Envion News

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has released news on their site that crypto mining firm Envion AG’s ICO was illegal and violated a number of Swiss laws. Evion’s ICO raised $90 million from some 37,000 investors but failed to follow the rules as laid out by regulators. According to FINMA’s investigation which began back in July 2018: advertisement “Investigations carried out by FINMA to date indicate that in the context of its ICO, Envion AG accepted funds amounting to approximately one hundred million francs from more than 30,000 investors in return for issuing EVN tokens in a bond-like form.” “FINMA is committed to ensuring that serious innovators can launch their ICO projects lawfully and published guidelines to this effect in February 2018. However, it also consistently takes action against ICO business models, which violate or circumvent supervisory law. FINMA has also repeatedly drawn attention to the risks that ICOs pose for investors.” The news was announced a couple of days ago. “Envion AG granted the token owners a claim to repayment after thirty years. Furthermore, the conditions for the EVN tokens issued in a bond-like form were not equal for all investors, the prospectuses did not meet the minimum statutory requirements and there was no internal audit unit as required by law. In the present case, this acceptance of US dollars and the Ethereum and Bitcoin cryptocurrencies, therefore, amounted to an acceptance of public deposits for the purposes of the Banking Act. This, however, requires a banking license.” Nicholas Ruggieri from EthNews also dug up some interesting tidbits in an investigative piece here: “Drama surrounding the EVN token was behind much of the infighting between founders Luckow and Woestmann. In January 2018, Woestmann allegedly issued actual shares of the company to investor Thomas van Aubel (a German lawyer) instead of tokens, diluting Luckow’s 81 percent stake to 33 percent, in what Luckow called the “world’s first analogue ICO hacking.” “In May 2018, Woestmann claimed Luckow and a group of founding members fraudulently created 20 million additional tokens to enrich themselves without the knowledge of the board of directors. As a result, Woestmann planned to take full control of the company, which might have actually panned out if it wasn’t for a Swiss court that found Envion didn’t really have a board of directors, to begin with.” It is not known yet if the company will start refunding its investors as they are already in the liquidation process. About Richard Kastelein Founder and publisher of industry publication Blockchain News (EST2015), a partner at ICO services collective Token.Agency($750m+ and 90+ ICOs and STOs), director of education companyBlockchain Partners (Oracle Partner) and ICO event organiserat leading industry event CryptoFinancing (Europe’s first ICO event nowbranded Tokenomicon)– Vancouver native Richard Kastelein is an award-winning publisher,innovation executive and entrepreneur. He sits on the advisory boardsof some two dozen Blockchain startups and has written over 1500articles on Blockchain technology and startups at Blockchain News andhas also published pioneering articles on ICOs in Harvard Business Review and Venturebeat. Irish Tech News put him in the top10 Token Architects in Europe. Kastelein has an Ad Honorem – Honorary Ph.D. and is Chair Professor ofBlockchain at China’s first Blockchain University in Nanchangat the Jiangxi Ahead Institute of Software and Technology. In 2018 hewas invited to and attended University of Oxford’s Saïd Business Schoolfor Business Automation 4.0 programme. Chevalier (Knight) – Ordre desArts et des Technologies at Crypto Chain University and an AdvisoryBoard Member of International Decentralized Association OfCryptocurrency And Blockchain (IDABC) as well as Advisory Board Memberat U.S. Blockchain Association. Over a half a decade experience judgingand rewarding some 1000+ innovation projects as an EU expert for theEuropean Commission’s SME Instrument programme as a startup assessorand as a startup judge for the UK government’s Innovate UK division. Kastelein has spoken (keynotes & panels) on Blockchaintechnology in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Beijing, Brussels,Bucharest, Dubai, Eindhoven, Gdansk, Groningen, the Hague, Helsinki,London (5x), Manchester, Minsk, Nairobi, Nanchang, San Mateo, SanFrancisco, Santa Clara (2x), Shanghai, Singapore (3x), TelAviv, Utrecht, Venice, Visakhapatnam, Zwolle andZurich. His network is global and extensive. He is a Canadian (Dutch/Irish/English/Métis) whose writing career hasranged from the Canadian Native Press (Arctic) to the Caribbean& Europe. He’s written occasionally for Harvard BusinessReview, Wired, Venturebeat, The Guardian and Virgin.com, and his workand ideas have been translated into Dutch, Greek, Polish, German andFrench. A journalist by trade, an entrepreneur and adventurer at heart,Kastelein’s professional career has ranged from political publishing toTV technology, boatbuilding to judging startups, skippering yachts tomarketing and more as he’s travelled for nearly 30 years as a Canadianexpatriate living around the world. In his 20s, he sailed around theworld on small yachts and wrote a series of travel articles called,“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Seas’ travelling by hitching rides onyachts (1989) in major travel and yachting publications. He currentlylives in Groningen, Netherlands where he’s raising three teenagedaughters with his wife and sailing partner, Wieke Beenen. 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The Swiss Financial Market Authority (FINMA) has declared Envion AG’s initial coin offering (ICO) — which raised almost $91 million from over 37,000 investors — illegal. FINMA has issued an official statement claiming that Envion AG, a cryptocurrency company, “unlawfully received public deposits on a commercial basis from at least 37,000 investors.” The amount of […] The post Envion AG’s ICO Deemed Illegal by FINMA, Enters Liquidation appeared first on BeInCrypto.

FINMA, Switzerland’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority, has found Envion AG guilty of receiving commercial public deposits from a minimum of 37,000 investors in the context of an initial coin offering (ICO). Envion AG is currently being liquidated. FINMA’s enforcement proceedings against the company began in July 2018 and have concluded this month. Its investigation discovered that more than 90 million Swiss francs had been raised by the company in the form of an initial coin Read More The post Envion AG Liquidated, FINMA to Continue Fighting Illegal ICOs appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

The curse of the EVN token.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority in Switzerland have confirmed that the Zug-based cryptocurrency venture Envion, a crypto mining operation, unlawfully received deposits from at least 37,000 investors.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has finished enforcement proceedings against crypto mining firm Envion AG, the authority announced on March 27. As a result of the investigation launched in July 2018, FINMA concluded that Envion’s initial coin offering (ICO), which closed in early January 2018, was unlawful. Envion, a blockchain firm that claims […]