to ground following his dismissal last September, so why he chose to throw it all away on Ager-Hanssen’s failed putsch remains a mystery. But it appears that Ager-Hanssen made an attempt at ‘grooming’ Andy Moody shortly before everything kicked off.

One month before the mock trial, Ager-Hanssen tweeted his first and only public reference to Andy Moody, saying he was “second to none and brings a lot of value to our Group.” Ager-Hanssen said he’d “recommend everyone to follow” Moody’s account, which never had more than 18 followers and has since been deleted.

LEANDRO NUNES:

The only response to Ager-Hanssen’s Moody tweet came from Leandro Nunes, nChain’s former chief revenue officer, who told Moody it was “great working with you, mate!” Nunes, who remained very pro-nChain right through late-September, hasn’t tweeted since October 13, 2023, when he said a company building on BSV could “count on me!”

Leandro Nunes, who joined nChain in May 2022 from MasterCard, is no blockchain neophyte, having his name on several patents related to blockchain-based supply chain solutions (coincidentally or not, a similar area of focus for nChain).

PETER COULSON:

Peter Coulson may be the one individual on this list whose motivations aren’t in any doubt, given that he’d been nChain’s chief operating officer for all of a week before Ager-Hanssen launched his coup attempt.

A highly decorated Royal Navy officer with an OBE, Peter Coulson was likely unnerved by Ager-Hanssen’s alarmist claims, decided he’d made a serious mistake and stampeded for the exit. Can’t say we blame him, given his relative unfamiliarity with the business and Ager-Hanssen’s penchant for painting his opponents as agents of the apocalypse.

Don’t cry for me

It’s unclear exactly what lies Ager-Hanssen might have told some of the unwitting accomplices above, nor what promises he might have made to those who were in on his scheme from the start. No doubt some of them truly regret their roles as Ager-Hanssen’s pawns, their reputations sacrificed in the furtherance of his criminal ambitions. But they are far from alone in falling for Ager-Hanssen’s deceptions.

Following the dot-com crash of Ager-Hanssen’s Cognition, Dagens Næringsliv writers Ingun Stray Spetalen and Gøran Skaalmo wrote a highly informative article (Phantom billionaire fooled the media) detailing Ager-Hanssen’s methods, some of which are worth quoting at length:

On the surface, Ager-Hanssen is just a simple swindler, a talker and seller of God’s grace. He has a unique ability to make people believe what he says. He is a master at using all available tricks to get what he wants.

In one case, a source told how Ager-Hanssen can enter a meeting with important people, and sit down and cry if he thinks that’s what it takes to get it the way he wants.

The next day, we called Ager-Hanssen to insist on an agreement he had promised us. And the man breaks down in tears. Crocodile tears, but you can never be sure.

Ager-Hanssen’s sociopathic ability to cry on command appears to have been on full display last October, when a different Dagens Næringsliv reporter wrote:

It’s late night in London’s Belgravia. A red report lies on a large leather-clad meeting table. In the chair at the end of the table, one of Norway’s most famous and controversial investors is crying.

I’ve been so lonely, sobs Christen Ager-Hanssen.

Tears roll.

If you come at the king, don’t miss

No doubt some of Ager-Hanssen’s accomplices now regret having been taken in by his duplicity. They likely also regret having played any role in his plot to take control of nChain, which, like so many other Ager-Hanssen schemes to acquire something that was not rightfully his, proved an utter failure.

In the immediate aftermath of his expulsion from nChain, Ager-Hanssen continued to promote BSV, saying he still believed “it’s a good technology and it works.” By New Year’s Eve 2023, when the reality that he wasn’t going to be nChain’s owner had finally set in, Ager-Hanssen was dismissing BSV as having “no future.”

Ager-Hanssen might well have been describing his own diminished fortunes. This certainly wasn’t how he expected to finish the year, rage-tweeting to a largely disinterested and rapidly diminishing audience. There would be no big payday from his year-plus masquerade and no position of authority from which to oversee the entire blockchain IP sector.

Instead, the only thing Ager-Hanssen’s bungled grift had accomplished was to offer the world the highest profile example to date of why no one should risk doing business with him in the future. If he is indeed on COPA’s payroll, it says a lot about Ager-Hanssen’s perceived toxicity that even they won’t publicly admit it.

Check out all of the CoinGeek’s special reports on the Satoshi Trial (COPA v Wright)