Who is Richard Heart?
| Item | Fact | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Legal name | Richard J. Schueler; Finnish and Turkish reports give the middle name James | Court record (tier 1) |
| Public name | Richard Heart | Court record (tier 1) |
| Born | 9 October 1979; place of birth often given as Pittsburgh, not confirmed by a primary source | Finnish police listing (tier 1) |
| Citizenship | United States; living in Finland at the time of the SEC case | Court record (tier 1) |
| Founded | HEX, PulseChain, PulseX | Court record, contract data (tier 1) |
| Accounts linked from a live official site | X @RichardHeartWin, YouTube @RichardHeart — listed on pulsex.com/links, checked 17 Oct 2026 |
pulsex.com (tier 2) |
| Accounts linked only from his own site’s 2024 archive | Instagram RichardHeartOfficial, Telegram channel scivive (SciVive self-help) |
richardheart.com archive (tier 2) |
His own domain, richardheart.com, did not resolve on 17 October 2026. The Instagram and Telegram accounts in the second row are linked only from the archived 2024 copy of that site, not from any live official site, so they are not on the official links list; treat any other handle as unverified. Check every account against that list before trusting it.
What did he found, and when?
| Project | What it is | Start | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| HEX | Token on Ethereum with time-locked staking | Day 0 = 3 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC (contract constant LAUNCH_TIME); contract deployed 01:50 UTC the same day |
Contract code (tier 1) |
| PulseChain | A fork of Ethereum with its own chain ID, 369 | Ethereum’s state copied up to block 17,232,999; block 17,233,000 is PulseChain’s first own block (10 May 2023); first block by the system coinbase 11 May 2023; client release “PulseChain Mainnet Launch!” 13 May 2023 | Client code, chain data and releases (tier 1) |
| PulseX | Uniswap-v2-style exchange on PulseChain | v1 factory deployed 11 May 2023; v2 factory 1 June 2023 | Explorer data (tier 1) |
The common “launched 2 December 2019” for HEX is the U.S. evening of the same moment. For PulseChain, the first own block is dated 10 May 2023 (22:52 UTC), regular block production began on 11 May and the public launch is dated 13 May 2023; each date is correct for what it describes.
What did he do before HEX?
By his own account in a 2021 podcast, he grew up poor, retired early and spent about five years living in hotels while travelling (Zuby #170, 1:09). He says he found Bitcoin through Reddit, first dismissed it, then GPU-mined full 50 BTC blocks in the first quarter of 2011, bought near the 2011 top of about $30 and held through the fall to about $2 (1:15, 6:24). These are his statements; no independent record of his 2011 mining exists.
In the Bitcoin years he was interviewed on CNBC Africa’s Crypto Trader (2019) and spoke at the AIBC Summit in Malta (November 2019); his own site also lists two episodes of RT’s Keiser Report from 2018. His site cites two price calls of his own: Bitcoin at $20,000 when it traded near $5,000 (stream uploaded 2017-10-12, 29:05) and $60,000 (Malta 2019, 9:38). They are linked here as his claims, not as a verified track record. A documentary about him, The Highest of Stakes, opened in U.S. cinemas on 4 August 2023.
What does he talk about, and what is he accused of?
- Self-custody. “Not your keys, not your coins” recurs in his interviews; he says HEX was built so stakers keep their own keys. See anti-scam work.
- Scams. He describes challenging Craig Wright’s claim to be Satoshi on stage, and calls paid crypto marketing a “scam industrial complex”.
- Giving. PulseChain’s sacrifice let participants send funds to SENS Research Foundation, a longevity-research non-profit; he also gives away self-help books under the SciVive name. See philanthropy.
- Accusations. In 2023 the SEC alleged unregistered sales of HEX, PLS and PLSX and the misuse of $12.1 M of sacrifice funds; the case was dismissed without a ruling on either point. Finnish police suspect him of aggravated tax fraud. The technical accusations most often made against the projects are checked against the code in Myths vs. Facts.
Where do his legal cases stand?
| Case | Status on 17 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| United States — SEC (civil) | Closed. Dismissed on 28 Feb 2025 for lack of personal jurisdiction and on extraterritorial grounds; judgment for the defendants on 6 May 2025. No ruling on whether the tokens are securities. |
| Finland — criminal investigation | Suspect in an aggravated tax-fraud investigation; police also listed a 2021 assault suspicion whose current status is open. Remanded in absentia in 2024. No charges, trial or verdict. |
| Turkey — Istanbul | Detained on 14 Oct 2026 on the Finnish Red Notice, confirmed by the Minister of Justice on 17 Oct. Any later custody decision, charges or extradition request not public. |
| ProveX | Claims by on-chain analysts about mixer funds; no authority has made such a claim. |
Every step, with the accusation, the counter-argument and the source, is on the legal timeline. How the community reads it is on a separate page, labelled as a view.
Is he still posting?
His YouTube channel’s last upload is from 25 December 2025; there are no uploads in 2026, which predates the detention and says nothing about it. X and Telegram activity could not be checked without logging in, so this page makes no claim about them.