29.03.2024

ICO Analysis: Bankera

Mining cryptocurrencies in today’s booming environment is the ultimate accelerated lesson in capitalism, adapt or die. The small-scale GPU farmers can no longer compete with large-scale ASIC mining farms.

Mostly coming from the east, these large-scale facilities are mining the majority of bitcoins. It’s not easy though, as they still face local and national governmental regulations, restrictions, and electricity cost spikes.

These farms are all set up, and can’t just leave when the going gets rough. The new startup, Envion, can just close its doors and quickly relocate to the cheapest green energy supplier, anywhere in the world.

The group over at Envion has already ponied up more than $1 million of their own money to design and produce their first Mobile Mining Unit (MMU).

As you can see, it’s pretty fancy. Mobile enough to move anywhere in the world, the MMU has plugins that can tap into any form of green energy; solar, wind, fossil, and hydro, reducing the carbon footprint while supplying their miners with the cheapest energies on the planet. It’s built on a budget of between $100,000 – $150,000 (that’s per unit, including the miners).

Each unit will have a variety of miners, which are connected to their Unified Mining Cloud (UMC), a market monitoring program that determines the most profitable currencies to mine and reprograms the miners to that coin. The MMU has a giant antenna on top, which allows for non-stop internet access so each unit is always connected and accounted for.

Overheating is probably the biggest problem these units face. They claim to have spent several hours doing scientific research to find the perfect patent-pending solution. With this revolutionary design and two small fans, these units may never overheat or freeze. They have most definitely not tested this cooling device in all the different environments yet, as they only have the one unit built (and its inside of a factory staying warm).

The Token

EVN is an ERC-20 token. Possessing the token entitles the holder to 75% of Envion profits paid out in ethereum dividends each week. It also allows users to have voting/vetoing rights for major decisions.

The presale starts Dec 1, ajd investors can sign up now for the whitelist:  https://www.envion.org/en/#invest (supposedly there are already 40,000 people signed up)

You can purchase with ETH, BTC, or credit card.

The base price is $1 (Dec 1 = $0.70,  Dec 3 = $0.80, Dec 7 =$0.90 and Dec 14-31 = $1).

When you go to their token sale page they have a dividend estimate calculator, where you can type in the amount you want to invest and they will show you your future predicted dividends. Basically, Envion is promising 161% ROI.

They are trying to raise $150 million. As I said earlier, each unit costs $100-150,000. It really doesn’t matter to the token holders how large the supply is because they get 75% of the profits in dividends each week either way.

The Team

Registered in Zug, Switzerland, but located in Germany, the Envion team seems to lack real talent in the mining industry.

Matthias Woestmann, CEO, has been an investor in renewable energies since the early 2000s. He financed one of the most successful solar module producers in all of Germany. One investigator in the ICO’s bitcointalk pointed out he may not be as successful at financing things as he suggests because he couldn’t get anybody to come in with him on Envion. The story goes that in 2015 Matthias had an epiphany and convinced the other founders of Envion to start this project. They then spent two years developing the first MMU.  However, if you dig into the six core members of their team, all of them joined within the last two months.

Jasper Hellmann (marketing): High-performance marketer, founded and marketed largest international music festival chain and $30 million eCommerce startup within 11 months.

Felix Krusenbaum (finance): An IT professional with over six years of experience as a strategy consultant at A.T. Kearney with a focus on digital, retail, and eCommerce; ten years of startup and programming experience.

Jonathan Koch (technology): In the whitepaper he’s described as a “Software engineer with 10 years of experience as a team leader at Rocket Internet wooga”. However, when you investigate further, it turns out he only worked at rocket internet Wooga for four years total. One of their bitcointalk spokesmen admitted to this embellishment.

Nikita Fuchs (blockchain): Software engineer and expert for ethereum smart contracts; design and development of decentralized blockchain applications; smart contracts for finance, industry, and NGOs; senior consultant to Astratum.com

Greetings from a part of the team including founders, technicians, developers, marketers, finance and support-team,…

Posted by Envion on Wednesday, November 15, 2017

I got called “disgusting” for commenting on the number of kids on their team. I honestly look at this team and see interns at their very first job.  A gigantic mining operation needs technology wizards and experienced miners.  This team photo, as well as the founders/management resumes, do not lead me to believe they can pull off this massive venture. Out of the six core member from the whitepaper, only two have programming experience, and I don’t think any have mining experience.

