TenX was one of the most successful ICO’s of 2017, raising around 80 million dollars in minutes. The company had great support and was hyped up in the community. Two weeks ago TenX posted a video showing team member Paul Kittiwongsunthorn using his TenX card to purchase coffee in a Starbucks.
They even released a reward token to PAY holders that will from the sound of it act as security in that if the company does well then the holders will be paid rewards.
Why did their CEO Dr Julian Hosp suddenly resign and do it via video post?
Is it a sign that TenX is about to go belly up? Is Hosp making an early exit? Or did his alleged links to a pyramid scheme called Lyoness result in him getting pushed overboard? Is TenX actually going to send out cards to its holders or not? And did TenX employees pump and dump their own coins in 2017? To find out let’s take a look.
TenX was a massive success at ICO, but very quickly the company hit problems and it seems that the timeline very clearly leads to the reasons for their CEO Dr Julian Hosp’s sudden departure from the company. The moment TenX’s PAY token hit the exchanges the price dumped hard. It turned out that early investors and the employees at TenX had been given unlocked tokens and so they were sold the moment they hit the exchange.
TenX has had since July 2017 to get a working product out to the token holders and with huge amounts of capital available to them. Despite this, they still haven’t sent cards out to customers. The company keeps on putting out target deadlines and then fails to meet those targets. This appears to be because of poor management if the following employee review is to be believed. To be clear, this is an employee review on glassdoors.com. So it could be the work of a disgruntled ex-employee, or it could be some clever FUDSTER making the whole thing so we should view it with some scepticism to be safe. If true, the review does imply that the TenX company isn’t being managed very well.
It does say this person is still a current employee of the company and disapproves of the CEO. They also say the company is poorly managed and that they should also do something about Julian who is creating a lot of bad rep for the whole company.
This was posted to the site on the 24th of December 2018 I guess this individual was busy gift wrapping this nugget of FUD ready for Christmas Day. The timing of it is interesting though because it specifically mentions Dr Julian Hosp giving the company a bad rep. Around the 10th of December, a number of articles came out alleging that the CEO Julian Hosp was initially linked to a pyramid scheme company called Lyoness in Austria.
It looked like Hosp had attempted to cover his links to the multi-level marketing company before reinventing himself as an ICO expert however Fintelegram.news put the links together in a detailed article and the news of this spread quickly.
Following this, I was able to track down the video presentation in which Hosp is marketing and promoting Lyoness. Lyoness has been declared an illegal pyramid scheme in a number of countries.
In all fairness to Hosp, people often do things in the past they regret. It’s also important to note that even though Lyoness is a Pyramid Scheme Hosp may not have been fully aware of that. It was a Multi-Level Marketing company and even though most MLM’s look like pyramid schemes many are actually legal.
This all came to light shortly before TenX’s planned snapshot. The purpose of the snapshot was to give all PAY token holders the new TenX Reward Token.
It’s been alleged that Julian Hosp sold 2.2 million PAY tokens prior to resigning. One batch five days before the snapshot and then another batch on the 1st of January immediately after the snapshot. This was all put together by GMGH a Reddit user on the r/cryptocurrency page. He/she shows the potential evidence and concludes that Julian Hosp sold 2.2 million tokens. Of course, this is speculation, but if the other founders and team members were aware that he did this, it would certainly be a good reason for the company to push Hosp out.
Only three weeks ago the company released this update on the companies restructuring plans. There was the plan to put the several companies that makeup TenX under one parent company to streamline further investment, and it was planned that early investors would soon receive their shares of the company. One thing that is covered in a bit more detail is that the team had enough liquid assets to cover the business for four years. This doesn’t sound like a company about to go bankrupt. There was no mention of staff layoffs, but this can be common when a company restructures.
All of this led to this week when Hosp released a short but emotional video online where holding back the tears as he says goodbye to the TenX community.
