An analyst who has been highly positive towards Arbitrade and its “dignity” token all year is now expressing serious concerns about the cryptocurrency exchange and coin company.

Ronnie Moas, of Standpoint Research, is calling on Arbitrade to give full disclosure about its claim that it has title to $15 billion of gold bullion.

He told The Royal Gazette that he now sees “yellow and orange flags and smoke” and has had heartbreaking messages from people who have suffered significant investment losses on the crypto token that he had been bullish on in his subscription service newsletter and through posts on Twitter. Mr Moas has 45,000 followers on the social media platform.

Meanwhile, Arbitrade’s board of directors said they had called on Mr Moas to stop writing about dignity and Arbitrade in his e-mails and on Twitter, and dismissed claims that he had been misled by its executives and consultants, or about its “timelines for delivering certain items”.

Mr Moas is the founder of Standpoint Research, which lists among his achievements the authoring of more than 1,000 research reports and appearances in more than 100 television, newspaper, radio and magazine interviews since 2014. He has also been a headline speaker at a number of conferences.

Speaking to the Gazette, Mr Moas said he had received heartbreaking messages from people who had invested in the token and now stood to lose their life savings after its price plummeted. Dignity was yesterday valued on CoinMarketCap at a fraction above half a cent, having fallen 85 per cent during the past month.

Arbitrade incorporated in Bermuda this year and has named Victoria Hall, on Victoria Street, as its global headquarters. The $6.5 million office block was acquired by Arbitrade Properties (Victoria Hall) Ltd, a subsidiary of Arbitrade Property Holdings.

The company is in the process of having its subsidiary, Arbitrade Exchange (Bermuda) Ltd, licensed under the Digital Asset Business Act 2018.

Arbitrade has made a number of bold claims during the past six months, including its plan to use gold bullion to back five crypto tokens, with each token backed by $1 worth of bullion. One of the tokens is dignity, and it has a total supply of three billion tokens. At present there are 523 million dignity tokens in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap.

Len Schutzman, chairman of Arbitrade, said Arbitrade had “title” to 395,000 kilograms of gold bullion, worth about $15.5 billion, to back its crypto tokens, and that this gold had been verified by an independent public accounting firm. However, the company did not identify who had given it title to the gold, under what conditions, nor where the gold is or the name of the independent accounting firm. A reason given later for this was that it was commercially sensitive information and the company was legally bound by non-disclosure and privacy obligations.

Mr Moas said he wants Arbitrade to “come clean” on its gold claim, and to provide answers to questions he has asked them in the past few weeks.

He said his outlook on Arbitrade had also changed for a number of reasons. On Monday he shared some his thoughts on the Wild West Crypto Show online podcast.

Speaking to The Royal Gazette, he said: “The deal-breaker for me was that I sent them [Arbitrade] a couple of dozen questions last week, and they did not respond to any. I don’t think they had an answer to my questions.

“They are saying they have $15 billion of gold, but the DIG [dignity] coin is trading at less than a penny right now. If you have $15 billion, your name does not trade at $3 million on CoinMarketCap.”

Arbitrade’s board of directors last week said it was legally bound by non-disclosure agreements and obligations, and had been “as open and transparent as possible with Mr Moas on everything that the company was working on which could be publicly shared”.

The statement added: “The company recognises that Mr Moas has been a loyal supporter of Arbitrade and is an authority in the blockchain space and, as a result, the company has not contradicted him up until this point; however, this behaviour has now become unacceptable.

“We trust that on mature reflection Mr Moas would accept the position that the company is legally bound to take as a result of the NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] to which it is subject.”

When asked what he felt now needed to happen Mr Moas, who owns three million dignity tokens, said: “At the very least I want there to be full disclosure before this gets listed on any other exchanges. I don’t think they can clear this up unless they can show the $15 billion of gold.”

The Royal Gazette has sent a number of questions to Arbitrade and will publish further news in the coming days.

• The video of Mr Moas on the Wild West Crypto Show can be seen here https://youtu.be/NCvPjnLyYLE