Verdict

The streets are whispering. No, the bitcointalk and telegram streets are actually shouting at the top of their lungs about this being a $150 million heist in progress. After going through all their social media with a fine-toothed comb, I counted seven seemingly intelligent people fudding Envion with passion. I cannot validate their claim of hoax. I can however validate their skepticism.

After seeing too many red flags to handle, I took to telegram and asked their representatives a variety of questions. I learned the most from the questions they could not answer, such as:

CWhat’s the name of the production company that is building the MMU’s?”

“Who is going to supply Envion with thousands of ASIC miners, aren’t they always sold out?”

I asked many other questions but persisted with these two for about 36 hours straight. Their reps just delayed answering, and still haven’t except for saying, “you may not get an answer at all, because like I said, we do not comment on our supply line.”

And they do not comment on why they do not comment. They’ve clearly been instructed not to reveal any actual information relating to the project. Another area of questioning they can’t get into is mining stats. They have their one MMU supposedly running in a warehouse somewhere (they won’t reveal where) and it’s confirmed that it’s not actually mining.

I never heard of a company asking for $150 million, and then not revealing any of their business model.

This is odd, and a good example of what I’m talking about. This video debuted on some random YouTuber’s channel.  It’s supposedly a random stranger discovering and touring Envions one and only MMU. This MMU is supposed to be operating in a factory somewhere in Germany. The writing on the MMU is English, and the Youtuber who put this video out is from Florida! When asked in telegram about this, the Envion representative quickly produced a detailed story about how the Floridian Youtuber simply stole the video from Envion’s Facebook. When asked “why isn’t this video on their Facebook page?” the rep said, “it just disappeared at the same time it popped up on the Florida guys channel.”

Risks

  • According to the whitepaper, it doesn’t look like a human will be monitoring/guarding each unit. This is insane to me because the other two mining businesses I observed are filled with computer geeks doing maintenance on the units 24/7. The Envion team doesn’t seem to have any idea how hard this is going to be. -4
  • The Unified Mining Cloud (UMC) is responsible for handling and supervising all maintenance operations throughout the Envion network. There are no demo yet of the UMC in action; I believe this fancy networking system is only an idea so far. -2
  • They are basically promising 161% ROI. Dividends start in January. They don’t show how the profits are calculated, they just say token holders will receive 75% of the profits each week. They have one MMU, and nobody knows how fast they can make more. If the first few months of dividends are underwhelming, it could cause a dump.  -2
  • I’m trying to wrap my head around their business plan.  The only way a large farm can keep scaling is by reinvesting most of their profits right back into their miners. Envion is using a completely different approach by paying 75% of the profits too token holders each week and investing the other 25% back into the MMUs. With all the hidden expenses, this won’t be enough to sustain what they got, let alone grow. -5

Growth Potential

  • As they build these units they get to chose from the entire planet as to where to put them. They are never locked into one location, and can continuously find the cheapest spots and best partnerships. And apparently, some of these facilities are giving away free energy that they have an overabundance of. +4
  • They are really good at marketing. They have adds all over Facebook, and claim to have more than 40,000 people registered for their whitelist. It’s a very attractive idea – genesis mining is huge. If Envion is successful, I can see them getting very big. +1
  • All over their website and social media is the promise of 161% ROI. I don’t know where they got this number, and they won’t tell me, but this promise alone will be huge in today’s get rich quick market. Look no further than bitconnect. 0
  • ASIC miners are changing the game. It is very hard to get a constant supply of any type you want. Usually, unless you are connected, there are long waiting periods. Envion claims to have access to “efficient, available, low-cost hardware”, but they refuse to reveal their source. If they do have a never-ending supply of miners, that will be a huge advantage. +1

Disposition

I keep being told that the ICO doesn’t start until Dec. 1st, and to wait patiently for the answers to my questions. Malarkey! I’m going to release this report so Hacked readers know to beware of this ICO, and if the Envion folks magically start producing evidence of legitimacy, I will update this report. However, even without them withholding information, and the numerous believable allegations of dishonesty and black magic, this project is far too sketchy. 3 out of 10

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