After an ICO and a controversial ousting earlier this year, Liza Aizupiete, the former Managing Director of cryptocurrency exchange, Globitex, and her team are back, with the launch of Fintelum.
In compliance with the 5th EU AML directive, the venture’s first product is a toolkit that caters to companies and startups looking to raise funds via token offering process. The service includes: contributor KYC profiling, live ID verification, AML checks, co-management of crypto funds and issuance of the Ethereum-based eip-20 (erc-20) tokens.
The company says that it has made huge strides in implementing this product, by most recently securing two licenses from the Estonian financial intelligence unit (FIU). The licensed activities are providing a virtual currency wallet service and providing services of exchanging a virtual currency against a fiat currency.
Fintelum’s second product to market will be a free web mobile and desktop open source wallet for multiple cryptocurrencies. This will effectively allow anyone to “be their own bank” by utilising the private key management system, the company claims.
Aizupiete comments: “The next 12 months are going to be game changers for the business and the industry with the launch of our new products. It’s a very proud moment for me and my old team to embark on such a sizeable project.”
Vulture capital
In July, Coin Rivet interviewed Aizupiete about her departure from Globitex. When asked what she would do differently if she could start over, she replied: “I would ensure that venture capital does not become vulture capital”.
Addressing her decision to write an open letter about what went down, she said: “Following the biggest deceit I have ever experienced professionally, friends and acquaintances and many of the over 4,000 contributors to the Globitex GBX ICO were approaching me with a perfectly natural question: “Liza, what happened to your company? Why did you step down from your own creation?”
“After a couple of tormenting months of coming to terms with the new reality, I decided to share my story to all those who asked and to those might ask down the line. Without naming any names, we as a team decided it would be a good lesson to learn from.”
The open letter, she added, aimed to give a heads up to both startups and venture capitalists. “On the one hand for startups, to be careful and never give up control of your created company, trust doesn’t always work. On the other hand for venture capitalists, we want to stress that it is unacceptable to take companies away from their creators,” Aizupiete commented.
Read the full interview here.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.