Diogenes Casares

Patagon Management LLC, the company he runs as CEO and owns, sued Wei Wu in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; CoinDeskCoinDeskCoinDesk is a cryptocurrency media, events, index, and data company founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York. Its businesses include the CoinDesk news website, the annual crypto industry conference Consensus, and the CoinDesk Indices index business. In November 2023, the digital asset exchange Bullish acquired CoinDesk from Digital Currency Group, and CoinDesk has since operated as an independent subsidiary of Bullish.Open the full entry writes that Wu is alleged to be the man behind the pseudonymous Spartacus of SpartacusDAO. Patagon alleged that he front-ran his own redemption program for the SPA token for a profit of $4.3 million and violated securities laws and obligations to shareholders. SPA investors had earlier voted through a non-canonical process to dissolve the DAO, which Spartacus ignored, and a later community vote on another redemption was ignored as well.⁠[1][2]

In late April 2023, Patagon’s lawyer posted the legal papers to SpartacusDAO’s Discord server; the post was deleted within minutes and the lawyer was banned. Patagon’s lawyers then tried to serve Wu by means of an NFT. Private investigators had earlier failed to locate him, and an email notice had gone unanswered. DL News writes that Patagon obtained a temporary restraining order against the Spartacus DAO team in April that prevented its founders from moving the project’s assets.⁠[1][3]

On May 4, 2023, Judge Victor Marrero upheld the restraining order at a hearing, keeping $35 million in crypto assets frozen until Wu starts to work with the court; Wu had not appeared or formally responded. Casares said that Wu “basically dropped off the map last year. And we couldn’t find a location.”⁠[1]

In a press release of May 19, 2023, Perkins Coie, the law firm representing Patagon Management, writes that a federal court in New York permitted service on the pseudonymous founder of SpartacusDAO by NFT, through Discord and by email, and upheld the prior temporary restraining order enjoining him from accessing $35 million in crypto assets. The release describes SpartacusDAO as a purported decentralized reserve currency protocol on the Fantom blockchain and says that the defendant sold “SPA” tokens and allegedly misused the related funds; the firm’s team included partner John Hardin, counsel Emily Cooper, and associates Will Conley, Gabriella Romanos Abi Habib and Hellen Park.⁠[4]

On November 2, 2023, the Aragon Association announced that it would dissolve its governing body and deploy its treasury so that ANT token holders could redeem their tokens for ether, returning about $155 million in digital assets. Critics said that the Association had shut down the ANT token without consulting the DAO.⁠[5]

Patagon Management was an investor in Aragon and a member of the Aragon DAO, a community of investors pushing for control of the project’s treasury. He said that day that the plan had a “major issue”: in his view “A minimum of 35% of ANT [has been] inactive for a year or more,” those tokens were unlikely to be redeemed, and the Association could therefore claim well over $50 million after the redemption period. He proposed that the Association receive a guaranteed amount out of the excess, “say $20 million,” with the rest split 50/50 between the team and token holders. DL News writes that several investors do not accept the current sharing formula. He also said that some investors might sue the Association for breach of contract and damages, because ANT holders had agreed the previous year to transfer the treasury to the DAO and the transfer never happened.⁠[3]

In May 2023, Aragon’s Twitter account said that its DAO was under attack by the “RFV Raiders” and Arca, which it said were buying ANT tokens to pass proposals. In November 2023 a DAO proposal sought to pursue the responsible members of the Aragon Association so that investors’ money would not go to the Aragon team’s new company, speculating that the Association could keep $50 million. The first vote, to approve the lawsuit, passed unanimously with 1.6 million governance tokens in favor; the second, to fund it, passed with 1.6 million tokens in favor and 1 million against, and $300,000 in USDC was then paid to Patagon’s wallet. Under the terms, other funders would get their money back with 10% annual interest and share a 5% cut of the funds returned to token holders if the case is won, and receive nothing if it is lost; the oversight committee includes a representative of Arca, DCF God, and the pseudonymous members Wismerhill, Tedward, CM, Triangular and Yakitori.⁠[2]

Under the proposal, Patagon would lead the lawsuit and the negotiations with the Aragon team, could keep the legal process confidential and decide the legal strategy, while its case-related financial transactions would appear in public reports and the funds had to be held in a wallet and bank account separate from its business accounts. Casares said that the Aragon Association would receive about 70% of the treasury plus $20 million already set aside, roughly $143 million in all, while investors would get about $50 million; he also said that the team had accelerated its own vesting of Aragon tokens that should have belonged to the DAO, further diluting investors, calling this “clearly absurd.” He considers the Association’s actions illegal and hopes to prove it in court: “We believe this will be an example case that such blatantly malicious activity is illegal.”⁠[5]

In a response added to the Cointelegraph article on November 30, the Aragon Association called his figures “inaccurate” and “speculative.” The Block writes that the Aragon Association said many token holders had redeemed before the vote, so the vote was not representative, that it was “disappointed but not surprised,” and that the vote may be challenged in a Swiss court by those who voted against; the Aragon core team said it is not part of the Aragon Association and had no decision-making power over the Association’s move to dissolve. Patagon said on X: “The Aragon team have no basis to block this, any excuses they use are hollow.”⁠[5][2]

