Ambrosus, the blockchain-based pharmaceutical supply chain project, caused confusion and dramatic price action yesterday as rumors of a takeover or partnership with rival supply chain company VeChain swept the crypto community. Talk of exit scams and shady business practices quickly took hold, seeing a pump and then a dump of the AMB token price, before clarification, of a sort, came from Ambrosus CEO Angel Versetti.
Ambrosus SOGC Renaming
The confusion started when eagle-eyed Twitter users spotted that Ambrosus had been renamed as VeChain GmbH in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, the Swiss business registry, which led to the initial theory that VeChain had bought out Ambrosus. It was then suggested that Ambrosus CEO Versetti had parted ways with the company and that the CTO Stefen Meyer was running the company, with Versetti and other team members engineering the recent AMB price rise in order to sell their tokens at the best possible price. No official announcements came out from either party announcing any kind of collaboration or takeover, allowing the rumor mill to spin on.
@GunDkiller – $VET swollowed $AMB ,
could you investigate this bruh..? Huge if true..!
— KrishnA (@saikrishnadasri) April 3, 2019
It quickly became apparent that there was no such merger or takeover, and that Ambrosus may have simply tried to steal the VeChain name for use in Europe, where VeChain currently doesn’t operate. Ambrosus didn’t help matters when they posted a tweet referencing the start date of VeChain’s upcoming summit, offering to reveal some news if they received an amount of re-tweets that was eerily similar (ok, identical) to the start date of the summit:
Let all #crypto communities join hands and bring this post to 1804 retweets.
As soon as we reach it, we will post an update!$AMB pic.twitter.com/DgwEzcOQy6— Ambrosus (@AmbrosusAMB) April 3, 2019
With the whole thing suddenly seeming like either a PR stunt gone wrong or simply some underhand business practices. The 13% pump that AMB had seen shortly after the rumors initially surfaced quickly reversed and dropped the price back to exactly where it had been, as supporters of both companies looked for clarification. VeChain CEO Sunny Lu took to Twitter to confirm that the news was nothing to do with them and that they were seeking clarification on the legality of the supposed name change:
Official statement: VeChain has not considered acquiring Ambrosus GmbH and is not acquiring any interest in Ambrosus GmbH.
— Sunny LU, VeChain (@sunshinelu24) April 3, 2019
Later, Versetti took to Reddit to explain the situation from his side:
Not a Great Look for Ambrosus
Versetti’s attempts to distance himself and the Ambrosus project from the actions of the “company related to a team member of Ambrosus” fell on largely deaf ears, with many Ambrosus supporters questioning the professionalism of the activity. As one poster put it, “From an outside perspective, it would seem that this can only tarnish the reputation of this emerging blockchain enterprise?” Indeed, trying to usurp your competition by stealing their name, whether the company in question is connected directly or indirectly with them, is a terrible look for Ambrosus.
Versetti has also put to bed rumors that he had left the company in his efforts to maintain the status quo. The fact is that even though the initial rumors were false, what has transpired as fact still looks bad for Ambrosus, and with legal action potential to follow it could get worse.
