A big and different company
The Austrian COINTED claims to be Europe’s largest Crypto-ATM operator and the world’s largest Ether mining farm owner. Impressive, isn’t it?
COINTED has always been a somewhat “different” company in the best sense of the word. The Hong Kong-based company, with its operational headquarters in Kufstein, Austria, was founded by Christopher RIEDER and Wolfgang THALER. Later, Charli AHO and Daniil ORLOV joined the team.
Christopher RIEDER is one of the suspects in the OPTIOMENT Crypto-Crime which is currently investigated by Austrian authorities (read our reports here). A few weeks ago the Austrian police raided COINTED offices and seized a number of documents and papers. Much too late, said a lawyer representing some investors.
Christopher RIEDER and OPTIOMENT
The Austrian crypto-entrepreneur RIEDER is said to have played a key role in OPTIOMENT crypto-crime as well as his COINTED. The three so-called “3 Optioment Musketeers” – the most important distributors of the OPTIOMENT system – also claim that RIEDER managed the payments of the OPTIOMENT investors and that at least for them they he was the scheme’s mastermind. Supposedly, there are two more backers whose identity is unknown and their existence is doubted at all by some investors. From the crime file at the public prosecutor’s office, you learn that only RIEDER has communicated with the real or fictitious people in the background. In this respect, the theory that RIEDER created the backers could be quite right. That will probably turn out in the course of the investigation.
As a matter of fact, COINTED Crypto ATMs were deployed to exchange the FIAT funds of the OPTIOMENT investors into Bitcoins (BTC) and then transfer them to OPTIOMENT wallets. COINTED acted as payment services provider for the OPTIOMENT scheme and thus was deeply involved. In total, around 12,500 bitcoins (BTCs) have allegedly been deposited by investors into OPTIOMENT and a large part of them vanished the scheme’s collapse.
RIEDER allegedly left the COINTED in the course of the OPTIOMENT scandal. Allegedly because a report by the Austrian TV station ORF revealed on April 27, 2018, that RIEDER still appears in the commercial register in Hong Kong as a 25% shareholder. An administrative mistake said COINTED spokesman Albert SPERL. Clearly, RIEDER’s and COINTED’s involvement in OPTIOMENT have done them definitely no good.
Contrary to some reports, Christopher RIEDER is currently not on the run, but only on a very long business trip somewhere far away from Austria.
The COINTED ICO, CTD tokens, and funds requirements
It also did not help that the ICO conducted by COINTED was a terrible flop. Instead of the targeted EUR 100 million just over EUR 3.5 million or 4,095 ETH have come been raised (see ICO page) and a significant part of this is said to have come from the COINTED people themselves. COINTED said that it needed the EUR 100 million to roll out their business as planned.
The ICO target was to sell 650 million CTD tokens to raise the EUR 100 million. They just sold some 6 million CTD token representing 1% of the target number. Consequently, there is no working token economy around COINTED and neither the funds to establish one. Now they are faced with a EUR 96.5 million gap and a few hundred CTD tokenholder caught in a trap. Does this sound like a mess? It is!
Consequently, the company does not have enough money for the planned expansion. This is a terrible situation, as COINTED has already invested huge sums into the international expansion. They established the SWISS CRYPTO GROUP in Zug, Switzerland (of course, you would say, you have to be in Crypto Valley). It’s the supposedly “world’s largest ether mining farm”. Moreover, they allegedly built huge ether mining facilities in Sweden and branches in other countries. COINTED went global already before the ICO and hoped to have the money to fund this global operation with the ICO funds. Unfortunately, the plan didn’t work.
COINTED also needs the funds to run the many crypto-ATMs that have been set up. COINTED claims to be Europe’s largest Crypto-ATM operator. Additionally, they need to finance the development of a powerful cryptographic payment solution including a debit card that does not exist until today. In short, big projects that devour huge amounts of money, money that is perhaps not available.
Where is the world’s largest Ether Mining farm?
Strangely enough, customers cannot purchase any mining offers from COINTED either on their website or through the SWISS CRYPTO MINING GROUP website. The COINTED website itself informs that the green mining offer will be coming soon, in the first quarter of 2018. Wait a minute, Q1 2018 is history already, right?
One wonders how a company has become (or wants to become) the largest ether mining company in the world without directing mining offers to potential buyers.
Yesterday, FinTelegram was informed by a person close to COINTED that allegedly most of the mining servers were taken offline a few weeks ago, so they do not even mine anymore? The devices would have been “secured”, it says to one of the shareholders. Sounds cryptic, right?
The COINTED crypto-burn rate
If you analyze the ICO Wallet of the COINTED, then you see that over the last few weeks there have been massive corrections and that in March to over USD 4 million balance has now shrunk to just under USD 100,000 or about 170 ETH, i.e. they already burned 95% of their ISCO funds. In the last 14 days alone, about 600 ETH have been transferred from the Wallet. Apparently, they have been transferred to some mining wallets and from there to Kraken. Obviously, a lot of money is being burnt for the maintenance of the COINTED and the payouts of the mining investors.
If the information provided to FinTelegram yesterday is correct then COINTED is no longer doing “big scale” crypto-mining. Consequently, payouts to mining investors would have to come from other sources, such as the meager proceeds of the ICO. When asked about the liquidity situation of COINTED, a shareholder answered with rather gloomy outlooks. Ouch!
If the latest information reflects the company’s reality correctly, then its mining investors have to prepare for an early end of payouts and customers of COINTED may be faced with an abrupt halt of the operation. We know from a reliable source that many mining investors were introduced by the Austrian Crypto-Scheme WACHSENDE WERTE into the people who were then still known as Crypto Unity OG.
The open questions
We will continue to research and report. We are currently intensively examining 3 questions:
- What role did Crypto Unity OG play in COINTED?
- What role did GROWING VALUES play in Crypto Unity OG and COINTED?
- What does the financial situation of COINTED actually look like?
Stay tuned, read FinTelegram and make correct investment decisions.
