Dishonest.wiki

There are various reasons to doubt MTI's claims that this AI trading bot actually exists and is making a consistent ~1% daily profit. There are also various reasons to doubt that MTI's leadership knows anything at all about running a business.

In this video, all MTI corporate can be seen trying to distance themselves from the fall-out.

• MTI claims that they have exclusive access to a proprietary bot which shows consistent daily returns. The concept of having a “big black box” that is able to magically make money, is not a new concept. This is a proven concept used in various scams, somewhere the very management of MTI has been involved with in the past.

• The alleged creator of the bot has not been named, nor have any details been provided regarding the technologies used, but MTI's descriptions of the bot bear striking resemblance to other clearly fraudulent claims of advanced trading bots.

• This claim can be supported by MTI mentioning that they have to pay a certain amount of Bitcoin per month in order to use this proprietary bot, almost like a subscription service or a licensing agreement.

• Anyone with basic experience in trading knows that consistent positive returns are essentially impossible. Up to date, MTI has only had one negative trading day since its inception.¹⁾²⁾

• Even if such a bot had existed, with the extent of MTI's claimed assets under management, consistent returns would be impossible because they would move the market. There would be no-one to take the other side of the trade in order for MTI's bot to actually make a profit.

• The creator of such a bot would hardly need to share it with anyone else, in fact it would not be a good idea for the creator to share it with anyone if they can simply create infinite wealth for themselves. As stated above if they are indeed trading with the value of assets under management that they claim to do, the market shift would be so substantial that it would be impossible to turn a profit. MTI's current position is that they are offering their service to customers because they want to financially empower their customers to earn money. If true, this would mean that MTI is the first company in the history of the world that can sustainably offer free money to its customers, where there is no actual service or product exchanged between the customer and the business. This would be a miraculous turnaround strategy for the top management of MTI, considering they have proven track records with being involved with scams.

• MTI claims that all the Bitcoin deposited by investors is “safely” in cold storage and that the (unregulated) brokers offer credit against this for actual trading.

• No broker would be able to offer that service, as they would expose themselves to an unsustainable amount of risk considering the numbers involved.

• MTI claims to use several different (unregulated) brokers for trades, for “diversification”.

• So-called “live” trading video appears to show a single account with their entire claimed Bitcoin holdings, which would directly contradict the above claim.

• Johann Steynberg has claimed in a Q&A video that only a very small amount of the total Bitcoin is actually used for trading (less than 5%) He further commented that the Bitcoin used for trading is leveraged to 200x in order to obtain favorable returns. Not only is this again in contradiction with the above showing a single account, but trading with 200x leverage would also essentially increase the risk and exposure exponentially, making consistent returns impossible.

• MTI repeatedly claims that since they work in the “crypto-space”, they are beyond the reach of regulators and as such while they claim to cooperate with bodies such as the FSCA (which the FSCA themselves don't necessarily confirm), they don't believe that they are subject to their authority.

• However, whether they accept deposits in fiat currency or bitcoin, the FSCA has made clear that MTI is illegally accepting deposits from investors. Commercial activities involving bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are subject to the same regulations as other asset classes, including taxation.

• MTI initially claimed that their super-bot was trading Forex. On 18 August 2020, the FSCA told them in no uncertain terms that this was illegal as they didn't have the proper license to do so. MTI claimed that they then stopped trading Forex on that day, and that they were tweaking their bot to trade cryptocurrencies instead, to go live on Friday 21 August 2020.

• But for the days in-between, MTI still reported daily trading profits in line with what they had previously done, around 1%. And yet even by their own admission, no bot was busy working those days. Clearly, the department responsible for marketing about the bot didn't talk to the department responsible for bragging about profits.

• Additionally, since cryptocurrencies and forex are very different markets, it is highly unlikely that the same bot would work in both spaces.

• Furthermore, even though none of the management has any experience in development, and that it has been established that this bot was developed by a 3rd party, MTI seems to have the ability in house to tweak the bot in record time to switch from Forex markets to Crypto.

• Currently the AI bot claims to only trade Monday to Friday. If the bot did exist, it would not need to conform to business hours. Technically it there would be nothing stopping the bot to run 24/7, 365 days a year, as cryptocurrency markets do not only operate during business hours like traditional stock exchanges.

• If this AI bot did exist, and if MTI did trade, which has been proved not to be true MTI would create more wealth than the entire GDP of South Africa in a matter of a few years.

• It is important to note that the data from the MTI leaks showed that a substantial amount of Bitcoin is missing and unaccounted for in the Bitcoin pool. This supports the claim that no actual wealth is created via trading as MTI claims, but the proceeds are undoubtedly funded from new members joining, and that MTI's management has looted funds to support their lavish lifestyles.

• MTI has thus far claimed that they are unable to produce audited financials because their financial year-end is in September. The company has by law 6 months after its financial year-end to issue annual financial statements.

• However, according to the CIPC, MTI's financial year-end is in February, and therefore their financials were due by end of August. At the time of writing, we are not aware that these documents have been produced.

• MTI claims to be making profit hand-over-fist. The company ostensibly takes 10% of the day's trading profits which over time works out to millions of rands.

• However their CIPC return (filed around 6 months late incidentally) would indicate that the company has a turnover of less than R1 million.

• According to their latest video uploaded, the following claims were made³⁾ -
  • MTI's KYC will not be as rigorous as the FICA requirements which include contact numbers, verified addresses and personal contact information.
    • South Africa's KYC requirements were specifically implemented inside of the FAIS framework to combat various criminal activities.
  • KYC will allow MTI to remove “rolling accounts” where money is transferred between duplicate members' accounts.
    • Any removal of duplicate and false accounts would require half the founding members and and all of the directors and non-executive management team to lose their duplicated accounts.
  • An audit's only purpose is to show the liquidity of a company.
    • This is patently false. Audits are conducted internally and externally to review and verify the correctness of information, manage risks, verify best practice to achieve strategic objectives and review financial information.⁴⁾