Guten Tag to all international Apes.

German Ape here.

I wrote a 2-part DD on CM-Equity AG and all FTX companies located in Germany and Switzerland in our German GameStop Sub “Spielstopp” few days ago. These companies drew my attention as there is a connection to issuing tokenized security offering (TSO) like the GME TSO FTX Token. After receiving a lot of positive feedback and suggestions for an English version of my research I decided to translate my post.

I also saw many posts / comments about these companies here on Superstonk with missing or incorrect information. This research should provide you the needed details with sources to dig further and maybe discover something essential. I´m to smooth to process and connect some of discovered details so feel free to add your thoughts on this topic.

Its going to be a slightly different version as my original post because I received additional updated Information in the meantime. I used deepl to save some time and tried to correct some sentences. As far as possible I tried to provide sources in English. Please note that English is not my first language and not even my second to learn.

Disclaimer:

I reached out to Superstonk mods for approval to post it here since I do not meet the karma requirements.

I´m holder of GME since February 2021. Only hold one stock atm. ~95% DRS´d, remaining ~5% position is split between 3 German brokers.

It is in no way meant to represent any financial advice.

TL-DR:

CM-Equity AG (issuer of GME tokenized stock) is shady AF and they started to wipe information from their homepage. Almost all FTX related companies in Germany and Switzerland seem to be shell companies run by a small group of people. There was a connection between Binance Deutschland GmbH and FTX Derivatives GmbH in Switzerland, which was dissolved ~3 weeks before CZ’s tweet.

TL-DRS.

Let’s start:

After collapse of FTX crypto exchange and the numerous discussions about the tokenized shares (TSO) especially of the company GameStop, I have taken a closer look at the companies involved in this matter. Thereby I consider only the companies, which are registered in Germany and Switzerland and have a connection with FTX. I hope some smart apes can bring something important to light based on this information.

This post contains following companies and their leadership:

– CM-Equity AG

– FTX Trading GmbH

– FTX Certificates GmbH

– FTX Europe AG

– FTX Switzerland GmbH

– FTX Derivatives GmbH

– FTX General Partners AG

– BINANCE DEUTSCHLAND GMBH & CO. KG

Some further companies are briefly mentioned, which do not have direct connections to FTX, but which have certain connections among the management personnel.

In obtaining the information, I mainly refer to the following websites:

https://www.handelsregister.de/ Page in English through this Link. Documents still in German.

https://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ Page in English through this Link. Documents still in German.

https://www.northdata.de All Information should be available in English here.

I did not use a paid account for more detailed research information.

HRB 143533 District Court of Munich

LEI 529900FYFELVOBF2P080

Legal form: Aktiengesellschafft (public limited company PLC)

Date of registration: 07/12/2002 by Michael Kott

Address: Kaufingerstraße 20, 80331 Munich, Germany

Management Board: Jens Andre Brunke, Augsburg, 09/28/1975

Managing Director: Michael Kott, Munich, 03/20/1966

Subsidiaries: Optimtrader (Trading Platform)

Partnership: Vivid invest (trading, investing app)

Company location / leadership

Google Maps Link

My research started with this company. The connection between FTX and CM-Equity AG is as follows:

CM-Equity AG is /was the manufacturer of the product: ” Tokenized Stocks GAMESTOP CORP-CLASS A (bilateral OTC derivative contract)” Basic Information Sheet: https://products.cm-equity.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20210528_FTX_GME_EN.pdf

Or in short, the manufacturer for the GameStop tokenized stock contract, which is traded on FTX:

GME tokenized stock FTX

CM-Equity AG stated in a correction dated 11/11/22 that it does not have a business relationship with Alameda Research LLC and that the cooperation with FTX Trading GmbH was discontinued as of 12/31/2021. Furthermore, the company was also not responsible for offering tokenized shares via the FTX platform.

Besides GME, there are another 2245 basic information sheets for different tokenized stocks / precious metals or fractional shares. These all appear to be identical in themselves with adjusted stock names. LINK

In the time of my research, the website has started to wipe information which was previously available. There was e.g., a button “CM-Equity AG” under Basic Document Sheets few days ago, this has disappeared since 11/16/22.

Resources

Good thing that the Wayback Machine exists, so we can check here what is currently no longer available:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220529021735/https://cm-equity.de/resources/

The following information has been deleted from their website:

These are basic information sheets for tokenized stocks, however you can find “Binance” in the document names:

deleted basic information sheets

This does not represent the connection between Binance and FTX mentioned in the headline, it comes a bit further in this post.

