The German financial market supervisory authority BaFin has issued an investor warning against PLATINCOIN (www.platincoin.com). BaFin’s statement points out that PLATIN GENESIS DMMC, which is the company behind the website, is not an authorized institution according to §32 KWG (German Banking Act) and may therefore not offer its services. The Slovenian PLC GROUP AG DOO is also mentioned on the PlatinCoin website as an additional operator on the PlatinCoin website.
What is PLATINCOIN?
According to the information on the website and in the technical description, PlatinCoin offers the “Minting” of PlatinCoins (PLC) on the basis of its proprietary blockchain. This would mean working with Proof-of-Stake (POS) instead of the widely used Proof-of-Work (POW) as is currently the case with the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain. A separate PLC Secure Box, already patented, would also have been developed for “minting”.
One learns that PlatinCoin would have a worldwide community of 200,000 members, of which almost 40% would be located in the German-speaking markets Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In addition, the company would have 60 employees. That all sounds very impressive, doesn’t it? Well, websites and paper are well known to be patient.
PlatinCoin (PLC) has been listed as a cryptocurrency since 1 October 2018. According to CoinMarketCap, the PLC is traded on the BitForex, Exrates and YoBit offshore exchanges against US dollars, BTC and ETH. No market capitalisation is given for this.
Companies and people behind PLATINCOIN
OpenCorporates presents a PLC GROUP AG founded in 2016 with headquarters in Crypto Valley (Zug) in Switzerland and a PLC GROUP AG DOO founded in November 2018 in Slovenia. German citizen Alex REINHARDT is registered as a member of the Board of Directors of the Swiss AG. There are no records in OpenCorporates for a PLATIN GENESIS DMMC allegedly registered in Dubai. This is the company BaFin addressed in its warning. The board member of the Swiss PLC GROUP AG, Alex REINHARDT, is also provided as a team member on PlatinCoin’s Facebook page. This confirms that the beneficial owner of PlatinCoin is the Swiss PLC GROUP AG and its shareholders. In addition, this Alex REINHARDT also promotes a PlatinCoin aggressively through events and social media.
The domain www.platincoin.com is also registered in the name of Alex REINHARDT with a Berlin address. Why the Swiss company and Alex REINHARDT are then not listed on the website can only be assumed. In any case, Alex REINHARDT as a German citizen falls under German jurisdiction. According to Domainbigdata the domain www.platincoin.com is operated from Russia. Alex REINHARDT is apparently also the publisher of the messenger app ELVN, which wants to reward its members with CryptoCoins for activities.
PLATINCOIN and Money Laundering
At the end of July 2018, the German GERLACH Report reported on ongoing investigations into money laundering in connection with PLATINCOIN. Now the Gerlach report is not exactly the best source, but in connection with the warning against PLATINCOIN which was issued very early for BaFin standards (the MLM system PLATINCOIN has been available since spring 2017), this money laundering investigation could well be a reality. We have already reached out to the respective authorities for more information.
According to Alexa, Russia is also a focal point of this Crypto MLM system alongside the German-speaking markets. The high ranking of these Crypto MLM systems in the website rankings appalls us time and again. Africa with Nigeria seems to be a field of activity for PlatinCoin as well as for many other Crypto MLM systems. About 8% of the website hits come from this African country.
Preliminary Conclusion on PLATINCOIN
Apart from the BaFin’s warning about the lack of legitimacy of the offer, PlatinCoin appears to be a scam knitted according to the usual pattern with various companies, a lack of transparency and incomprehensible information. BaFin’s investor warning was only the last red flag to deter investors.
