Banx.io has offloaded less than 1% of its total token supply in the three months since this publication first examined the project. Six months prior, creator Mark Lyford told readers that half the Ban
Banx.io has offloaded less than 1% of its total token supply in the three months since this publication first examined the project. Six months prior, creator Mark Lyford told readers that half the Banx IPO had sold. The actual figure falls below 6%, according to calculations derived from data Banx.io itself published.
Banx holders remain locked out of trading. The promised integration with BitShares, which Lyford set as a December deadline, never materialized. His recent blog posts and video updates make no mention of BitShares. Lyford claims a medical condition has sidelined him. Last November, he streamed from a Frank Turner concert. He also announced the purchase of a new home while his investors cannot recover their money.
Banx Shares is a digital currency controlled and promoted by Mark Lyford. Prospective buyers saw charts suggesting it was among the fastest-growing cryptocurrencies. The statistics were either manipulated to the point of deception or entirely fabricated. Banx's rise through the CoinMarketCap rankings occurred at an unsustainable pace. The climb happened because Lyford's own exchange, the only place to trade Banx, enforced a price floor. No transactions occurred below that level. Despite this inactivity, CoinMarketCap used the floor price to calculate market capitalization. After this publication contacted CoinMarketCap's owner, Banx was removed from the rankings. Banx now appears only on a clone site operated by Lyford.
Banx Capital made implausible claims about company revenue. The firm stated it expected to mine thousands of bitcoins during 2015, years after halting its mining operation, which was never verified to exist in the first place.
In October 2015, Lyford told us BitShares integration would arrive by December at the latest. He also predicted the IPO would sell out by February, at which point he would open Banx to the open market with or without BitShares. Late that month, he promised integration "within weeks." The same assurance went to CoinMarketCap's owner. The deadline passed. Integration never came. Each missed date brought a new target. BitShares is a blockchain that would let Banx trade without Lyford's involvement, stripping him of pricing control and subjecting the token to market forces.
Lyford has withdrawn from public view, attributing his absence to illness. Yet he found time to broadcast from a concert venue in mid-November, just before failing to meet his latest BitShares deadline. During this period, when customers could not access their funds, Lyford purchased real estate. His recent Periscope streams and blog posts abandon any discussion of BitShares. Instead he touts upcoming ventures with sparse detail: "Entrepreneur Action" and Remittio, a related project that remains unfinished.
In his announced "return to work," Lyford posted an inspirational essay copied word-for-word, including the header image, from another author's site. We contacted the original creator. He had not given Lyford permission and had made no sale. Lyford's blog contains plagiarized material.
Remittio holds its own credibility marker: an award from Web Summit, a conference. The timing raises questions. Remittio had no website when it received the honor. Web Summit has drawn scrutiny from tech observers over practices that resemble extracting fees from startups. Lyford and his partner Michael Taggart carry a track record of failure. Remittio has yet to launch, though Lyford promised release later that month. Their previous venture, LottoShares, collapsed. The fundraiser ended on January 1st after raising only 3% of its target. An email circulated to LottoShares backers offered either Remittio investment or fund return. Forum members report that investors have received their money back upon request. The campaign was considered defunct in early December when falling short became apparent. The email blamed the shortfall on advertising restrictions. Bitcoin news outlets had banned casino-related promotions. Coindesk and Bitcoinmagazine received mention. Notably absent from the explanation: Lyford owns digitalmoneytimes.com, which he markets as a "leading" cryptocurrency news source in his seminars and Periscope broadcasts. Lyford has accumulated losses. Banx Mint never launched. Mining operations failed. The cryptocurrency exchange went live but shows minimal volume across its markets. The trading platform did not materialize or missed its targets.
We reached out to Lyford via Skype and requested comment on BitShares integration and other concerns. He discontinued contact. This writer's IP address was blocked from banxcapital.com, though a VPN circumvented the restriction.
Without BitShares integration, Banx remains subject to the price controls at Banx.io. No sales can occur below a set floor. Because virtually no one buys at that price, the open order books see almost no activity. Investors wanting to exit have nowhere to go. No other markets for Banx exist. Banx.io once paid dividends, but half came as additional Banx tokens. Bitcoin dividends failed to arrive last month. Given the brief dividend period, few if any investors recouped their initial outlay.
