Being a serial entrepreneur and having invested in many of blockchain startups, I can say that Velvet Exchange is a new company which has not been launched yet. The platform has been in development for 1.5 years, and we are currently experimenting with beta testing and setting up the team. We are in discussion with several insurance companies, executive team members and other parties who will help us build a strong product.

Anastasia Chokan is the only one from the team who used to work for Dmitry Vasiliev in the past, but I consider her a good professional. Despite the overall background, I judge people by their skills, not groundless claims and accusations. I am also aware of the fact that Dmitry Vasiliev was very upset that Anastasia refused his job offer on a new project, and he is now doing everything to create negative PR around this project before it even launched (of course I hope I am wrong, but this is definitely what it looks like).

Our team is trying to build a transparent company, fully compliant with the relevant laws of the countries where it will conduct business. We have strong compliance procedures in place to meet regulatory frameworks. We are very serious about security and collaborating with top international cyber security firms. If you think there are better choices on the market, you are very much correct. And there is a reason for this — our platform is not launched, it is not 100% operational. Not all positions in the team are filled, but those who we have onboard so far, are all great and talented people, including Anastasia. I stand by this statement openly and strongly, no matter how many tomatoes will be thrown my way. My personal opinion, she is a victim of deception just like many users of wex.nzand its partners.

Anna Maksimova previously worked as a PR-manager for the media outlet Coin.Radio. It was her first experience in the crypto and blockchain industry, as before she was working in more traditional industries like financial and construction sectors. Another previous places of hire for Anna was VTB Bank, where she worked for 5 years and overall she holds an experience of 12 years. She is a sound professional with outstanding organizational skills, she has never worked for Wex.nz. The crypto world in Russia is a very tight-knit community with many people interacting in different settings on conferences and meetups, so it’s natural for there to be a flow of professionals between different projects and companies.

In regards to the claims that I am somehow connected to Dmitry Vasiliev, or his accomplices I would like to state that I am 44 years old, I have a family and 3 kids, I’ve founded many different businesses, and I do not normally publicly connect myself to them for various reasons. One of such reasons is this one and the very fact that a few thousand victims of fraud are now convinced that I am a representative of DV and somehow connected to Wex or its founders. I consider it a risk to the safety of my family, and try to distance myself from projects where risk is involved.

Other team members and I myself, have already received a number of threats from individuals in public groups and private messages. For the safety of our team members we treat ALL threats as real. To all of these people, I would like to say loud and clear: these threats are subject to the Russian Criminal Code, in particular to article 119 which is easily applicable, and moreover, Russian law enforcement welcomes such cases, because the proof needed for prosecution is quite straightforward, and the medium of delivery of the threats (including telegram messages) is not important.

There are a lot of cases where businesses have nominal shareholders that are usually silent and not involved in the business, but are just used as a face of the enterprise — this is simply not one of them. I am not a nominal shareholder for anyone but myself. I do not need Dmitry Vasiliev, nor his resources to make this company a success, especially when his business-practice obviously proved to harm its clients and operation.

I believe there is a room for another exchange in the world that can provide solutions to real-life problems. Being a programmer in the past and knowing the challenges crypto exchanges face with security, payments, and insurance, I realize there is a window of opportunity. Even though competition is fierce, the market is still immature, and new players and business models will pop up here and there.

I have founded a few crypto-related projects, one of them is Swap.Online- a functional decentralized exchange based on atomic swaps. Jury.Online- a project I have invested into marketing under the management of Alex Shevtsov. It was a successful ICO, and the product has been delivered as promised to investors. Even though the value of collected funds has significantly declined, and public interest in the product of decentralized escrow is simply not there, the team continues to support the project and do everything in their power to find a business model that can relate to the original idea. It was mentioned that there is a connection between Velvet and Wex because Jury.Online(same founder as Velvet) accepted Wex codes as investment methods. I wasn’t aware of this until it was mentioned in the chat, but I know that Jury.Onlinewas accepting hundreds of payment methods from ICO investors who passed KYC. Wex codes were among many.

Someone in the group chat also mentioned that the Wex database will be moved to Velvet.Exchange. No, we do not possess any databases. On top of that, every user of Velvet has to undergo compliance procedures, which include KYC/AML checks done by Lithuanian compliance specialists.

Even though the users of wex.nzare not the target audience of the Velvet.Exchange, I feel it is important to address the concerns that were raised by the community, simply out of respect for the people who lost funds with the wrong exchange. I hope this matter will be resolved soon for the benefit of deceived users of wex.nzand the industry in general.

Sincerely,

Vlad Smirnov