29 Comments
Mar 29, 2020Liked by Kristaps Mors

Ido from Colminey here.

My net investment (deposits minus withdrawals) was around €7350 in Envestio and €11200 in Grupeer. The rest of my account balance is unactualised profit.

On Grupeer, most of my funds are invested in legit loan originators like StikCredit, Ibancar, CubeFunder and DoZarplati. Some of it is likely to be recovered even if Grupeer collapses.

Even if we accept those investments as loss and deduct them from my overall earnings, my remaining profit from P2P since I began documenting my earnings is over €7500 (not counting affiliate income, which is much smaller).

As you know, I have written critically about Grupeer in the past. I don't encourage people to invest in anything, but merely document my own investment journey. Affiliate links are not a key element in my blog, nor in my motives.

Yes, sometimes I feel the need to calm people down. And yes, sometimes my trust is misplaced. But at least, myself and other bloggers operate on the belief that human beings are decent, and thrive on spreading hope. Meanwhile, you operate on the assumption that all people are bad, and you thrive on spreading resentment.

You may be a better investor, but I'm a better person.

Cheers.

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author

I like how many bloggers try to ignore the lost profit when it comes to losing money, but do count the profit when all is fine, even if the "profit" is the same - unrealised, sitting in the platform. If you recover anything from Grupeer, let me know - will update stats.

I have nothing personal against you or any other bloggers, I am just annoyed by the exaggerated optimism that results in huge damage for everyone. And even if you are on this list, in my opinion - you are one of the guys that actually try to add some value to whole community, so keep it up being a better person and I hope you will get better at investing as well. Good luck!

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Mar 31, 2020Liked by Kristaps Mors

You are an oasis in the middle of this desert. Thank you for writing your thoughts, I wouldn't expect anything less. I hope you can continue for a long, long time. The "world" doesn't need more nice bloggers, nor the ones that only write the good things.

We need people who say the truth, especially when related with bad things of this magnitude. Please keep it up Kristaps!

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Thank you!

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Jan 12, 2021Liked by Kristaps Mors

You got banned from a conference that clearly do more harm to investors than good (and they have to pay for it!), I think in the end it would prove to you as a positive thing. Anyway, p2p fraudulent bloggers are only the tip of the iceberg, if you see the video of 'investors' going around on TikTok, this is a phenomenon that cannot be stopped...unfortunately. It is too easy to go back, delete or change past posts so that you have a great investing record, everyone can be a great investor-blogger that way (my best example is Lars, talking about people involved in conferences as well). This obviously ruin the space also for the legit ones, people that maybe put 80% of the time into the research process and 20% into marketing and not the reverse...but hey, entertainers gonna entertain...

Keep on Kristaps, you are doing a good job

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Thanks!

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Mar 30, 2020Liked by Kristaps Mors

Dearest Kristaps, I give you all my support too. I am really grateful to you. Based on your advises and your personal support I have been able to recover approximately 20k euros which are a relevant part of the total savings I had invested in the shady Baltic crowdfunding industry. Thank you very much!!!

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Glad to hear! Good luck with future investments.

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Your platform rating, based in an objective analisis and investigation, is like a fucking crystal ball that predictes the near future of this p2p platforms!! Thank you!

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Thank you!

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I'm also thankful for your work and advices. You can be harsh at times, but you're always substantive. I decided to only invest in few platforms which have been running for some time now and were rated well by you, and now I'm happy that I had your rating to aid me in my diversification process. That surely saved me some money!

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Next months will be hard for all platforms, but hope it will turn out OK for you!

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where's p2p-millionaire in your listing?

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Good question, maybe I should add him in next update.

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Hi Kristaps - Georg from Crowdlendingrocks.eu

First of all, thank you for adding me to your list and now having me on your radar. I think it is important to tell the whole truth, good and bad. Visiting platforms we have often discussed if there should be regulations on bloggers as well as on the platforms. You provide some kind of regulation like that and I have to say that I actually like it. Keep up the good work and please call me out if you think I am crossing the line.

It is true that bloggers make affiliate income. In about the year I have been blogging about P2P I have made an amount equal to what I made working two weeks as an IT consultant. So it is not an income I can retire on and play golf in Portugal. However, if I would run Google ads telling people that P2P are safe investments, then I could have made a lot more. I, like you, do not like the "it's fine" attitude of some bloggers. P2P is 10% of my total investment portfolio I consider high risk and I have not been hiding that.

Please don't compare me to Jørgen. I think we are very different. I do not rehash the information I get from the platform. I have been doing direct transcribed audio interviews, so whatever was asked and answered is what is in my interviews. Before each interview, I have been asking the community if they had questions for the platforms, so I could ask them under the visits. So my intent was to try to add value for investors with my articles. I will give you one thing, my pictures like very much like Jørgens. Haha. You are right about that! But that is just a lack of imagination from my side. I visited platforms with affiliate agreement but did not write about them because I thought they would be bad investments.

