In a strange turn of events, a very reputable (until now) payment processor from Germany, Wirecard, just filed for insolvency in the middle of a huge scandal involving a 3.2 billions Euro debts owed to their creditors. Founded in 1999, Munich-based Wirecard has 5,800 employees in 26 countries around the world, including UK. It was listed on the German Marker, considered to be a Blue Chip. It processes digital payments for both consumers and businesses and reported revenues of more than 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in 2018, more than triple the figure in 2014. This is the equivalent of Enron scandal in the US, few decades ago. The former boss was arrested earlier this week. Wirecard was audited by EY (subsidiary of Ernst & Young) for almost a decade. And they just managed to notice now, despite warnings given by a whistleblower more than a year ago. 1.9 billions Euro are unaccounted and cannot be found. Most of them money coming from fast emerging companies in the cryptomarket, such as Crypto.com and Revolut. But they are the victims in here, and their only fault is that they did not realise this earlier, as there were few inconsistencies in the past 24 months.
In February 2019 Singapore police launched an investigation after Financial Times published some reports of alleged financial irregularities at Wirecard's local office, shares taking a sharp drop following the investigation. But, in October 2019, Wirecard choose to sue Financial Times, giving some legitimacy to their claims, even if now all it seems to be just a smoke-screen to drive the attention out of the real problems. The final blow came in June 5 this year, when Munich prosecutors said they had searched Wirecard's headquarters and opened proceedings against the payment company's management board as part of a market manipulation probe initiated by financial regulator BaFin. Prosecutors commented that they believed the company was having issued misleading information in order to manipulate Wirecard's share price between March 12 and April 22. At the moment the share price is on free fall.
Read the Financial Times article, it is quite surprising and enlightening, and it is worrying that no company in the Crypto-market, working with Wirecard, did not raise some alarms after this article was published. Crypto.com, Monzo and Revolut are their clients, using Wirecard payment processor, and they were affected all over Europe and UK. US seems to be alright at the moment. As for our money in these crypto companies, all of them issued communicates, telling us that our crypto are safe, but the cards will not work for a limited amount of time, until a solution is found.
“Our EU/UK cards will stop working today. All customers will receive 100% credit back to their crypto wallets within 48 hours,” said Kris Marszalek, chief executive officer of Crypto.com. “Separately, we’re working on transferring the card program to a new provider, so that we can resume the issuing of cards in the UK and Europe and allow existing and new customers to benefit from our card program again,” he added. MCO coin had a slight drop, but CRO is still looking good. They increased nicely lately and it will be a shame if some external event will interfere with what was a decent growing strategy until now.
So, if any of your cards related to cryptocurrency are not working at the moment, do not panic, this is the reason. All your funds will be reimbursed in the next 48 hours in the form of cryptocurrency credited to your wallet at a value equal to the fiat currency balances held on the cards.
I hope i could bring some good news soon! Take care and follow your dreams!
G.
Sources
3. Financial Times article about Wirecard
6. https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2020/06/26/crypto-com-suspends-card-wirecard/
My crypto-related links (check ratings - 1 to 5 stars based on my personal experience)
Games to gain crypto
***** League of Kingdoms - link here: similar with Heroes of Might and Magic (worldwide - paying in DAI)
Exchanges
***** Binance( good for staking/savings ) - link here
***** Kucoin( good for staking/savings ) - link here
***** Coinbase( ideal for beginners )- link here
Investments
**** BlockFi (decent interest rates, but less choices than Celsius) - link here
***** Celsius.network (good rates of interests and monthly codes for free crypto, 1235256530 => my referral for $10 bonus ) - link here
**** Coinbundle (investing in crypto bundles) - link here
**** Stakecube (staking, masternodes and very easy to claim faucets for 28 coins/tokens) - link here
Wallets for multiple cryptocurrencies
***** Coinpot - link here (microwallet for all Moon faucets, Bitfun and Bonusbitcoin)
***** Atomic wallet - link here (microwallet for Publish0x DAI, BAT and Loopring)
***** Spherewallet (for Horizen, combined with the faucet for extra bonus) - link here
**** Crypto.com wallet (good interest staking and 50$ bonus in MCO) - link here
Free crypto (faucets and more)
****Lbry.tv (free crypto for watching or making videos) - link here
**** Bitfun( 3 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
*** Bonusbitcoin( 15 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
**** Moon Bitcoin ( 5 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
***** Horizen faucet ( 20 hours countdown - automatically deposit to Sphere wallet ) - link here
*** Tezosfaucet ( 7 days countdown - automatically deposit to Coinbase or Binance wallet ) - link here
** Tron and other crypto faucet (24 hours countdown) - link here
Others
***** Publish0x blog (Free BAT, DAI and Loopring for reading/writing - can combine with Atomic wallet) - link here
***** Brave browser (Free BAT for using it, based on paid ads, very good AdBlocker and high speed) - link here
Disclaimer: This text also can be re-published on my personal blogs, such as this one.
