In late 2016, a tech start-up debuted in New York, one that would eventually come to be known as Blockchain Terminal. It was founded by a man who called himself Shaun MacDonald, a dark-bearded Torontonian who wore thick-framed glasses and had an awkward, self-effacing air, as well as a faint, indiscernible accent that most people attributed to his Irish roots. Shaun’s background was in marketing and product design, but at investor meetings he came alive, pitching with a zeal that financiers found compelling. At the time, the opaque world of cryptocurrency had unleashed a multibillion-dollar scourge of securities fraud. Trading across crypto platforms in real time, meanwhile, was so complicated that even the quants couldn’t keep up. Blockchain Terminal offered a solution to both: a product that promised to simplify the dizzying complexity of digital currency trading and eradicate much of the fraud from the world of crypto finance.