When Christen Ager-Hanssen waddled up to Craig Wright at Ascot in June 2022, Wright was immediately intrigued by him. Ager-Hanssen, being the predatory individual he is, claims to have “done his research” and knew Wright would be in attendance. He approached him with a tailor made pitch that would change both of their lives.
Ager-Hanssen made two propositions to Wright. One was boasting he had unnamed middle-eastern investors lined up and ready to ‘invest’ a billion dollars into the right blockchain company, which would make the shareholders multi-millionaires overnight. The second was volunteering his ‘dark arts‘ to help Wright in his legal battles.
A little over a year later, when Ager-Hanssen had failed on all counts and realised the game was up, he attempted what he always does: a hostile takeover and a kompromat campaign against his former colleagues, creating a smokescreen for his failure.
Several individuals reached out to this website to share their information. After checking out their claims and the documentation they provided, we believe the whole saga is still a bit hazy, but we have a more complete picture. For the first time, we can delve into Christen Ager-Hanssen’s disastrous year at nChain.
Firstly, it’s essential to understand that Ager-Hanssen is a confidence trickster. As one of his former staff wrote: “He has a Trumpian fondness for fibbing, and as someone who sees most other people as mindless “jellyfish,” who drift wherever emotional currents take them, he has long practised the fine art of manipulating journalists looking for a good story, movers and shakers seeking greater glory, and investors in need of a corporate knight in shining armour. As a result, if you need to make a GoT comparison, Ager-Hanssen isn’t anything like the heroic Jon Snow—he is the Night King, the destructive leader of brain-dead zombies.”
Contrary to the fake news he spreads publicly, Ager-Hanssen has never been one of Norway’s richest men. His approach to nChain came after he failed to infiltrate Algorand, where he promised to increase users by forcing start-ups to use their technology in return for a cash injection.
Ager-Hanssen has used this tactic for years. Swedish investigative journalists Ingun Stray Spetalen and Gøran Skaalmo claimed in a 2011 investigation that Cognition (Ager-Hanssen’s former company before Addreax) offered start-ups an upfront lump sum in return for a large stake in the company.
Ager-Hanssen then uses this to inflate the valuation of his own companies artificially—for example, if a company sells 10% of its shares for £1 each, the whole company would be estimated to be valued at £100. If each share was bought for £10 each, the company would be valued at £1,000, etc.
Using this fake inflated valuation, Ager-Hanssen allegedly convinced HSBC Cognition’s portfolio was worth £1 billion (or NOK 20 billion). According to Swedish journalists, nobody has been able to retrieve a copy of this alleged valuation, and Ager-Hanssen has refused to send copies to journalists who have enquired (similarly with his dossiers on Kyle Roche and Craig Wright).
The nChain coup has echoes of his previous failure, as summed up by one of his former staffers; “Using his ownership stake in Metro to bill himself as an industry visionary, he insisted the company could easily be saved by someone with his track record and bold thinking, while pushing a vague plan to save British journalism by trading promotional opportunities to entrepreneurs in return for equity stakes in their ventures.”
According to sources, Ager-Hanssen’s offer was initially rebuffed. They remained unimpressed with his offer despite Wright’s insistence on NChain top brass meeting him. That all changed, of course, when the Kyle Roche video dropped.
At the time, Wright was in litigation with just about everyone: developers, exchanges, and space cats. Wright invited Ager-Hanssen to meet NChain’s top brass at a garden party hosted by one of the company’s shareholders, Calvin Ayre.
Predatory Ager-Hanssen told Norwegian media: “I wanted to get to know the guy better, and I told my son he had to get Ayre drunk”. The evening moved to a nightclub and ended with Ayre losing his mobile phone. Ager-Hanssen gloated in Norwegian media that he was happy that Ayre thought he had stolen it.
Although Ager-Hanssen publicly denied being behind the sting, privately, he promised to repeat his Kyle Roche sting on COPA members and others involved in Wright’s legal disputes. Ager-Hanssen was made CEO of nChain and given free rein to press ahead with his plans.
Ager-Hanssen’s first step was to fire people and bring in his own cronies. He brought in Custos lawyer David Brookes and business partner Lars Jacob Bo from scam marketing company Addreax (although publicly, they traded on his Bain credentials, as he is head of Financial Services at Bain & Co Norway).
He also brought in his son, Casper, even though nobody ever recalled seeing him at the office. Even Casper’s tennis coach was brought in, as the Ager-Hanssens’ gorged on nCHain hospitality.
Insiders note how the atmosphere changed at nChain HQ after the ‘Custos Boys’ took over. Some note many would work from home on days they knew the gang would be in. Staff would avoid rooms and lifts if Ager-Hanssen was seen in them as he had a fondness for asking people what they did, and if he didn’t see any value [or even understood their work, which was most occasions] he would fire them on the spot.
