Envestio vanished – Wisefund next?

So it looks like the collapse of Kuetzal triggered some kind of Bank run. The Envestio website is currently not reachable. After some very unprofessional Twitter duelling with a apparent industry insider RPeerDuck (Twitter profile deleted now due to death threats). Are my 2’006 € from Envestio gone then? Very likely. I have yet to filed a Police report with the Estonian Police.

The last message posted on Tuesday the 21st of January 2020 from Envestio :

Dear Investors,
We would like to address all our clients, investors, borrowers and other counterparties with the following very important issue. We proudly declare that till present moment Envestio managed to fulfill on time and in good faith all financial obligations to all contractual investors and borrowers, despite the very unfavorable situation in the crowdfunding market, provoked by the uncertainty and potential fail of Kuetzal platform.

Simultaneously with the recent concerns within the industry, we tracked repeatedly various technical attempts targeted to influence dramatically on stability of Envestio platform. They were performed through hacker attacks on our web site and platform’s internal structure and database.

At the same time, we noticed that destructive public relations campaign against Envestio has been initiated and which consisted of spreading knowingly false and unconfirmed information by numerous internet resources questioning financial stability and reliability of our platform, denigrating the reputation of the Envestio owners and key employees.

We tend to consider these attempts as a consistent and well-planned set of actions aimed to cause significant financial and reputational damage, as a result of which the Envestio platform should inevitably begin to experience substantial difficulties with current payments to its investors.

We assume that the ultimate goal of all these actions is to devalue overall Envestio’s business, and the subsequent potential raider takeover of the company or an attempt to eliminate the company from the industry, getting rid of as strong competitor. The implementation of the aforementioned scenario is evidenced by a number of factors and hostile actions that occurred precisely at the moment when a serious crisis of confidence reigned in the crowdfunding market and which actually was caused by the scandal surrounding the activities of the Kuetzal platform.

Envestio strongly condemns any actions aimed at further destabilizing the current crowdfunding market situation and disrupting the activity of the Envestio platform, as these factors together can lead to an uncontrolled solvency crisis, influencing not only Envestio but also other industry participants.

Last message from Envestio on Facebook

After that message the website basically became unreachable and there were no more updates at all.

Wisefund next?

During the whole downfall of Envestio I personally got a bit concerned with Wisefund. They did only add one single new project to their platform since I deposited money on January 3rd. They send two unnecessary emails asking investors to keep calm and not do a bank run with them.

I understand the fear of the investors which may believe that all platforms in the Baltics are scam. But I think it’s also concerning that Wisefund doesn’t seem to be able to add new projects to their platform. Maybe one of you readers have previous experience with Wisefund. Can you confirm if adding only one project per month is normal for the platform?

This is the unnecessary email I am referring to:

Statement from Wisefund 

Dear Wisefund user,
 
Wisefund and our team, we are confident in what we do and how we do it, the history of our work, and we intend to keep it this way and prove our place in the industry.
Due to certain circumstances that accrued yesterday within the crowdfunding sector, Wisefund is experiencing a large amount of early-exit requests from many of you. During Kuetzal collapse, there were no significant issues Wisefund experienced except slightly slower pace of funding, but since yesterday when Envestio website is not accessible anymore, there’s a hype in early-exit requests which causes certain administrative burden towards us, financial and administrative burden towards our partner, and certainly slows down our ​daily work.
 
Wisefund is confident of its loan management system, the loan management process, the relationship with borrowers, the vast amount of work we’ve done within the team to create the onboarding process and keep it in terms with each application; we have a very strong loan agreement in place with borrowers, and there’s never been intention from anyone of them to speculate and show signs of no repayment.
 
Unfortunately, due to the panic lenders forget that they entered into contractual relationship issuing a loan for certain period of time, and contractual relationships should be honored, whereas the early exit option is actually meant for people who are ready to bear the early exit fee because they really need that money, instead of just running away from obligations they entered. Simple example, how would you feel if for no reason your local bank would request an immediate return of your mortgage?
 
Even though the guarantee from Wisefund offers to cover loans that are defaulted, there are none of the current active loans that show signs of default, all payments are made on time, and we work hard to keep it this way, and will continue to do so.
 
Unfortunately, many of you currently don’t value contractual relationships and request an early exit from their loans without specific reason simply due to happenings that are not dependent on Wisefund or its borrowers and have no relation as well. Wisefund is not planning to request back the money from borrowers before the contractual terms and will continue serving loans as per the payment schedule.
 
For your information, from the very beginning, Wisefund had guarantee agreement under certain terms, and early exit option was not intended for everybody to use it, For now, after this statement, Wisefund will limit early exit requests until we take care of existing requests and receive confirmation the guarantee provider is ready to accept further requests.
 
In the end, Wisefund values all parties involved through its business, lenders, borrowers, and partners who with their services allowed the portal to grow. And we tend to keep this value, honoring every side and will try to find the right balance for that.
 
If you have any certain worries regarding Wisefund activities, please express them writing to the Wisefund support team, and we’ll reply to you in detail on each worry you have in the shortest possible time.
 
Wisefund will take the opportunity to update lenders on each of the funded project development processes and further projections, although, this might take some time to deliver the information towards our valued lenders due to a higher amount of support and early exit requests.
 
Looking forward to be your partner of choice in the future as well,
On behalf of Wisefund,
Ingus Linkevics, CEO

Wisefund email 22.01.2020

Takeaways

I will therefore put Wisefund and Monethera which might be involved in the whole story too on a blacklist for sending more funds of my second half investment.

I like to take the opportunity to highlight this statement which is true for ALL kinds of investments:

“Do not invest money which you can not afford to loose”

Mr. Cheese & other wise men

So shit happens, I was lucky to avoid to invest in Kuetzal but now got hit by Envestio. You win some, you loose some.

I personally look forward to my second monthly portfolio update. I will do a review of the platforms which didn’t collapse yet.

Comment if you are affected by the Envestio or Kuetzal collapse. Subscribe to the blog on the right hand side.