According to Forbes, Alt5 Sigma, a crypto firm that routed over an estimated $500 million to an entity affiliated with Donald Trump, filed a notice with the SEC on November 29, 2024 (Black Friday). In that filing, the company stated its independent accountant, Hudgens CPA, PLLC, resigned “effective immediately” on November 21 due to the retirement of its sole partner. However, William Hudgens himself told Forbes he informed the company before June 30 he was stepping down after its second-quarter report, filed August 12, because his firm was exiting the public company audit business, not due to retirement. Alt5 Sigma, which accumulated $1.5 billion of World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency in August, is already late on its third-quarter report, blaming the “timeliness and responsiveness” of its accountant in a November 12 filing. When asked last week who its accountant was at that time, an Alt5 Sigma spokesperson said, “We have no comment at this time.”
Timing and Compliance Questions
Here’s the thing: the rules here are pretty clear. Public companies have to notify the SEC within four business days when their accountant resigns. The accountant also has to review any interim financials in a quarterly report. So, if Hudgens said he was leaving back in June, and the Q2 report was done in August, what exactly was the relationship status by the time of that delayed Q3 filing in November? The company’s “no comment” isn’t exactly reassuring. It creates a messy timeline that the SEC will probably want to untangle. Was the firm operating without a properly engaged independent accountant during a critical reporting period? It sure seems like it.
The Bigger Picture of Crypto Deals
This isn’t just about filing deadlines. This is about a company that was sitting on $1.5 billion in a specific cryptocurrency as part of what Forbes describes as a “circular deal” funnelling half a billion to a Trump-affiliated entity. When you’re moving that kind of money, especially in the often-opaque crypto world, having clean, timely, and transparent audits is non-negotiable for investor trust. The discrepancies in the accountant story—retirement versus exiting the business—might seem like a small detail, but in the regulatory world, it’s a red flag. It calls into question the entire control environment. If the basic story around who’s watching the books is shaky, how solid can the books themselves be?
A Pattern of Delay and Opacity
Look, the sequence is telling. Late quarterly report. Conflicting reasons for a key partner’s departure. A “no comment” on a basic operational fact. For a business in a sector already under intense regulatory scrutiny, this is not the playbook you follow. It’s the kind of pattern that attracts more than just a routine inquiry. Whether this is incompetence, obfuscation, or something else, the outcome is the same: a severe erosion of credibility. And in the world of public markets, even crypto-adjacent ones, credibility is the only currency that truly matters in the long run. Without reliable financial reporting, the whole enterprise is built on sand.