According to sources, Ager-Hanssen was particularly cruel to junior staff, including screaming at individuals and making them stand up in meetings and state “I’m an idiot” ten times if they didn’t want to be fired.[He has a history of this, by the way.] Back when he was bankrupt (the second time) and his house was seized, Ager-Hanssen was particularly difficult and was incredibly rude to those who came to view the property. Eventually, it went to auction, where Ager-Hanssen tried to bid for his own house back, losing out to a younger woman who clearly had more money than he did.
Ager-Hanssen’s first task was to gain Wright’s trust by helping him with his legal pickle in the US. Some suspect he used his dark arts people from Blackcube, although there is no documentation to substantiate it.
Ager-Hanssen then became more involved in the day-to-day running of nChain, instructing his team to go out and find ‘deals’ for nChain that would ultimately benefit his own company, Addreax. He tried to set up a venture capital company within nChain, which our sources claim he eventually wanted to merge with his own, Custos Group, having nChain foot the bill for their overheads. [Note: Ager-Hanssen began tweeting about the ‘venture division’ before it was even established.]
Unfortunately, none of these deals brought in any money, or real value to nChain’s portfolio. Take the TradeWindow deal for example. Trade Window was a struggling NewZealand company in which nChain was to invest $2.4 million upfront (in return for a stake a la Christen) and provide millions of pounds worth of services in return for… well, that was precisely the question.
According to credible sources close to the matter, their version of events is that Matthews had become increasingly frustrated with Ager-Hanssen, who had promised an influx of foreign investors into nChain, which had yet to materialise.
As they saw it, Ager-Hanssen was up to something. The fact he was bringing in all of his Custos and Addreax Group cronies whilst haemorrhaging nChain money into questionable startups did not go unnoticed.
Ager-Hanssen had previously tried the same thing at Johnston Press, as was described in a 2019 article: “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.”
The nChain top brass tried to rein him in, but he kept stringing them along, promising the ‘big investment’ was imminent.
In the run-up to Ayre becoming the controlling shareholder in nChain, his team started auditing Ager-Hanssen’s so-called “deals”, they were horrified to see the extent of the bill he had already run up, with nothing tangible to show for it and nChain was rapidly running out of cash.
Sources claim this friction behind the scenes led to Ayre falling out with Ager-Hanssen. According to Ager-Hanssen’s own ‘Fairway Brief’ report, he was disinvited from Ayre’s birthday party in May 2023:
It is most curious, then, that this is around the time Ager-Hanssen began plotting to remove Ayre and take over nChain.
He began de-stabilising Wright’s legal battles by removing Ontier (the law firm that had been working on the cases for years) and bringing in a law firm under his control. The Custos Group KC, Zafar Ali, steered the process despite being a criminal defense barrister with zero experience in complex commercial litigation, but with plenty of experience in defending terror suspects including the brother of the Manchester bomber of the Ariana Grande concert, who went on to receive a 55 year prison sentence.
On the 22nd September, a mock trial was held at an office in London which had been set up inside to look like a court, despite the practice being illegal in the UK. Ager-Hanssen had Zafar Ali KC pose as COPA’s council, with Wright being defended by former University Challenge winner Ted Loveday.
The mock trial was presided over by an unidentified individual, who acted as a judge, complete with robe and wig (which Ager-Hanssen modelled for photographs).
Wright was grilled on the evidence which was to be presented at trial by Ali, in order to determine how Wright would explain the allegations of forgery on the stand in the upcoming trial. The trial seemingly went terribly for Wright but went precisely according to plan for Ager-Hanssen. By destabilising Wright, he attempted to force a wedge between him, Ayre and Matthews. He also was successful in removing his funding, setting him up for Ager-Hanssen’s next moves.
The fake judge invited everybody back in two days for his judgement. Wright returned to the mock courtroom on Sunday in which the fake judge handed down his verdict that Wright was “a fraud”.
With Wright on the ropes, Ager Hanssen pounced. His play was to convince Wright he was the only person in the world who could save him in return for his equity in nChain, thus giving him a vital foot in the door for his next move…the takeover.
Ager-Hanssen still, at this stage, believed that Wright was the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin or part of the team which did and must have recreated lost documents, as he stated here in a Twitter space on 30th September 2023.
Things apparently moved quickly over the weekend, with Ager-Hanssen desperately trying to drive home the wedge between Wright, Ayre and Matthews. By the Monday, Wright had stepped away from nCHain. Ager-Hanssen desperately tried to meet Wright and his wife to secure the elusive equity he always attempts to secure in his shakedowns [see previous articles]. We understand the offer was rebuffed and instead, Wright fired Ager-Hanssen and his entire legal team.
