Rodney Burton, the self-styled crypto influencer who went by “Bitcoin Rodney,” pleaded guilty on June 15, 2026, to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The charge stems from his role promoting HyperFund, a platform that allegedly siphoned approximately $1.89 billion from investors through promises of passive returns generated by crypto mining operations that never existed.
Burton entered his plea in US District Court in Maryland. His sentencing is scheduled for July 23, 2026.
Inside the HyperFund scheme
HyperFund, which also operated under the names HyperVerse, HyperTech, and HyperCapital, promised investors daily passive returns of 0.5% to 1%. These returns were supposedly backed by large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations that didn’t exist.
The scheme ran from June 2020 through late 2022, fueled by multi-level marketing tactics that incentivized existing investors to recruit new ones. It stopped working in July 2021, when HyperFund began blocking investor withdrawals.
