Mining City finally admitted what everyone already knew: it's broke.
CEO Greg Rogowski sent an email this week announcing the company has frozen all withdrawals and payouts. Affiliates haven't been able to touch their money for over a year, mostly because BTCV—the cryptocurrency at the heart of the scheme—collapsed.
Rogowski's email reads like a greatest hits of excuses. He blamed failed crypto projects that never caught on. He blamed a mining theft comparable to the Genesis Mining heist. He blamed Chinese and Kazakhstani governments shutting down mining operations. He blamed the Russia-Ukraine war making it impossible to pay for electricity at Russian mining farms due to sanctions. He blamed faulty compensation software that overpaid members and created legal problems. He blamed regulatory investigations into money laundering and multi-level marketing.
What he didn't blame was the real culprit: the recruitment machine broke. New money stopped flowing in.
Still, Rogowski insisted he has no plans to disappear or shut the business down. He just needs time. MineBest CEO Eyal Avramovich, who owns Mining City, promised they'd recover stolen mining machines in "a few months" and move them to new facilities.
That timeline matters because something else is happening. Mining City has quietly launched a replacement scheme called iMine, targeting Asia.
The new operation spun up around February 18th, 2022 on the domain imine.com. Jorge Mesquita, a Portugal-based entrepreneur with a patchy track record in cryptocurrency, was brought in as CEO. His LinkedIn shows he bounced between IT, advertising, and consulting before rebranding himself as a blockchain expert around 2016.
Mesquita's resume reads like a roadmap of failed crypto ventures. He liked Trade Coin Club on Facebook—an MLM crypto Ponzi from 2016. He was COO of Universe Coin from July 2019 to May 2020, another project that went nowhere.
According to iMine's website terms and conditions, the company operates from a co-working space address in Lviv, Ukraine.
The timing is telling. Mining City's collapse wasn't some sudden disaster. It was a slow bleed that stretched over more than a year. Rogowski and Avramovich had plenty of time to watch their scheme die. And rather than wind it down, they quietly built the next one.
This is how the cycle works. When recruitment dries up and the money stops, operators don't vanish. They rebrand, relocate, and find new pools of victims willing to believe that this time, things will be different. iMine is that next iteration—the fresh coat of paint on the same broken machine.
🤖 Quick Answer
What withdrawal restrictions did Mining City implement?Mining City froze all withdrawals and payouts for affiliates, who had been unable to access funds for over a year. The restriction resulted from BTCV cryptocurrency collapse, the scheme's underlying asset, leaving the company unable to process financial obligations to participants.
Why did Mining City cite government mining shutdowns?
CEO Greg Rogowski attributed operational failures to Chinese and Kazakhstani government closures of mining operations, reducing hash rate production and revenue generation capabilities necessary for maintaining the compensation structure and withdrawal obligations.
How did the Russia-Ukraine war impact Mining City's operations?
Rogowski blamed international sanctions against Russia for preventing electricity payment at Russian mining farms, disrupting mining infrastructure and operational continuity required to generate cryptocurrency returns for the affiliate network.
What compensation system issues did Mining City acknowledge?
The company identified faulty compensation software that allegedly overpaid members beyond contractual
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