Why Vivid Money is evil and what every trader should consider about the fake migration of their investments
Theft looks like this
In October of 2022, I first started to notice that something is very wrong with the attitude displayed by both Vivid Money and CM-Equity. The trading of crypto token POLY was suspended. No explanation was given. More than 200 angry customer comments piled up in the Vivid app. 3 months later, after I started the arbitration process, Vivid and CM-Equity deviously sold all customers’ holdings of POLY. They demanded of me that I keep quiet. They still refused to give a sufficient explanation.
The arbitration judge took my side but overlooked the breach of contract and the devious behavior. After all, the arbitration body turned out to be biased, presumably because it is funded by CM-Equity and other finance parties and its primary purpose is to absorb but not solve conflicts.
Bullshit looks like this
As a customer since December 2020, I have witnessed almost every communication, every move. I was well aware that I was dealing with a haughty startup team pushing its product way too hard. I forgivingly overlooked the irritatingly bad customer service replies, the flaws in their app, the over-ambitious release of new features, and the constant marketing bribery.
I did not, however, doubt that they were honest about their attempt to build a better product. I started life as an intern for an internet startup. Some of Germany’s most prolific internet entrepreneurs were my early role models. After several attempts, I enjoyed my own 15 minutes of fame as a solopreneur — a business curating and licensing artworks, which I ultimately failed to grow after 3 years. The point is: I do appreciate the changemakers, the challengers, and the explorers.
I do not, however, tolerate any kind of bullshit!
Neither Vivid nor CM-Equity has a good excuse for refusing to continue processing sell orders for investments already made by their customers. Vivid’s pursuit of a new investment service with another partner has been in the works for a long time. Vivid knew that their partnership with CM-Equity would come to an end, long before they announced it on February 28, 2023.
This means that they continued taking our money, knowing full well that our investments would be cut short!
Coercion looks like this
When I learned that Vivid is run by a team of Russians, I started to factor in the cultural aspect at play. The society I want to live in does not hurt other people and does not take their stuff. Granted, Germany, where I still live, is not the best example of such a society. Still, I allege that Alexander Emshev and his team do not feel bound by the same ethical standards. They are out to manipulate people, not to earn trust!
On January 25, Vivid first suggested that the Crypto 1.0 pocket would discontinue “soon”. This is the day Alexander Emshev and Michael Kott of CM-Equity turned against their customers and finalized their decision to prey on us.
Customers were asked to sell. If they refused to, they faced a forced selling of their assets. After setting the deadline to March 31, it was later shifted to April 14. This shift to a later date shows that this deadline is variable. It is freely negotiable. Why is that important?
When CM-Equity wrote to me that they were not able to shift the March 31 deadline, they lied! There is nothing and no one in the world that forces CM-Equity to set a tight deadline. The purpose is to make the money heist quick and dirty and to create facts before anyone can prevent or confront them.
Vivid has no excuse for not keeping the Crypto 1.0 pocket functional for longer. Nor does CM-Equity have an excuse for not keeping its infrastructure available to receive sell orders.
The act of coercing customers into a time frame of merely 30 days (44 days) is pure evil — a calculated, cold-blooded act of aggression, with only one goal: to rip off customers and steal their money.
(To understand why this is stealing, understand that CM-Equity makes a profit, when you make a loss.)
A fake migration looks like this
At this point, customers should have been outraged about CM Equity’s refusal to continue taking their sell orders. But Vivid introduced a distraction: the fake migration. The suggestion that crypto assets could be migrated from the Crypto 1.0 pocket to the Crypto 2.0 pocket turned customers’ minds away from evil and gave them false hope. It was a false hope because the migration was a ploy. Read on.
With the introduction of a migration option, customers now faced three instead of two choices:
- sell by April 13
- migrate by April 13
- suffer the forced liquidation on April 14
The migration option combined the selling with a subsequent re-purchase of the same number of coins of the same token. For example, if you held 2 BTC worth 44.000 EUR, the proceeds of the sale were used to buy 2 BTC again.
It should be clear from this example, that nothing got migrated. “Migration” is just a label used to evoke the false hope that you won’t lose anything. It is a malicious tactic to fool you. The truth is, you started a completely new investment. It doesn’t even matter if you were in profit or loss. In both cases, the decision to sell an asset only to rebuy it instantly doesn’t make any logical or financial sense.
Many traders fail to understand why this is a bad choice. If you wanted to buy 2 BTC, why would you sell them first? If you had freedom of choice, would you even buy BTC or rather something else? Just because you own 2 BTC doesn’t mean you should buy BTC again. If you are not aware of the sunk cost fallacy, please do yourself the favor and become aware of the heuristics that drive your decision.
Vivid’s goal was to distract you and they succeeded! Vivid was able to take advantage of you both psychologically and financially. They should be sued for extortion, deception, and robbery.
Evidence of evil looks like this
After explaining how nonsensical and evil this migration is, I’d like to ask you a question.
Imagine you were in CM-Equity’s position. You have just announced the termination of your service. Now all you would need to do is to process sell orders and on April 14, liquidate all remaining positions. Why not sit back and contend with this?
Walking in the shoes of Michael Kott, CEO of CM-Equity, it seems you are the smartest person on the planet to get away with theft in broad daylight. Nobody is going to notice because your legal terms provide the freedom to walk away from your duties at any time. Why would you change anything now? Why would you take the initiative and introduce a third option?
The answer to this question is this: There is no good reason for a third option. As a broker, it should not concern you when a customer sells. Just as your bank doesn’t care whether your rent payment gets deducted on the 10th or the 2nd of a month, your broker shouldn’t care when you want to sell.
I hope you can agree that the invention of a fake migration is suspicious. Why would they make this effort?
On April 13, Teresa Pirkl, Head of Compliance at CM-Equity, wrote in an email to Vivid,
“I hope a lot of people still do the migration.”
This is proof that CM-Equity was interested to manipulate you into selling. As I just explained, a broker should normally have no say in your choice. So why were they interested to manipulate you into migrating your coins?
I see two reasons:
1 — The migration ensured that the proceeds returned to Vivid.
By migrating, you unwittingly “rewarded” a company for forcing you out of your investments by giving them your money again. I can’t imagine something more evil and deceptive.
2 — By selling yourself, you freely gave up your investments and therefore indirectly accepted the termination of the contract by CM-Equity.
Again, you rewarded a rogue player by surrendering to a threat. That’s what they want. They prefer willing prey to forced prey.
Still, willing prey might be able to sue them for deceiving you, while forced prey might be able to sue them for for both deception and extortion.
The next migration looks like this
The migration of coins was just the first migration. I expect the migration of fractional shares to involve the same deception, i.e. a combined action of selling and buying labeled as “migration” to make it seem less harmful.
My moral core looks like this
None of us traders and investors imagined all of this. We gave our trust to this stupid company called Vivid Money.
Unfortunately, Vivid Money and CM-Equity are not the only problems.
Wicked, rogue players like them can only act out to the extent that we let them. Why do we let them?
I am very surprised to witness how some customers completely miss the moral dimension. My inner moral compass points straight to pure evil and there is no margin of error. Other customers try to justify the migration and try to evade the reality that they got robbed. Please wake up! You have every right to complain!
Why are you debating in your head whether the “migration” is better than a forced sale? This is like asking a thief whether he would prefer a cup of tea before taking your stuff. Please wake up!
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