Solidus Technologies, which issued unregulated bonds paying up to 13% per year for a three year term, has issued its first accounts for the period ending March 2019.
The accounts show that the company raised only £944,000 in its bonds as at March 2019, having said in its investment literature that it was targeting a raise of £10 million.
If the muted interest in its bonds disappointed the company, that hasn’t stopped it plowing ahead with its plans to generate returns by mining cryptocurrency.
According to a June 2019 press release, Solidus has been mining cryptocurrency (mostly Ethereum) in a temporary facility, having been unable to start construction of its planned Romanian data centre due to cold weather. The press release says construction has now started.
Solidus is operating in partnership with a Romanian firm, Soft Galaxy. Judging by its press release, Soft Galaxy CEO Adrian Stoica (also Head of Mining Operations at Solidus) is doing most of the talking for it.
According to the March 2019 accounts, Solidus owes £1.8 million to joint ventures in addition to the £944,000 plus interest owed to bondholders.
The company owns £2.8 million in assets of which £1 million is recorded as software licenses – “a unique application provided by our Joint Venturer – Soft Galaxy”.
Bearing in mind that Ethereum mining software can be downloaded for free, Soft Galaxy’s application must be pretty stellar to merit spending over a million – a third of Solidus Technology’s gross assets, and slightly more than it raised via its bonds – on licensing it.
Solidus’ other assets consisted of £1.4 million in tangible assets (mostly assets under construction and plant and machinery, presumably the Romanian data centre) and £380k in current assets. Net assets came out as a marginally negative £31k.
Solidus stated in its Information Memorandum that 25 – 30% of funds raised would be used to pay for the cost of fundraising.
Crypto mining is a very competitive venture that eats up huge costs – especially the electricity to power the specialised processing and on top of that the crypto market is very volatile. I very much doubt this company is going to last long. This is an incredibly risky gamble. This will end in tears. You would have more luck – and more fun – on the favourite in the 3:15 at Cheltenham.
Won’t be long before Brev is reporting it being in administration and the administrators warning recovery for investors will be very low, if anything.