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Shares of Longfin, which have spiked astronomically on ties to blockchain technology, fell Monday after a tweet from noted short-selling firm Citron Research.
Longfin (Ticker: LFIN) shares briefly tumbled 13.5 percent and were trading 8.9 percent lower near $64.77 as of 11:13 a.m. ET. The tiny, little-known stock surged more than 1,200 percent over two trading days in mid-December after the financial technology company said it is purchasing a firm focused on blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
“If you are fortunate enough to get a borrow, indeed $LFIN is a pure stock scheme,” Andrew Left’s Citron Research said in a Monday morning tweet. “@sec_enforcement should not be far behind. Filings and press releases are riddled with inaccuracies and fraud.”
Tweet
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment.
“Citron is known as a short seller,” Lijie Zhu, managing director at Longfin’s investor relations firm Dragon Gate Investment Partners. “He has no evidence. There is no content for his report and we see no fraud as a third party investor relations firm.”
Longfin CEO Venkat Meenavalli was not available for comment as he was traveling in Asia, Zhu said. She added the company is also in the middle of preparing its annual 10-K filing.
On Dec. 18, the day Longfin hit its record high of $142.82, Meenavalli said on CNBC’s “Fast Money” that the several billion-dollar “market cap is not justified” and “is not a reality.”
He added that while Longfin is profitable, the blockchain company it was acquiring, Ziddu, “doesn’t have any revenue right now.”
Longfin agreed to buy the microlending company from a private Singapore firm called Meridian Enterprises for 2.5 million shares of the company. A filing showed Meridian is 95-percent-owned by Meenavalli.
