



With Bitcoin recovering from under $3,300 in December to around $5,500 Wednesday, the cryptocurrency industry has had life breathed back into it. Apparently, it has also given cryptocurrency upstart Coin Citadel (OTCPK: CCTL) a heartbeat as well.



Silent since December, the Plattsburgh, New York-based company, said on Wednesday that it has received a sizeable order of $1.36 million for 200 Bitcoin ATM machines (Satoshi1 units made by Genesis Coin) with a price tag of $6,800 each. That’s a tall order for a company with a market capitalization of just $295,330, according to data from OTC Markets Group.



Shares of CCTL are down 25% at $0.0003 with about three hours left in the trading session at the time of this writing. The stock initially rose to $0.0005 but a few hits on the bid took it into negative territory. More than 306 million shares have traded already on Wednesday, compared to an average volume of 13.5 million per day over the last 30 days.



The first Bitcoin ATM installation will be at the Los Angeles corporate headquarters of CrowdGather, Inc. (OTCPK:CRWG), a digital asset company that has been radio silent since last June as it continues to restructure operations. CrowdGather was at one time a growing company owning and operating public forums and a social gaming platform called Plaor. Funding problems and growing indebtedness led to the sale of the Plaor assets.



Although CrowdGather released no news on this matter itself, shares of CRWG are up 21.6% at $0.0045 in afternoon trading.



As of last June, CRWG chief executive Sanjay Sabnani said that company was working with – and had become a shareholder in – leading forum startup Tapatalk. Tapatalk is positioned for the future of forums being reward-based with decentralized governance and ownership. The company specializes in providing an integrated interface and a mobile app for communities worldwide that typically were hosted on local servers.



If you never heard of Tapatalk, you’re not alone, but the company is a quietly growing VC-backed player that is introducing blockchain to its platform. The company can boast that the forums connected to Tapatalk have an aggregate registered user base of 300 million people, which puts it on par with household names like Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Reddit.



Thomas Pillsworth, who assumed the role of CEO at Coin Citadel in December, explained that the first location serves multiple purposes. The obvious is that it provides access to people looking to purchase Bitcoins through Coin Citadel. The second is more forward-looking insomuch as Coin Citadel is cozying up to CrowdGather, saying it intends “to host semi-regular meetups at their [CrowdGather’s] offices in order to develop ties to Bitcoin developers and startups that we intend to partner with.”



Pillsworth shed additional light on the company’s plans as it launches operations and prepares filings to receive a MTB license (a money transmitter license required individually by each state a company plans to operate). Upon receipt of all approvals, Coin Citadel intends to re-open Bitcoiner7, its online exchange platform, effectively creating a diverse digital and physical network at the core of its Bitcoin initiatives, while it explores other value propositions in the cryptocurrency space.



Readers may take note that the “About CrowdGather” section of Coin Citadel’s PR mentions Plaor as being a subsidiary of CrowdGather, an asset described (along with the forum network) as being sold last summer per CRWG’s news release. There is also a discrepancy in the total number of ATMs sold, where the headline in the CCTL new release reads “200” and the first line of the PR shows “80”. Based upon the total order figure of $1.36 million and each unit costing $6,800, mathematically 200 is correct. We have reached out to both CRWG and CCTL for clarity, but have not ye received a response. The article will be edited to reflect correspondence at a future time.

