Thread by @MephistoRes

#NorthernData is quite talkative about its acquisitions. Yet, one acquisition of a related party it did not tell investors is the one of Swiss Hashtrend AG in 2020. A 🧵, respective sources numbered in brackets.

Founded in 2018, Hashtrend (HT) was a crypto-mining venture led by Northern Data’s (ND) current CEO and CTO [1]. HT held a 20% stake in Whinstone at the time it merged with ND in early 2020 through which it became a material shareholder in ND, owning more than 700k shares.[2]

HT had a subsidiary, Aliviar GmbH, developing a mining management software Steiger [3]. Steiger seems to be employed until today. Logs of the documentation show that copyright changed from Hashtrend to ND subsidiary Northern Data Software GmbH in Jan 2021
bitbucket.org/steigerapp/ste…

Moreover, in an interview one former HT employee states that HT was acquired by a listed company from Germany in the summer of 2020. A similar hint is found on the Linkedin page of an advisor to HT [4]
mybilio.de/die-gruender (search for “Hashtrend”)

Additionally, the imprint of Steiger’s website refers to ND, see my.steiger.app

You may wonder: If HT was a shareholder in ND since the Whinstone merger, wouldn’t ND buy its own shares by acquiring HT few months after the Whinstone deal? Interestingly, the lock-in agreement made an exception for HT to transfer its ND shares to its respective shareholders[2]

Then, who are the shareholders of HT? While the Swiss registry is not of help, another company shared the same address as Alivar, Internolix AG [5]. The 2018 annual report of Internolix shows a 41% stake in HT [6]. Data on other shareholders could not be identified.

Side Note: The main business of Internolix, besides minor ventures, is adult entertainment [7]. Its UBO are Jochen Hochrein and Klaus Kahler [8]. The former is known for being on the management team of Wire Card AG until Sep 2004 being succeeded by infamous Dr. Markus Braun.

@NorthernDataAG Could you elaborate on this acquisition?

@miachaelbark2 @BuschmannGeorg @WinterLars

HT, since renamed, entry in the Swiss corporate registry: zefix.ch/de/search/enti…
List of sources: 0bin.net/paste/kRxmEPTe…

Disclaimer: We are short Northern Data and profit from a decline in its share price, thus have a big conflict of interests. We may increase/decrease our position at any time. Scrutinize our posts.

@michaelbarck2 @downhillcap