At least sixty victims of Koinz Trading, the Dutch company that promised so-called Miners S9 machines to its customers , lost lost their money. The company was declared bankrupt by the court in Amsterdam on Wednesday. Dozens of declarations have arrived at the police.
Although customers actually bought a so-called bicoin factory, a computer that generated crypto coins via complex calculations, Koinz Trading took care of the process of mining for its customers. Users did not see the computer systems themselves. The location of the warehouse where the systems were installed remained secret.
The systems were not cheap: 6100 euros each plus a management rate of 23 euros per month.
The company originally promised that 0.3 Bitcoin would be made each month. At the then high price of the digital currency, that would have yielded about 3500 euros, but customers saw nothing of their investments. The payouts faltered as early as September.
The victims suspected that there was a pyramid scheme where new systems could be purchased with customers' money. According to lawyer Marco Kalmijn, who assists 60 people, however, a total of several million would be invested in the company. The earnings model for founder Barry van Mourik: He wanted to invest every Bitcoin extra in his own pocket.
Van Mourik first reported that there were problems with a server in China, "then he had been swindled by a business partner and then he had to undergo eye surgeries urgently." Some customers claimed the computers, but they did not. Rumor has it that Van Mourik was selling his clients' computers to pay his debts.
Why customers have put so much trust in a completely unknown company is a mystery. Founder Barry van Mourik is a former car dealer, who has stepped into the bitcoins without too much experience, and has also been personally declared bankrupt. Even when there were already many problems, few critical documents appeared in the newspapers. 'Making money yourself, it sounds like alchemy,' de Volkskrant wrote in November.
The extent to which the falling prices of crypto coins of the last weeks have contributed to the bankruptcy is not clear. With the extraction of crypto coins enormous costs are involved due to the extreme power consumption. Incidentally, the Bitcoin has finally started on a march again this week: this morning the currency was just above 10,000 dollars.
Source: https://www.emerce.nl