CoinDesk wrote on February 8, 2024, that he had pivoted from activist investing to building a company, Stream Protocol, and that his background did not suggest a startup founder. He called Stream a “decentralized market maker” that generates yield on user deposits without directional exposure, and planned eventually to turn it into a decentralized perpetual swaps exchange.⁠[6]

Stream’s design draws on RFV (risk-free value) trading, which targets tokens priced below their book value; the article notes that “risk free” is a misnomer, since the strategy depends on the discount closing. He said he had found success by targeting failed projects. As he described it, the strategy takes a short position on a perpetuals DEX with 2x–3x leverage and hedges it with a matching long position on AaveAaveAave is a decentralized, non-custodial lending protocol deployed on Ethereum and several other public blockchains, where users can deposit crypto assets into liquidity pools to earn interest or borrow on an overcollateralized basis. The protocol is governed by the Aave DAO, made up of AAVE token holders.Open the full entry funded by borrowing, the hedging cost being lower than the funding received, which produces passive returns.⁠[6]

He said the planned exchange would be “way more capital efficient” than GMX and Hyperliquid, and that much of their growth is contingent on “unsustainable” incentive systems such as points programs. He said he does not want to be known as the crypto world’s Carl IcahnCarl IcahnCarl Icahn is an American investor known for activist investing and hostile takeovers; in the 1980s his battles for control of companies such as TWA earned him a reputation as a “corporate raider.” He controls the diversified holding company Icahn Enterprises, his main investment vehicle, and has led shareholder campaigns at public companies including Apple, Herbalife, Xerox and Illumina.Open the full entry, that is, as someone who buys tokens to gain power over other projects.⁠[6]

On March 20, 2024, the Thiel Foundation announced its 2024 class of 20 Thiel Fellows; he was selected for the Thiel Fellowship with Stream. The announcement states that the Thiel Fellowship, established in 2011, provides each recipient with $100,000 and access to a network of tech founders, investors, scientists and former fellows, and that fellows commit to focusing full-time on their projects, companies or ideas. His entry in the list reads that “Stream seamlessly integrates the benefits of centralized exchanges with the decentralized nature of DeFi,” and says that it enhances liquidity and security while eliminating custodial risks.⁠[7]

CoinDesk wrote on April 10, 2024, that Stream Trading, the company behind Stream Finance, had raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Polychain CapitalPolychain CapitalPolychain Capital is a digital asset investment firm founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee and headquartered in San Francisco. Its business covers actively managed blockchain asset portfolios and investments in related companies, with public investments spanning base networks, cryptography, on-chain finance, payments, data and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry and a handful of angel investors; he said the round valued the company at $20 million. He is the founder and Solal Afota the co-founder; the two built the team quickly to take advantage of that year’s crypto bull market, and Emanuel Adamiak worked as systems engineer. Stream Finance was one of the newest crypto derivatives platforms on the EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry blockchain, giving depositors exposure to high-yield rate arbitrage trades for a fee of 10% or more; it had just emerged from beta testing with $5 million in total value locked, which he said was already enough to nearly turn Stream profitable.⁠[8]

Stream planned to become a decentralized perpetuals exchange competing with dYdX and other “legacy” DeFi derivatives names; the article compares it with dYdX and Vertex, which had attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits. He argued that most protocols focus too much on cutting fees and too little on improving funding rates: “We’re focusing more on the funding rate side than the swap fees side.” Emanuel Adamiak said that Stream was building with the restaking protocol Eigenlayer in mind, explaining that Eigenlayer slashing gives them economic security with a low node count and higher throughput.⁠[8]

A case-document listing by OffshoreAlert dated October 31, 2024, shows a complaint and an application for a temporary restraining order filed by Patagon Management LLC, of DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Aragon Association, the Aragon Shield Foundation, Aragon X AG (all three of Switzerland) and Luis Cuende; the listing’s title summarizes the complaint as “$25M Crypto Self-Dealing.”⁠[9]

DL News writes that Stream lasted about nine months and that its co-founders shut it down in November 2024, giving slowing growth and “operational challenges” as the reasons.⁠[10]

DL News writes that Caleb McMeans offered to buy the Stream protocol and brand and took control of the protocol and the Stream brand in January 2025. Under the agreement signed in January he would have complete control of Stream, including its trading strategies, report yield to users and handle withdrawal requests, route 35% of collected fees to Stream Trading Corp., and maintain full liability in the event of a theft.⁠[10]

In early November 2025, Stream said that an “external fund manager” had lost about $93 million, roughly 17% of the assets entrusted; on November 4, Stream’s X account said it would open an investigation. Trevee, a yield protocol, estimated that Stream had borrowed $283 million to mint xUSD, a synthetic dollar, and itself lost $14 million; Chaos Labs said that Compound, Euler and Morpho had various levels of exposure to Stream.⁠[10]

DL News wrote on December 11, 2025, that Stream’s co-founders, suing as Stream Trading Corp., had filed a lawsuit on the Monday of that week in federal court in San Francisco; the co-founders go unnamed in the lawsuit. The suit is directed at Ryan DeMattia, a Georgia resident, and Caleb McMeans, a FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry resident.⁠[10]

