Back in February I reviewed the Carlauren Group’s C-Coin cryptocurrency investment. C-Coin investors hand over £70 per C-Coin and can then use those C-Coins to either buy care services from Carlauren, or cash them out on an exchange. Carlauren claims investors in C-Coins can expect “an increase in their core value”.
The BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones has recently reviewed the C-Coin as well. Unlike myself, he went as far as to join the exchange and buy a coin. There he found there was an “offer on market” to buy C-Coins for £189, despite investors being able to buy them at the offer price of £70. He attempted to buy a coin for £70 and immediately sell it for £189 but unsurprisingly failed to do so.
He then received an email inducing him to buy more C-Coins on the basis that they could be bought for £70 and sold at the “market price” of £189.
He was then told by Carlauren CEO Sean Murray that the £189 market price will only be available once all 500,000 C-Coins have been sold.
A market price at which nobody is able to buy or sell is not a market price in any shape or form.
The £189 market price is evidently set internally by Carlauren Group – nobody outside Carlauren would have offered £189 for a C-Coin when they can get them for £70. The implications of the C-Coin scheme allowing investors to cash out at a 170% profit once a certain level of investment has been reached are extremely disturbing. Cryptocurrencies with internally manipulated prices (as opposed to the price being set by supply and demand) rarely end well.
However, bearing in mind that Carlauren has so far managed to sell 47 C-Coins at the time of the BBC article (including the one bought by the journalist as a test), raising a grand total of £3,290 in Sterling, there seems little point dwelling on those implications.
If the present rate of 47 coins sold in six weeks continues, the last C-Coin will be sold at some point around the year 3,220 AD. At which point it is quite possible that elderly citizens will have bionic legs and brains and no need for care homes.
Movers and shakers news
Shortly after my review was published, the then Carlauren Group Marketing Director Seth Bishop commented on my review, accusing me of publishing “factual inaccuracies” “so significant I would need to write an entirely revised article”.
He failed to point out any such inaccuracies, other than claiming my reference to C-Coins being used to purchase care services was inaccurate on the basis that Carlauren’s care services are not care services because “Coins are used to pay for accommodation in resorts not care rooms in care homes. […] Our resort accommodation does offer care on demand.”
Seth Bishop left Carlauren Group a month later, according to his LinkedIn profile, perhaps sick of a job that involved making a fool of himself on blogs and claiming that a care resort offering care on demand to elderly residents isn’t a care service.
Bishop remains CEO of Accordiant Limited whose website says that it offers “Assured rental income – 10% fixed annual return on your care home investment”, which is the same rate of return that Carlauren offers on its unregulated investment in care home suites. Accordiant’s website suggests they are offering a service to investors who already hold care home studios rather than offering an investment itself.