According to current information, Envion AG is facing liquidation. The investors are supposed to get money back. However, they remain alienated. This is due to the business practices of Envion AG.
The news spy and the current Bitcoin share price
The promise sounded as promising as it was alarming: 161 percent return on deposits with the ICO of Envion AG. The news spy use case should also be convincing: mobile Bitcoin miners that use surplus green electricity. With the news spy scam of the so-called „mobile mining units“, Envion collected a total of 100 million US dollars by January 2018. At a Bitcoin exchange rate of almost 20,000 US dollars at the time, this was an attractive offer.
Envion: Good business model, no more than that. The problem was that there was neither business nor turnover. In short, the investors ultimately received relatively useless tokens.
In the midst of the events, two people faced each other: Michael Luckow and Matthias Woestmanns. The latter was supposed to lend the company a serious face as a former ARD correspondent.
What followed, however, was less serious. Through a capital increase, Woestmann and his lawyer Thomas von Aubel succeeded in increasing his stake in Envion AG from 31 to 81 percent. Michael Luckow and his team took legal action against this. However, according to one judgement, the capital increase was legal. The disagreement that had already been announced since an ominous trip to China became more and more entrenched.
One of the „most successful“ ICOs
Nevertheless, the ICO was one of the „most successful“ projects of its kind – with a total of 86 million issued tokens with a nominal value of 1 US dollar at that time, the promising project raised a lot of capital. After the ICO ended in January, an alarming news came for investors – Envion is said to have increased the number of tokens by 40 million units. However, the white paper apparently did not mention this. According to the Zürcher Tagesanzeiger:
„On 27 January a bang follows: At the end of a meeting Woestmann mentions that he has increased the number of shares in the company. This move dilutes the founders‘ shares to such an extent that their stake drops from 81 to 31 percent. The majority is held by […] Thomas van Aubel – a business lawyer who has already been involved in several hostile takeovers (Balda, Q-Cells). Van Aubel is a friend of Woestmann’s for many years and was previously called to Envion as a legal advisor. Woestmann claims noble reasons for this step: „He points out irregularities at the ICO – he is interested in protecting investors.