The founder of the company believes that the event was “a success” despite the controversy it sparked and the resignation of the presenters and sponsors.
The hangover from the controversial crypto festival organized by MundoCrypto last weekend in Madrid has left the organizers with a bittersweet taste, in addition to a brutal marketing campaign and an increase in people registered on their platform since then.
The event aimed to achieve a Guinness record for attendance of the largest number of people wearing virtual reality glasses at the same time. It was the most anticipated moment of the night, and yet it failed miserably. “It is very difficult to achieve and it was a shame that it failed, but we are going to try again and we are going to achieve it,” warns Mani Thawani, CEO of the company, in conversation with EL MUNDO just 48 hours after the appointment.
The Controversy
The controversy surrounding the meeting continues to rage even after it has taken place. The National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) assured days before that neither MundoCrypto nor several of the sponsors of the event had the authorization to provide financial services and that, since July of last year, MundoCrypto itself has been part of the supervisor’s gray list, which includes entities that could be raising funds or providing services of a financial nature without any type of permit or being registered with the CNMV.
His warning triggered the resignation of the presenters, Cristina Pedroche and Jorge Fernández, and also that of several sponsors. Some even doubted that the crypto festival would finally take place, but it did happen and Thawani now calls it “a success.” “I am very happy with the impact. The crypto community is with us and is supporting us. Now we have to show our strength as a company,” he says.
Thawani is Optimistic Despite Criticisms
Far from fearing the criticism and controversy that the meeting unleashed, Thawani puts on the table the reasons for his optimism: 4,000 new requests for instructors on his platform and more than 30,000 registrations in total since last Saturday. “We want to repeat the event even before a year, but it is not safe because we do not want to tire the people who follow us,” he says.
The business model that Thawani supposedly wants to promote is based on the formula “to learn to earn”, and on a platform that allows “connecting instructors and students with a new technology within the metaverse.” Translated, his idea is none other than to copy the formula of companies like Uber, Airbnb, or Glovo and enable a digital space that puts supposed crypto professors in contact with students interested in training and courses on currencies and digital assets.
The teachers – who are called “instructors” here because there is no regulated training for them – are independent (and probably autonomous) and the fees they receive will depend on a scale that MundoCrypto has yet to establish. “We will check that the content they create respects the law and that it is informed about the risk involved in investing in cryptocurrencies,” Thawani said at the Metaverse Day presentation.
By Audy Castaneda
