Thread by @uglygame

Wanna hear a story of one of football’s fastest ever crypto partner collapses? Then turn your clocks back to 28 Feb 22, when Birmingham City announced a two-year deal with “Ultimo GG” which would see the club being the “first Club from the EFL to enter the Metaverse.”
#BCFC
1/14

The website of Ultimo, doubtless keen to assure users that it wasn't just another crypto fraud, profiled its founders and emphasised the experience of the Ultimo Group and its execs. And it's true, there is a company called Ultimo Ventures and Ultimo Warrior. But...
2/14

Ultimo Ventures’ Companies House filings showed that, only a few weeks earlier, it had filed accounts showing the company as dormant to year end 31st May 2021. So, even if it had been trading since then, that’s not much of a track record.
3/14

Ultimo Warrior had filed accounts to Oct 20 showing a poor financial situation. Its following year’s accounts, filed last month, make for even less happy reading. It was also so late with this year’s Confirmation Statement that it was threatened with being struck off.
4/14

So, the company with whom Birmingham City signed the deal looked *at the time* to be a bit fly-by-night. Except, this was only the parent company. Neither of them were actually the company who would flogging the crypto.
5/14

That company was a newish venture called "Ultimo GG Ltd", which had, at the time, filed no accounts. It could not, IMO, be fairly regarded as having a track record of anything, least of all launching football clubs into the metaverse.
6/14

And while founder of Ultimo, Tobias Gooden, *was* a director of crypto vehicle "Ultimo GG", the other profiled execs were not. The only other director (and majority owner of Ultimo GG) was a Sebastian Gooden, who appeared to be the 21-year-old son of Tobias.
7/14

And so, far from selecting a well-established esports brand, Birmingham City chose as a metaverse and crypto partner a brand new company owned by the 21yo kid of founder of a company which was itself vastly overplaying its own level of experience.
8/14

The high level picture was clear at the time: Birmingham City took a flyer on a company where any due diligence would’ve shown the partner was built on fresh air.

The next question, then: how did it work out for Ultimo and for any City fans who bought in? Can you guess?
9/14

Well… and I know this is going to shock you, it collapsed within a month. The app was supposed to launch in Beta in early March, but the Twitter account went quiet on 22nd March and there’s been nothing on Insta or YouTube since the first week of April.
10/14

The company’s website vanished sometime in June or July, while the Discord is full of angry people alleging fraud. (To be clear: I am not alleging and have seen no evidence of fraud.)
11/14

And so, to the main event: how has the crypto done?

Well, if you had put £100 into Ultimo on 28th Feb, when Birmingham tweeted about the deal, it would now be worth… £5.49p. A loss of 94%.
12/14

Unlike other crypto projects, whose values crashed in the “crypto winter” but recovered slightly, there is no prospect of anyone getting their money back. The crypto has been abandoned. In one 24-hour period this month, fewer than £1 of the crypto was traded.
13/14

And so the flat circle of football and crypto continues. A club signs a deal with a company on whom it does zero due diligence, banks the cheque, the scheme collapses *in less than a month* and anyone who buys in on their club’s recommendation loses all their money.
14/14

Hold the phone!

Have received a tip of a *huge* red flag that Birmingham City missed in signing the deal.

In April 2011, the Mirror ran an investigation of a spate of what it called "bogus debt 'watchdog' firms."

Tobias Gooden of Ultimo was a director or one of them.
mirror.co.uk/opinion/money-…

This story is rooted in a press release from the Insolvency Service in late 2010.
mynewsdesk.com/uk/uk-governme…

The press release relates to "UK Bankruptcy Limited (UKB)" of which Tobias Gooden was a co-director and 50% shareholder.
…te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC1386…

According to the Insolvency Service, the company used "dishonest practices to exploit the demand for debt advice for its own financial gain."

It was the co-director and -owner of this business that Birmingham signed a crypto deal in February. A deal that lasted a month.

In summary, Birmingham City signed a deal with a business selling financial services products to its fans where the frontman of the company had previously had his business closed for using "dishonest practices to exploit the demand for debt advice for... financial gain."

Update: while the metaverse crypto project was launched on 28/02/22, Ultimo had, since 02/08/21, been City's "official esports partner" aiming to "set up a new esports team for the club as well as host tournaments and boot camps."

And what that means is that, if any Birmingham fans had looked them up then and bought the crypto, they'd currently be sitting on a more than 98% loss.

While the current 24hr trading volumes on the Ultimo crypto can be less than £1, in late July 21 it was frequently over £500,000. For several days post the esports announcement it was over £50,000. So it's possible that some people did quite nicely out of Ultimo.

Additional: originally, I said that the crypto company Birmingham City partnered with, Ultimo GG, was solely owned by the 21yo son of the owner of the parent company (who had a less-than-glorious business track record.) In fact, it’s a bit more complicated than that…
1/6

While the original articles of incorporation and notification of Person with Significant Control (a disclosure of the major shareholders) did say that, they were dated 12 June 2020. Originally, the company had a notional value of £100. But things soon changed…
2/6

Just six weeks later, the company issued a further 18m+ new shares, allocated to two individuals, giving the company a notional value of £1.8m+ and taking Sebastian from 100% owner to holding just half of one percent of the company.
3/6

And then, just two weeks later, the company issued a further 82m shares. Over 47m of these went to Tobias Gooden and the Ultimo parent company, of which Gooden is the 100% shareholder, giving him nearly 48% of the crypto company, three times the next largest shareholder.
4/6

This meant Ultimo GG had a notional share capital of £10,000,000, despite being just two months old and, presumably, having done very little business. (When it filed its account for y/e 30st June 2021, it showed only one employee, presumably Sebastian, who now held 3%.)
5/6

And so, by the time Birmingham City came to sign a deal with Ultimo in late summer 2021, they were in fact doing business with Tobias Gooden, a decision that I think some people might reasonably regard as being a questionable one.
6/6

I emailed City earlier today with a load of questions and a request for a statement. As and when they get back to me, I will make their response available here.

Holy hell, look at who Birmingham City got into bed with.

The absolute state of this. Just straightforward crypto shilling; nothing about metaverse experiences or fan engagement. Increasingly looks like this is an epic failure by City and one, I'm quite sure, that will involve a reasonable number of people who were left out of pocket.

On 10 March 2022, Birmingham City posted this tweet promoting its partnership with Ultimo. But I have seen documentary evidence that a senior person at the club was aware several days *before* that Ultimo would not be able to deliver what it promised. It's inexcusable.

The *best* case scenario here is that a communications error within the club meant that Birmingham continued to encourage fans to get involved in a crypto scheme that would cost them their entire investment even after a senior person at the club knew that Ultimo was not reliable.

Exclusive: the metaverse partnership that collapsed in less than a month and the football club that continued to promote it while knowing the firm wasn't what it claimed.
#BCFC @BCFC
theuglygame.wordpress.com/2022/11/01/the…