The complaint alleges, “upon information and belief,” that DeMattia faced a margin call on a personal loan on October 10, 2025, was liquidated, and then used Stream assets he could access to cover the loss, accusing him of using the $93 million to cover his losses after defaulting on a personal loan. The suit also alleges that McMeans failed to honour an agreement he had signed; it says that when the co-founders sought transparency in September, McMeans gave “delays and excuses” and later admitted allowing DeMattia to invest more than $90 million off-chain. It further says that McMeans moved $2.1 million in Stream assets to a personal wallet and routed them through Railgun, a privacy protocol, before returning the crypto; the co-founders then moved the remaining assets to a multisig wallet, and the suit says he now uses joint control of those assets to avoid responsibility, refusing to act unless Stream Trading Corp. releases him from all liability. Stream Trading Corp. accuses McMeans of breach of contract, seeks damages of at least $75,000, and asks the court to declare its agreement with McMeans “valid, binding and enforceable.”⁠[10]

DL News writes that the Argentinian crypto investor Diogenes Casares has said on social media that he built the protocol, as well as Klyra, a platform for trading across multiple crypto exchanges simultaneously; he did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and McMeans and DeMattia could not immediately be reached for comment.⁠[10]

As of November 2026, the Patagon Markets team page lists him as CEO, describing him as a crypto investor, entrepreneur and Thiel Fellow, and states that his first venture, Patagon Management, laid the groundwork for Patagon Markets and the wider Patagon Digital Group, which in addition to Patagon Markets has proprietary trading and commodities arms. The page lists Sebastien Bigar-Vann as CIO and states that he met Casares during their early ventures and helped scale their first fund.⁠[11]

The Patagon Markets homepage states that the company gives accredited investors exposure to private growth equity through SPVs (special purpose vehicles), with a minimum ticket of $200,000, and plans digital banking, lending against private stock and stablecoin-powered, VisaVisaVisa Inc. is one of the world’s leaders in digital payments, with roots going back to 1958, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.Open the full entry-enabled credit cards; the companies featured on the homepage include Cohere, xAI, KrakenKrakenKraken is a digital-asset trading platform founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and Thanh Luu and launched for trading in 2013. As Payward’s flagship brand, it has expanded into spot and derivatives trading, equities, tokenized assets, custody and payments through jurisdiction-specific entities.Open the full entry, CircleCircleCircle is a financial technology company founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville. It issues the dollar stablecoin USDC and euro stablecoin EURC and provides cross-chain transfers, a payments network and blockchain infrastructure. It listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025 under the ticker CRCL.Open the full entry and AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, and the site states that Patagon is not a registered broker-dealer and offers interests in SPVs rather than securities directly.⁠[12]

CoinDesk wrote in February 2024 that over the previous year or two he had run Patagon Management, one of the only crypto hedge funds focused on activist DAO investing, and that he had made millions by pressing underperforming projects to return money to investors, most recently the governance project Aragon. CointelegraphCointelegraphCointelegraph is a digital news outlet covering blockchain, digital assets, artificial intelligence, and fintech, known for its cartoon-style news illustrations. It also runs businesses including Cointelegraph Magazine, research, an accelerator, and events.Open the full entry describes Patagon Management as a Delaware-based company owned by him; The Block writes that Patagon Management LLC is owned by him and describes itself on X as an investment company; DL News calls it a proprietary trading company and Perkins Coie a proprietary crypto trading firm. The Patagon Markets team page calls Patagon Management his first venture, an activist investing company that helped return more than $1 billion in assets to DAO investors.⁠[6][5][2][3][4][11]

Of the name “RFV Raiders” used by Aragon, he said: “I take issue with the name RFV Raiders because it makes it seem we are robbing candy from babies,” and “In reality we are activist investors, protecting and fighting for the financial rights of stakeholders.” In a Medium post he wrote, “While not frequently mentioned, the RFV community has broken down many DAOs,” naming Invictus DAO, Fei Protocol, Rome DAO and Temple DAO, and said that the group had partially influenced Redacted Cartel, Time Wonderland and Olympus. Aragon strongly implied that Avraham Eisenberg belonged to the group; Casares said that Eisenberg was known in the activist community but was not part of the group.⁠[2]

He is the son of Wences CasaresWences CasaresWences Casares is an Argentine entrepreneur and investor and the founder of the bitcoin bank Xapo Bank; before it he founded Argentina’s first internet service provider, the online brokerage Patagon, the Brazilian retail bank Banco Lemon, the mobile payments company Bling Nation and the digital wallet Lemon, and he served on PayPal’s board from 2016 to 2020.Open the full entry, founder of the crypto bank Xapo. In February 2024, CoinDesk described him as a New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private university in New York City, founded in 1831, and one of the largest private universities in the United States.Open the full entry student.⁠[6]

The Thiel Foundation’s list of 2024 fellows gives his hometown as Woodside, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry.⁠[7]

Patagon Markets: Official website: https://patagonmarkets.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

X: Public account: https://x.com/diogenes (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diogenes-c-aa3381130/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]