With Wright sidelined, the only people standing in Ager-Hanssen’s way were Calvin Ayre and his Fairway team, who had been looking after his interests in nChain since he increased his shareholding and were honing in on the failed promises.
Ager-Hanssen’s play seems to have been to try and bounce Stefan Matthews into giving him a stake and control of the company. Ager-Hanssen had been poisoning Matthews against the Fairway auditors for months (at least as far as the recordings show). He subsequently claimed he suspected he was being recorded, so told Ager-Hanssen what he wanted to hear, but that’s a matter for him and his conscience.
Clearly, Ager-Hanssen thought he now had Matthews on his side. The top team was jam-packed with his cronies, and with Wright no longer in the picture, Ager-Hanssen was ready to launch his coup.
On the evening of the 26th September, Ager-Hanssen summoned the gang he had stuffed into nChain jobs to a meeting at the Custos offices in Mayfair. Present were the Custos legal team Zafar Ali KC and David Brookes. Also present was Lars Jacob Bo, who had been moonlighting as Ager-Hanssen’s ‘deputy CEO’ at nChain and other minions Ager-Hanssen had managed to coerce.
Ager-Hanssen presented them with his ‘Fairway Brief’ report and his master-plan to take ultimate control of nChain. The group partied into the early hours of Wednesday morning, thinking they had hatched the perfect plan.
According to Ager-Hanssen’s own puff piece in Norwegian media, the meeting ended at 2am, and the report was sent to the board 12 hours later (2pm), with Ager-Hanssen being fired 7 hours later (9pm). The only issue with Ager-Hanssen’s narrative, is he omitted the events that took place prior to 2pm on the Wednesday.
What actually happened was Ager-Hanssen rocked up to the nCHain offices on the 27th September with the Custos gang and a third-party security team. The team took out the obvious security cameras (although clearly forgot about others) and ordered the IT team to give his team access to the company’s server room. The senior IT staffer refused to do so without approval from Matthews.
Ager-Hanssen furiously stormed down to the server room, breaking in with his team and instructing his own IT crony and Addreax director Endri Gjata (whom he had made nChain chief marketing officer), to take control of the company data and IP. The team covered the cameras, so it remains to be seen if or what they may have taken or copied.
Shortly afterwards, Ager-Hanssen fled the scene, leaving a security team on site while he slunk off to start spinning his ‘whistleblower’ narrative. From the copy that was briefly online, it was obvious the Fairway Brief report was cobbled together with a mish-mash of styles, fonts and sizes. It is inconceivable he had been working on it secretly in a hotel for months, as he claims.
After speaking to staff on the ground who had witnessed the attempted coup, Matthews realised what Ager-Hanssen had done and dismissed him immediately.
Ager-Hanssen initially tried to claim he believed Wright was Satoshi and that he believed in the BSV technology, but his ‘whistleblowing’ on Ayre forced his hand. Still, this narrative quickly changed when he realised nobody in the BSV community was buying his act.
With nothing to gain from his current position, in a classic play from the Ager-Hanssen playbook, he pivoted to change tact into leaking information, trying to intimidate nChain and attract the attention of the anti-Wright crowd, who he had previously been attacking with his dark arts toolbox.
According to Stefan Matthews in court and a follow-up with various insiders, NChain were able to obtain an emergency order stopping Ager-Hanssen from disclosing nChain documents publicly while his allegations were investigated and the company attempted to determine what he had stolen.
Faced with mounting legal pressure, Ager-Hanssen went on the run, but only as far as his childhood bedroom at his mother’s house in Norway. He forgot to turn off the geolocation data when he went on his social media rampage.
When Stefan Matthews brought it up on the stand, Ager-Hanssen began sharing posts on Twitter to make it appear as if he was in London. Like everything he does, it was a very probable lie to avoid alerting his Norwegian enemies that he’s back home.
This is likely why his son, Casper, has recently set up a new company, Lucorp Limited, in order to move what limited assets they have ahead of formal bankruptcy.
While he’s working out how to keep the lights on in Custos, following the closure of the London office, he’ll have some explaining to do to his current investors, Harrods heir Omar Fayed and Mayed Al Qasimi, the son of exiled Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr Al Qasimi, to keep backing him.
Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Martin Wennberg was an investor of Ager-Hanssen. We now understand that Ager-Hanssen is a client of Wennberg’s and has worked on his divorce case with Zafar Ali KC.
Despite decades of failure, fraud, and bankruptcies. Ager-Hanssen is a come-back king and will actively be trying to leverage anything he can, to anyone he can. As we’ve seen in previous Ager-Hanssen dramas, overnight friends can become enemies, and back again the next day, as those private conversations suddenly become not-so-private.
Let this be a fair warning to all, nCHain, COPA, Mayed et al…
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