Collaboration between Binance and CM-Equity AG on TSO is no secret, but I don’t understand why they purged this information only few days ago from their website.

In this article:

https://coincodex.com/article/11104/binances-tokenized-stock-feature-draws-attention-from-uk-regulator/

I could find the following:

stock custody

“CM-Equity custodies the shares that are backing the tokens.” I would like to see some proof where CM-Equity keeps the shares. I couldn’t find anything.

According to the following article, Binance has stopped trading TOS since July 2021:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/binance-stops-selling-stock-tokens-after-regulatory-scrutiny-2021-07-16/

Enough with Binance for now. Back to FTX.

Attached is a tweet from SBF about partnership between CM-Equity AG and FTX from 10/30/20:

SBF tweet1

SBF tweet2

You can read his complete tread here: SBF on Twitter

On CM-Equity´s homepage there are some documents available about execution quality of private clients.

Interactive Brokers Central Europe ZRT (984500QBG15950F8C352) is listed predominantly with almost 100% volume in several categories. I am not aware of what this means exactly, maybe someone can use this Information.

All documents are listed under “imprints” at the bottom of their page.

Execution Quality Private Clients 2021 Evaluation:

https://cm-equity.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20220426_2021_Auswertung-der-Ausfuhrungsqualitat-MiFID-II-Kategorie-3.pdf

History and network of the company (nothing suspicious here I guess):

History and network CM-Equity AG

Company has existed since 2002 with the same managing director, so it’s not a shell company. However, a look at the annual balance sheet provides us some interesting details. If you compare the years 2020 and 2021 you will see a quite big difference in the figures.

All documents can be found here in “Bundesanzeiger” with search entry “CM-Equity AG”:

https://www.bundesanzeiger.de/

These Documents are availible in German only. I hope some accountant apes in german sub will figuere this numbers out and provide some easy explaination. I will add it here as soon as it is availible.

Annual financial statement for the fiscal year from 01.01.2020 to 12.31.2020

Shareholders 2020

Digital Assets DA AG is a former company name of FTX Europe AG. More about during this post. Ownership of ~10% in CM-Equity AG

Balance sheet 2020

Balance sheet profit 2020: € 77,295.74

Annual financial statements for the fiscal year from 01.01.2021 to 12.31.2021

Shareholders 2021

Digital Assets DA AG changed the name and is already listed here as FTX Europe AG with ~10% stake in CM-Equity AG.

Balance sheet 2021

Balance sheet profit 2021: 11,027,228.40€.

or ~14300% profit increase in one year, not bad.

I have absolutely no idea about balance sheet calculations, but something seems to be very suspicious here. I made a post about their annual report in German sub, hope some wrinkled apes could help to find details.

I would also like to add that CM-Equity AG removed their FAQ section in the last few days. Trough wayback machine we are again able to look at removed information:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211027004139/https://cm-equity.de/en/faq/

As you can see their FAQ section contains questions about TSOs.

They also removed following two news from their page:

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20220529012118/https://cm-equity.de/en/quantum-technologies-fund-black-quant-invests-in-aegiq/

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20220529021622/https://cm-equity.de/en/qbn-and-cm-equity-set-up-e100-million-quantum-technologies-fund/

Website of this 100-million-quantum-fund has also been shut down in the meantime.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220923085651/https://blackquant.de/

This translated quote can be found in their report and is interesting:

In particular, the trading portfolio increased by EUR 20M€, which is largely composed of hedging positions acquired as part of the bulk customer business with bilateral contracts. The hedging positions serve as hedges for liabilities arising from bilateral contracts with customers. In addition, loans and advances to banks increased by EUR 9M€ as a result of liquidity inflows following the disclosure of hidden reserves in the banking book.

At this point I’ll leave the CM-Equity AG research here (we are still investigating this company in German sub) and turn to the other FTX related companies.

Let’s start with Germany:

HRB 220867 District Court of Hanover

Legal form: GmbH (equivalent to LLC)

Date of registration: 10/23/2020 by Max Hartmut Alexander Rhotert

Address: Wülfeler Str. 63, 30539 Hanover, Germany

Managing Director: Max Hartmut Alexander Rhotert, Hanover, 01/02/1966

Authorized signatory: Raatz Henry, Engen, 03/22/1976

History and network of the company (new company, managing director also leading several other companies –> suspicious):

History and network FTX Trading GmbH

Important names are marked. We will encounter them more often in the course of this post.