I lost money in P2P. True. Today I actually know very few people in baltic P2P who did not.

But that is part of the game. If I want to blog about it, I have to put my money where my mouth is. Do I have an education in doing due diligence on fintech platforms? Absolutely not! Have I been asking all the right questions? Clearly not! That is also why I have been asking for help. I am in no way an expert. I am just a private investor trying to learn and sharing whatever I find with the community. The truth is, none of the bloggers or even the most experienced P2P investors know half of the truth about any of these companies. But that does not mean we should stop trying. I will be happy to sit down with you in Riga and fins some better questions for me to ask the next time around if all is not burned to the ground before I get there.

About the conference and my participation on stage, can I really offer anything? Maybe not. But if you look at what I have asked to be part of it is a panel discussion regarding the topic "Finance bloggers and our role and responsibility in the P2P ecosystem". It is moderated by Target Circle.

Especially the word "responsibility" and that target circle was attending that I think is important here. The responsibility of bloggers. Could bloggers be excluded from earning affiliate income if they were stepping over the line or being too positive (blogger regulation)? What about Target Circle? What minimum requirements should there be in order for them to take a platform in? In my opinion, not all platforms should have this privilege. What could be done to improve the current system so platforms/bloggers could no longer take advantage of investors freely if they were dishonest? This was actually why I asked you if you were attending the conference. I think you and your big mouth could be a good addition to this panel discussion. However, it now seems that your big mouth got you banned from attending. Don't worry, I will be very happy to take some of your input to the panel discussion so you can still have a voice there.

One thing, though. I actually don't think Bernhard deserved to be called out for "promoting Grupeer" in the way you did on the Telegram group. He asked exactly the right questions and was very critical. He did a really good job even though he still has invested in Grupeer. That exactly how it should be done.

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Thank you for such a detailed response! I agree, comparison with Jorgen is not completely fair and I loved this post: https://www.crowdlendingrocks.eu/can-you-trust-p2p-bloggers-are-they-telling-the-whole-truth-will-they-share-everything-when-they-are-the-dumb-money/

I have no problem with bloggers making money from affiliate, and if someone makes a bad investment - that happens every day, no reason to blame. But if someone promotes super risky investments, and even scams as "safe", and no one cares and no one takes any responsibility - not affiliate networks, not bloggers - that is not OK. And the way Karlis acts - that is just ridiculous.

I partly agree about Bernhard - he helped others with his trips and questions, and I removed the pictures after he asked me.

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Great work so far! Thank you very much!

I know a few blogger more, who are invested at least in one of the above mentioned platforms... The sadest thing about that is, they do not give any update, what is happening in the P2P world. And that fact is really annoying. Earning money by affiliate, advertisment and other bullshit, nothing else is of their interest.

Consequently, it is luck for the P2P communitiy that there are a few guys at least, digging deep and asking uncomfortable questions. However, it was sometimes a bit late to retreat from the platform :-)

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Thank you!

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Good article, but the evaluations the platforms are not correct. With this questions, and without real finance reports for each LO you can not be sure which one is riskier than another.

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Good read like always! Why are P2P bad Investors ?

Their business is not investing, their business is selling Affialiate

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Can you do a review of PeerBerry?

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Isn't it too early to say that Grupeer is gone and the money is lost? there is no information about this more than speculations right now from a few investors, am I right or do you have information that no one else has?

I understand you talk about Monethera now since they "temp" closed all activity, incl support to the pandemic is over. Yeah it sure looks like a bad excuse to exit and they were always shady in my eyes too so that money sure can be lost like envestio and so on.

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About Grupeer - withdrawals are not working, management is silent, there is very strong reason to believe they mislead investors about guarantees, and set up fake Loan Originators. 1100+ investors in Telegram are in panic mode, and company does not care to answer them or explain anything? How much info do you need?

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Withdrawals are working for me.

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There are many platforms/companies that dont mind telegram and groups there so dont see that as alarming ( these groups tend to have some people wanting to scare more then needed. Im not saying its true or not for each case though) But yeah if withdrawals are late for some investors, it's more of a problem. Ive seen some get their money and some are waiting like you say, they did write about this on the site as a popup last week. They dont talk much on social media indeed, ive only seen they came with an announcement 27 march on their blog. So it's 3 days ago, but more info is needed ofc. But cant say im 100% writing it of right now hoping for the best

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Well, there are several employees of Grupeer in this Telegram group - so they are fully aware of everything going on there. Many have sent messages to CEO also on linkedin, email, etc.

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Peerberry no finacials and crazy claims

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Interesting that you say diversifacation in P2P doesn't work. If you choose the platforms wisely, what's wrong with the diversification?

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The main problem is that there is not much to choose from. Or at least I have not seen many good P2P platforms yet.

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