Said Gutseriev began actively investing in cryptocurrency platforms at the end of 2016, and in early 2021, he sold all his assets in crypto exchanges, concentrating on the traditional finance and retail markets. The exit from crypto projects took more than a year. The amount of the transactions was not disclosed.
Said Gutseriev, founder and managing partner of the investment fund Larnabel Ventures and majority owner of retail chains M.Video and Eldorado, has sold his stakes in three cryptocurrency exchanges — Currency.com, Capital.com.
Said Gutseriev’s stake in Zubr.io was bought by the international cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which is expanding its own network of developers by acquiring smaller companies.
Gutseriev’s stakes in Currency.com and Capital.com were bought out by UK-based technology entrepreneur Viktor Prokopenya, who was a co-owner and co-investor in these projects on a parity basis through his investment company VP Capital. Prokopenya is currently the sole owner of Currency.com and Capital.com.
Said Gutseriev and Viktor Prokopenya also jointly owned Banuba, a company engaged in developing AI technologies in computer vision and augmented reality. The startup’s top managers bought Prokopenya’s stake in Banuba and its divisions, while private investors acquired Gutseriev’s stake in Banuba. At the moment, Prokopenya and Gutseriev have no more joint projects.
As we learned, Viktor Prokopenya also had an opportunity to acquire a stake in Zubr.io, but the project did not arouse the businessman’s interest.
Representatives of Larnabel and VP Capital confirmed the fact of transactions. The number of deals is not officially disclosed, but according to market experts, the exit from cryptocurrency projects Zubr.io, Currency.com, and Capital.com could bring Gutseriev up to $300 million in profit.
The businessman began actively investing in cryptocurrency projects at the end of 2016, and in early 2020, on the wave of the market’s rise, he decided to get rid of his stakes. As Larnabel’s representative noted, the deals were made at a time when “Currency.com and Capital.com have become one of the market leaders in regulated cryptocurrency exchanges and investment apps.”
A representative of VP Capital said that “negotiations on the sale have been underway since the beginning of 2020. It took more than a year to finalize the transactions. Since Currency.com and Capital.com are regulated financial companies, the transactions required the approval of several regulators to close.”
It is also known that Said Gutseriev, in early 2020, unsuccessfully invested in the cryptocurrency Gram of Pavel Durov’s blockchain project TON. This project had over 170 investors who invested $1.7 billion in it. However, in May 2020, Durov announced the closure of TON and Gram — the U.S. Securities Commission (SEC) recognized Gram as a security and banned its issuance. Investors were given two options to get their money back: 72% in 2020 or 110% in April 2021. In early March 2021, TON investors filed a lawsuit against TON to get about $100 million of their money.
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Said Gutseriev is a businessman, Russian billionaire, and founder of the Larnabel investment fund, whose focus is on the technology sector. He is the principal owner of the M.Video and Eldorado retail chains. According to Forbes, in 2020, Said Gutseriev was ranked 80th on the list of Russia’s wealthiest business persons, with a fortune of $1.7 billion.
Viktor Prokopenya is a technology entrepreneur from the UK and the founder and owner of VP Capital. It is an investment company supporting more than a dozen large international innovative ML/AI projects, including those on the blockchain.