Please note: Hartmut Rhotert and Max Hartmut Alexander Rhotert seem to be the same person.

Let´s take a look at the managing director of FTX Trading GmbH:

Max Rhotert

This man is quite busy.

In the following companies except FTX Trading GmbH Mr. Rhotert is listed as managing director:

Alpina Film GmbH: HRB 728957 founded: 01/29/13 (balance last available year: assets: 546.531,91€ / liabilities: 546.531,91€)

LODE GmbH: HRB 221488 Founded: 03/23/2021 same company address as FTX Trading GmbH

And authorized signatory in the following:

Kephas Stiftung Gemeinnützige GmbH: foundation: 05/10/11 (balance last available year: assets: 4.724.976,00€ / liabilities: 4.724.976,00€) Kephas Stiftung is the owner of Catholic TV channel K-TV.

Their managing director is Patrick Gruhn.

CredoMedia GmbH HRB 77860: Founded: 01/29/13

Managing director also Patrick Gruhn. We will discuss this name later.

Now let’s look at the important company of the managing director Mr. Rhotert:

FTX Trading GmbH

The company is located here:

location FTX Trading GmbH

Google Maps Link

A rather unusual place for the headquarters of a company like FTX Trading GmbH.

It should be noted that a cosmetic studio is operated at this address by “Michaela Rhotert”. In the reviews of this studio, there is also a 5-star rating from “Max Rhotert”. Studio seems to be real. I think we got enough information at this point.

I would like to ask you to refrain from contacting these people as it cannot be guaranteed that they are involved in this whole FTX situation. It is not my intent to compromise personal information and it should only represent a connection between the managing director and company address of FTX Trading GmbH.

Here is the profile of authorized signatory of FTX Trading GmbH:

Henry Raatz

It´s the same foundation (Kaphas Stiftung) where Mr. Rhotert is also involved.

Let’s move on to the companies with an address in Switzerland, there are several here:

CHE-162.267.877

previous company names: DAAG Certificates GmbH (until 04/21/2022), Kali Hodling GmbH (until 12/29/2020)

Legal form: GmbH (equivalent to LLC)

Date of registration: 07/06/2020 by Crypto Lawyers GmbH and Ernest Ukaj

Address: Churerstrasse 135, 8808 Pfäffikon, Switzerland

Managing Director: Jürg Bavaud

Other important names: Ernest Ukaj

Location: this “office building” looks not bad for a small company:

Churerstrasse 135

Google Maps Link

But if you take a closer look, you will find that a shitload of different companies is located in the same building.

Now there are 73 active companies registered here:

registered companies under Churerstrasse 135

Please note that this website only shows active companies.

You can easily find Ponzi schemes and shell companies on this address back to 1994. Some examples are “Beltrust Management AG” and “IPCO Investment AG” these two companies alone have stolen ~100M$ of customer funds over just few years almost 3 decades ago. But I guess as long these companies share their profits everything is fine.

At this point I must thank this awesome ape right here u/EddyRosenthal. He was able go drive to this location and take some pictures. If im not mistaken not even 12 hours were spend since my original post in german sub until location was verified. Thats some Glacier Capital shit right here. Thanks a lot. Here are his fotos:

Churerstrasse 135 on 11/17/2022

you can find his post here: LINK

History and network of the company: (new company, managing director leading several other companies, company was renamed few times –> suspicious):

History and network FTX Certificates GmbH

Here we can find again Mr. Rhotert in relationship to FTX Europe AG. All important names are marked, and we will discuss them later.

Spoiler: these are some quite interesting personalities.

CHE-175.231.191

previous company name: Digital Assets DA AG (until 02/15/2022)

legal form: GmbH (equivalent to LLC)

Date of registration: 07/06/2020 by Ernest Ukaj

Address: Churerstrasse 135, 8808 Pfäffikon, Switzerland

Managing Director: Jürg Bavaud

Other important names: Ernest Ukaj, Rhotert Max, Robin Matzke

Company address: same “office building” as FTX Certificates GmbH

History and network of the company: (new company, managing director leading several other companies, –> suspicious):

History and network FTX Europe AG

Same names as at FTX Certificates GmbH, nothing changed.

At this point, the maximum number of possible images has been reached. Please continue to the second part .