Initially, on hearing he had resigned I thought that TenX was going bankrupt and to protect himself from further liability he was abandoning ship, but having looked into this in more detail, I don’t think that’s the case. Note how he says ‘it became clear to us as founders that the only way forward is to mutually part ways and that means I will be stepping down as the president of 10x it was one of the hardest decisions in my life.’ I believe that this refers either to the fact that the founders felt his past was damaging the companies image or they discovered he’d sold off his tokens and wanted to get out ahead of it.
It’s also important to note that when he thanks the community for their support during the hard times he says there are definitely more to come. It could be he’s talking about more hard times ahead for himself but if he’s talking about the company that really doesn’t bode well.
He kept the message very short and never clarified his reasons for leaving.
A follow-up video from Toby Hoenisch who I guess is now the CEO of TenX following Julian’s departure offered practically no further information and left many in the community even more concerned.
In the linked FAQ the following information was given.
Can you shed more light on the circumstances regarding Julian’s departure?
Julian’s departure was a mutual, joint decision that we agreed upon amongst all the founders, including Julian himself. For TenX to move forward with our plans for 2019, this was the outcome we felt was best.
There is speculation about Julian and insider trading, can you comment?
TenX has trading policies that apply to all employees, with more stringent standards for senior and executives. This requires them, among other things, to notify the board of directors prior to any trading of PAY tokens.
No such notification was received in the weeks leading up to and subsequent to the date of announcement of the TenX Token (the “Announcement Date”). All entities within the TenX Group did not participate in any trading of PAY tokens after 21 December 2018.
We are unable to provide any comments on the transfer and alleged trading of PAY tokens potentially undertaken by current and former employees of TenX. We note that the transfers and alleged trading took place on dates after the Announcement Date, and such alleged trades, would have been made on publicly available information.
###What’s the status of the financial license? ###
We spoke with the licensing authority recently, and our financial license is on track as per plan.
Will Julian’s departure affect current roadmap?
We can assure you that our plans for 2019 remain the same and we continue towards them, determined and committed as ever.
How many cards were sent to users?
So far, more than 20 cards have been shipped in our first batch. We are now ramping up with our second batch.
What is the status of the cards?
We have requests that are currently in the pipeline. We are in the process of KYC verification and card applications.
When can we expect further information on the TenX Token KYC process, timing on TenX Token distribution, rewards system and potential PAY utility?
We can confirm now that the process of claiming and performing KYC will be done via TenX app, KYC providers and all systems are already connected and integrated with the app, and we actively use it for card user verification. We expect the claiming and KYC process to commence sometime in Q1, along with further information relating to the rewards system and PAY utility.
If we break down the response, it’s really bad news for investors. Not only do they refuse to tell investors the real reason Julian has left they won’t even give a firm denial or confirmation to the allegations that Julian had sold off his tokens during the snapshot. When asked about their financial license application there is a one-sentence response: We spoke with the licensing authority recently, and our financial license is on track as per plan.
The real slap in the face, however, is the revelation that the company has only sent out 20 cards so far, so far that's only a cost to investors of 4 million dollars per card. Okay, I'm facetious, but they’re not delivering on promises the company made over a year ago.
I don’t think TenX are going bankrupt. I think they are going to move forward with their new company restructuring and are going to plod forward, but I think they will do that without the trust of their investors and with their integrity and transparency in question. I think that the company needs to level with the community over their dismissal of Julian Hosp because having looked at the information and the statement Hosp made I’m not at all convinced it was really a mutual decision at all.
Is the evidence compelling to you?
Why do you think Julian Hosp resigned? Did TenX handle this situation well? What would you like to see the company do moving forward? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below. We really like to hear your thoughts on the stories we run so, please get involved.
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Disclaimer: Cryptopig content is written by a team of blockchain passionate people. We are not registered as investment advisors. Don’t take the information in this post as investment advice and make sure you do your own research before investing. Cryptocurrencies are a very risky investment, never invest more money than you can afford to lose.