The Swiss financial broker and asset management firm Bitcoin Suisse has refuted claims it was involved in an alleged “exit scam” related to Matchpool’s ICO.
In comments emailed to Cointelegraph following the publication of an article about the controversy surrounding the startup’s fundraising activities, CEO Niklas Nikolajsen sought to state that no illicit transactions had occurred involving Bitcoin Suisse.
Wings.ai Biz Dev Stas Oskin, as well as Bitcoin Suisse, was one of the holders of the ICO wallet’s private key.
Matchpool’s co-founder and now ex-developer Philip Saunders alleged earlier this week that ICO funds, which at the time amounted to $5.7 mln, were being handled in a non-transparent manner.
On this issue, Nikolajsen stated:
“BTCSAGs single signature has not been used to sign ANY transactions, post-ICO, and which [was] not related to initial setup & pre-ICO tests.
BTCSAG has not performed any liquidations, small or large, on behalf of Matchpool, post-ICO.
BTCSAG has not received any large amount of crypto-assets from Matchpool, ETH or otherwise, post-ICO.
BTCSAG has never performed active marketing of the Matchpool ICO or any other ICO for that matter.”
The letter says further:
“BTCSAG is a Swiss AML-regulated financial intermediary and financial service provider, active in the field of crypto finance. Amongst our many services, we assist companies in ICO's, particularly regarding compliance, exchanges, hedging and safe storage of assets
In regards to Matchpool GmbH and their ICO, BTCSAG helped a subset of contributors exchange fiat funds to ETH and placed them in the ICO contract on their behalf.”
BTCSAG also held a single, non-mandatory signature to the Matchpool main ETH wallet but Matchpool was (and is) fully able to sign transactions without the involvement of BTCSAG.
The nature of the BTCSAG/Matchpool relationship, as described by Matchpool, is listed here.
Matchpool hires a new CTO
Fellow Matchpool co-founder Yonatan Ben Shimon meanwhile released his own post to counter Saunders’ claims.
“During the ICO, we got a lot of support from our community which eventually summed up to 2,370 different participants that trusted us with their funds. We take that very seriously and it is our sole desire to return this trust and provide our initial supporters with the best product and community possible,” he wrote.
Shimon adds that a replacement CTO for Saunders had been hired:
“We have appointed Or Demri the position of CTO. Or specializes in system architecture on Ethereum and is highly qualified for the role and came recommended by the community. Or won the Consensys NY EtherCamp Hackathon last year, so we’re in a great position to move onward and upward.”
According to Shimon, as a precaution all the BTC now are in a multisig wallet with the address: 392eAQg9FioqDn7T3mqkTu8bcFfux1YJAq.
“We are going to publish a developer plan in one week from now and release the first product in early June,” he says.