A VIRTUAL currency unveiled earlier this year by Baroness Mone is to be relaunched after failing to secure enough backing.
The lingerie firm founder, 46, and her boyfriend Doug Barrowman, 53, hoped the Equi coin would be the “British Bitcoin”.
Mr Barrowman said a pre-sale offering had raised £5.4 million, but the public sale that opened in March was less successful. The Sunday Times suggested it raised only £500,000, with all investors who bought the Equi tokens now offered refunds.
The project has also proved controversial amongst a team of paid bloggers who promoted the currency.
Baroness Mone, who was born in Glasgow, became one of Scotland’s most successful entrepreneurs after founding the Ultimo lingerie brand, which developed the silicon-padded bra. She left the company in 2015 after it was taken over by a large Sri Lankan apparel firm.
In April this year, it was announced that, following an extensive review of the business, Ultimo was to cease trading in the UK.
She was made a Conservative Peer in the House of Lords in 2015 by former prime minister David Cameron and now advises on a range of business topics.
Mr Barrowman is the founder and chief executive of a private equity company called Aston Venture and also founder and chairman of the Knox Group, a financial planning service.
Together the couple founded Equi Capital in the hope backers would buy the coins, which could then be sold on digital currency exchanges or used to invest in tech businesses.
As part of the offering, Equi was to identify cutting edge tech companies that could attract investment through the new digital currency.
The company is now “redesigning” the project, with potential interest from Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.
The virtual cash market has become saturated since the success of Bitcoin, with 608 digital coin launches in the first six months of 2018 compared to 370 in 2017.
In an earlier interview, Mr Barrowman told Business Insider: “Essentially, what an Equi Token allows people to do is access our platform, have a look at the investment propositions we are showcasing and form a view, and they can use the Equi Tokens to effectively invest in the projects in a project-by-project basis.”
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