CoinMarketCap no longer displays Banx in marketcap rankings, but the site retains historical volume data. In October, Lyford claimed most volume came from off-market trades of people buying IPO shares with fiat currency. He offered no evidence. Since virtually no trades occur on Banx.io's public books, any volume would originate there. Days after this publication's first article, the reported 24-hour volume plummeted from over $8,000 to under $3,000. The sharp drop suggests the figure has some connection to reality. A fabricated number would likely remain constant or climb. This drop indicates some authenticity in the reported trading data.
The IPO share count and the claimed circulating supply don't align with Lyford's February sell-out target. We analyzed reported 24-hour volumes by sampling each Monday in a given period and averaging the results. We cross-referenced Bitcoin's price and Banx's listed price using the same method. From October 19th through January 4th, Banx averaged roughly $2,875 in reported daily volume. Bitcoin averaged $365.62. Banx.io adjusted its price floor three times during this span. The token averaged 0.00592 BTC per unit, or roughly $2.16. At $2.16 per token and $2,875 in daily volume, approximately 1,331 Banx sold per day. Over 83 days, this yields around 110,473 tokens sold, less than 1% of the 12,000,000 total supply.
If investors expect to recover funds once all tokens sell and Lyford opens the market, they face a long wait. We considered whether our article might have derailed an otherwise viable IPO. The timing suggests our reporting had an impact. Yet even Banx's peak pace would not have sustained the target of selling 12 million tokens by February.
Before October and the CoinMarketCap removal, reported volume ran much higher. On June 24th, Lyford posted on Bitcointalk that "roughly half" the supply had sold. From June 22nd through October 12th, Banx averaged $8,182 in daily volume at an average price of 0.0072 BTC, or about $1.80 in USD. Over seventeen weeks, an investor might expect 4,545.5 tokens to sell per day, totaling 540,921 tokens. This represents 4.5% of the total supply. A faster pace than the post-October slowdown, but still far from the claimed half-sold.
Since Lyford's June declaration of "roughly half" sold, he has managed 5.5% additional sales by his own numbers. Since his October forecast of February completion, less than 1% has sold. Even at the earlier 4.5% rate per seventeen weeks, clearing the entire IPO would take 377 weeks, or 7.2 years. Banx launched in November 2014. Few data points show total sales reaching or exceeding that earlier period's pace. The accumulated sales fall far short of the remaining 94.5% needed. Banx appreciated in 2014, but the likelihood of half the 12,000,000 tokens moving by June, or at any point since, seems remote.
Midway through the IPO, Lyford doubled the token count from 6 million to 12 million. He said this was acceptable because he also doubled what investors held. He framed it as necessary to meet the company's ambitions. His half-sold claim came after the doubling. The decision to expand the supply contradicts market reality. Few buyers exist at the current price. The original goal was $2 million raised. That cap dissolved long ago.
No functioning blockchain explorer currently displays Banx transactions. The Banx-QT wallet refuses to connect. According to bchain.info, the network processed its last block 43 days ago. If Banx's network is offline, user balances are just numbers Lyford and his associates manage. We are working to verify whether the network is down.
Despite falling far short of his stated goals, Lyford extracted significant money. Using the earlier rough calculations, he collected approximately $1.2 million worth of Banx since June alone, based on his reported figures. That excludes revenue from banxplatinum seminars and related activities. Over a million dollars flowed from new cryptocurrency investors to a man offering no tangible benefit to the community. Those investors now avoid crypto for years. The entire ecosystem pays a price.
Lyford presents himself as a Bitcoin authority. New viewers watching his content expect Bitcoin investment opportunities, not Banx. The misdirection siphons capital that might otherwise strengthen Bitcoin's ecosystem. Banx represents a failure for those who invested. It has damaged the larger crypto community. For Lyford and his skeleton team of developers and promoters, it proved lucrative. During this investigation, we contacted Lyford. He cut off communication and removed this writer from Skype.
