"Crypto Bank" Klagenfurt with Dubious Partners

Great excitement a few weeks ago: The Kleine Zeitung reports that the first “crypto bank” is set to open in Klagenfurt! Okay, AFTER the House of Nakamoto in Vienna and the brick-and-mortar shop of Graz-based Bitcoin pioneer Coinfinity, it’s not exactly the first Bitcoin shop, but let’s be generous. It’s just a marketing claim, much like calling themselves a “bank.”

So we asked Google what could be found about this company: nothing, at least nothing related to Klagenfurt or Austria.

Next clue: The opening invitation #

In the same breath as Bitcoin, they mention something called “MACRO.”

“Transfer, acquire and invest securely and effortlessly — in the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Macro”

Searching for Macro or Macrocoin quickly leads to the homepage world-of.money by Alfred Salzmann, one of the initiators and shareholders of CBNK GmbH. Shockingly, alongside promoting Macro, Mr. Salzmann also tries to sell you on Onecoin / Onecoin archived version and Capricoin (premined, MLM Ponzi).

The people involved #

The managing director and majority shareholder with 34,650 of 35,000 euros in share capital is Günther Primik, who claims four years of cryptocurrency experience — but according to the Austrian Chamber of Commerce holds a trade license for direct sales (i.e. network marketing). The domain of the bank’s homepage is registered to Primik, along with that of a partner, the “Sustainopreneurship Academy,” described in press releases as a “recognized provider of online courses on cryptocurrencies.” Will we soon be able to buy training packages here?

The third member of the group, though not formally connected to the Cryptobank, is Mr. Hadil Krenn, who has been promoting Macrocoin through webinars and pub appearances for some time.

Macrocoin under the microscope #

Macrocoin is supposed to be a “100% asset-backed cryptocurrency” with the ticker MCO. They make an effort to stress the differences from Onecoin — “We’re not an MLM coin,” “We’re listed on an exchange,” “The code is open source and on Github.” On closer inspection, not much of these claims holds up.

There is indeed a listing on c-cex.com, but with virtually no trading volume (USD, BTC). The source code on Github was uploaded on September 1, 2016 and hasn’t been updated since.

The man behind Macrocoin is Simon Karakaš, a Slovenian with a colorful past (ask Google), who was also present at the opening of the Klagenfurt Cryptobank.

Faked statistics #

The official Macrocoin homepage is uecbank.com, he explains when asked. A look at the dashboard is supposed to demonstrate Macrocoin’s significance: over 600,000 transactions today, more than 2,700 trades, 9,000 users online, etc.

But a look under the hood exposes the truth here too: The numbers are hardcoded and change via a random number generator. A small example:

var tradesToday = "2,743.623"; tradesToday=fromFloatToString(fromStringToFloat(tradesToday)+random(3,9));

Even among the roughly 300 Macrocoin nodes, more than half are running in Slovenia, about 90 on a single IP address. The block explorer shows that apart from generating new coins, NO transactions take place — there is no actual usage or adoption of Macro.

Questionable “backing” #

Unfortunately, you have to take the claimed real-asset backing of Macro on blind faith. The fact that the last 5 digits of all listed assets on uecbank.com are identical down to the decimal point is surely just a coincidence…

At the opening, Salzmann and Karakaš claimed a minimum value of 1.20 EUR or 1.20 USD for Macro (MCO) — made possible by the miraculous backing. However, the block explorer shows that 1.9 billion MCO already exist and new ones are constantly being created. Someone please show us the guaranteed countervalue.

Perhaps the Asian partners, the “GSA — Global Sustainopreneurship Assosiation” [sic], whose companies are also supposed to be invested in, can turn lead into gold or Onecoins into Bitcoin and thus provide actual value. Meanwhile, Karakaš rolls out the next buzzwords and announces the use of Ethereum-based smart contracts. And everything will be fine!

Conclusion #

We considered whether Bitcoin Austria should even comment on this matter. But since the proponents have 1. a clear connection to Austria and 2. these people mention Bitcoin in the same breath as Macrocoin, we hereby WARN against investing in Macrocoin.

“Distribution partners” for Macrocoin should be aware that recruiting new investors carries civil and criminal liability risks.

Visiting the “crypto bank” shop itself should be harmless, as long as you keep your common sense switched on. The address is Neuer Platz 6, Klagenfurt. As of today (June 21), there is still no legal notice to be found on their website.

Update June 23: The “bank” website now only shows “maintenance mode.” The previous version can still be found on Archive.is and in Google’s cache.