BLOGGER MAY HAVE A PAST

A 30-year-old New Yorker who was barred from the securities industry last year may be behind an increasingly popular financial blog known as Zerohedge.com, which is catching flack for its obsession with anonymity.

Daniel Ivandjiiski, whose most recently listed address is on the Upper East Side, was barred last September by the financial industry's self regulatory authority, FINRA, for insider trading.

Ivandjiiski is also suspected of being one of the founders of controversial financial blog Zerohedge.com, sources tell The Post.

Ivandjiiski didn't return requests for comment, but he recently told industry publication Hedge Fund Alert that while he writes for Zerohedge, he's not a founder.

"He denied that he was a founder. He said he was just a contributor," Hedge Fund Alert Managing Editor Howard Kapiloff told The Post.

Ivandjiiski told Kapiloff that he's one of several writers who contributes to the site under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden," the charismatic, psychopathic alter-ego of the main character in the book and movie "Fight Club."

Several bloggers on the site appear to have been inspired by the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk, which was later adapted into movie starring Brad Pitt.

A man who answered the phone at Zerohedge declined to give his name or to comment. He offered vague statements like, "Zerohedge is not one person," and, "For us, its not about the messenger, its about the message."

A manifesto on the Web site suggests Zerohedge contributors are seeking to avoid the backlash their comments could unleash, saying anonymity protects "unpopular individuals from retaliation -- and their ideas from suppression -- at the hand of an intolerant society."

But its anonymity has also been a bit of a lightening rod, causing one commentator on CNBC to recently blast Zerohedge as residing in the "dark and cowardly corners of the blogosphere."

Still, the site has proven unusually popular since its launch in January, according to data from Web traffic data provider Alexa.com.

Alexa shows Zerohedge's Web traffic beating traffic from other, more established financial blog sites like Footnoted.org and Marketfolly.com and coming close to traffic from some of the most popular financial Web sites like Dealbreaker.com and Minyanville.com.

(from NY Post, September 2, 2009)