However, they had only been able to locate digital assets worth $610,000.
Dasset customer Marco Blum told the Herald this week that he had bought $40,000 worth of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum through the exchange, which also hosted his digital wallet.
He had received a payout of $2000 from the liquidators.
“I knew it was high risk. I wouldn’t have been happy, but I could have accepted it if the currencies had gone down. It stinks,” Blum said.
“But this feels like something’s wrong and the authorities are just walking away. I’m not going to go broke over this, but I’ve never been so angry in my life.”
Blum said after initial communication, the liquidators had ignored his queries, which he had been making every three months.
He was also exasperated that the Serious Fraud Office had dropped its investigation into Dasset on September 8.
Another Dasset customer, Leo D’Ambrosio, who works in the IT industry in Wellington, said he had $20,000 worth of cryptocurrency with the exchange.
“To ultimately receive around 5 cents on the dollar, that is a pretty devastating outcome,” he told the Herald.
“For me, the biggest disappointment isn’t just the financial loss. It’s going through this entire process and reaching the end with many of the same questions we had at the beginning.
“I wouldn’t pretend to know what the investigators found behind the scenes. But as one of the people affected, it’s difficult not to look back and wonder whether more could have been done earlier.”
False sense of security
In the weeks and months leading up to Dasset’s liquidation, D’Ambrosio said customers had complained they could not withdraw funds, nor reach management for an explanation.
Dasset was dropped from the Financial Service Providers Register in July 2023 for failing to respond to customer complaints since May of that year.
Blum said he had purposefully chosen a local crypto exchange. “I thought: ‘It’s a New Zealand company. I know where their offices are. If something happens I can talk to them’.”
But in fact, it was a false sense of security.
Although Dasset had promoted its Financial Service Providers Register membership on its homepage, and the register is hosted by the Government’s Companies Office site, there were no teeth behind the arrangement.
Cryptocurrency is not a regulated financial product in New Zealand, so the disputes service, the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme, had no legal mechanisms at its disposal to pursue Dasset or resolve customer complaints.
The body did send a series of emails to Macaskill asking him to urgently respond to complaints about locked accounts, but ultimately the only recourse was to drop the company from the register.
Blum did visit Dasset’s office but only a junior staffer was on deck. They could not answer his questions. The office was later abandoned altogether.
Missing CEO holds the key
In their second report, Ruscoe and Moore said, “The CEO has not responded to the liquidators since day three of the liquidation and is believed to be overseas.”
They added, “The CEO is understood to retain the key knowledge of how the overall exchange worked and also how/if customer records are stored.”
The Herald visited Macaskill’s home address – an apartment in Auckland’s CBD – the same week as the liquidation, only to be told by the building’s manager he had disappeared three months ago, with rent owing.
Unexplained withdrawals and trades
Ruscoe and Moore said that on top of the unexplained withdrawals, they had identified transactions on (unnamed) offshore virtual services that “allow derivative trading”.
Derivatives are a bet on the future value of an asset.
“These transactions, which are valued at millions of dollars, appear to be responsible for the large deficit in assets,” the liquidators said.
In February 2024, the liquidators referred the unexplained withdrawals and suspicious trades to the Financial Markets Authority, which in turn alerted the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
The SFO opened an investigation, which it closed last month.
The SFO said it would not comment on an open investigation.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it had managed to reach Macaskill, but said in a statement that it dropped the Dasset case because following investigation, it had determined “there is insufficient evidence to support charges of serious or complex fraud”.
The agency added, “Cryptocurrency remains a high-risk, unregulated investment. Anyone considering investing in cryptocurrency should familiarise themselves with the FMA’s advice.”
In their September 11, 2026 report, Ruscoe and Moore anticipated their next six-monthly report will be their last as they tie up the Dasset liquidation.
They say there are no security interests registered. They add, “There will be no funds available to make payment to preferential creditors.”
Preferential creditors include four employees who claimed a total $47,304 and Inland Revenue, owed $150,932 in GST and PAYE.
Macaskill is listed as an unsecured creditor. The chief executive and sole director (at the time of its collapse) was also Dasset’s single largest shareholder, owning a 40% stake. Auckland crypto firm Techemy (33%) was the other major investor.
By September this year, the liquidators – who could not immediately be reached for comment – had $550,000 in cash after expenses, which included $440,000 in liquidators’ fees, $264,000 in legal costs and $38,000 for IT, offset by $1.4m worth of cryptocurrency recovered from offshore exchanges.
The balance would be enough for a distribution “representing 5% of admitted claims”, which is now underway.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
