Prance Gold operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.
The company claims it is headed up by founder and CEO Andre Gerald.
In Prance Gold’s marketing videos, Gerald is played by this individual:
If you pay attention to the actor’s eyes, you can clearly see him reading off a script.
Andre Gerald doesn’t exist outside of Prance Gold’s marketing material, making him a good Boris CEO candidate.
The actor playing Gerald has a US accent. The actor playing Jacob Coulsen, supposedly Prance Gold’s COO, has a British accent.
Given the hard-coded Chinese subtitles, it’s highly likely these two men are actors picked up in Asia somewhere.
It’s also worth noting Prance Gold’s marketing videos were uploaded in 360p. This suggests they were shot on a cell phone.
Not really what you’d expect for legitimate corporate videos.
Prance Gold operates two websites, “prancegoldholdings.com” and “prance.gold”.
The former domain was privately registered in May 2019. The latter was privately registered in February 2020.
It’s worth noting the Prance Gold Holdings domain registration was last updated in February 2020. The company’s websites went live in March 2020, suggesting the holdings domain was acquired in February 2020.
The Prance Gold website is targeted at Japanese visitors and defaults to Japanese. On the site an incorporation certificate for “Prance Gold Holdings Limited” in Seychelles is provided.
Given the high probability of this being a shell company, with respect to due-diligence this certificate is meaningless.
Given Prance Gold appears targeted at a Japanese audience, it’s not surprising that Japan represents 90% of traffic to Prance Gold Holdings’ website (Alexa).
Curiously, “prance.gold” doesn’t have enough traffic to be tracked via Alexa.
As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.
Prance Gold’s Products
Prance Gold has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Prance Gold affiliate membership itself.
Prance Gold’s Compensation Plan
Prance Gold affiliates invest $1000 or more in USD, bitcoin or tether, on the promise of advertised returns:
- invest $1000 to $4999 and receive a 300% ROI
- invest $5000 to $9999 and receive a 400% ROI
- invest $10,000 to $29,999 and receive a 500% ROI
- invest $30,000 or more and receive a 600% ROI
Prance Gold pays up to 0.9% a day, through a convoluted “you must invest at certain times” system.
Affiliates are given three 8 hour time periods they must manually login and click some buttons to generate daily returns.
Note that this process can be automated for a 10% deposit fee.
Whereas USD is accepted for investment, Prance Gold only pays returns and commissions in thether.
- if an affiliate wants to wait three days for withdrawal Prance Gold charges a 5% fee
- if an affiliate wants to wait eight days for withdrawal Prance Gold charges a 3% fee
Residual Commissions
Prance Gold pays residual commissions via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
Prance Gold caps payable unilevel team levels at twenty-five.
- recruit one affiliate and earn residual commissions across three unilevel team levels
- recruit two affiliates and earn residual commissions across five unilevel team levels
- recruit three affiliates and earn residual commissions across ten unilevel team levels
- recruit four affiliates and earn residual commissions across fifteen unilevel team levels
- recruit five affiliates and earn residual commissions across twenty unilevel team levels
- recruit six affiliates and earn residual commissions across twenty-five unilevel team levels
Note that in order to count towards the above qualification criteria, recruited affiliates must have invested.
Residual commission rates across twenty-five unilevel team levels are based on how much a Prance Gold affiliate has invested:
- invest $1000 to $2999 and receive 8% on level 1 (personally recruited affiliates), 6% on level 2, 4% on level 3, 2% on levels 4 to 6, 1% on levels 7 to 10, 0.6% on levels 11 to 19 and 0.4% on levels 20 to 25
- invest $3000 to $4999 and receive 12% on level 1, 9% on level 2, 6% on level 3, 3% on levels 4 to 6, 1.5% on levels 7 to 10, 0.9% on levels 11 to 19 and 0.6% on levels 20 to 25
- invest $5000 to $9999 and receive 16% on level 1, 12% on level 2, 8% on level 3, 4% on levels 4 to 6, 2% on levels 7 to 10, 1.2% on levels 11 to 19 and 0.8% on levels 20 to 25
- invest $10,000 to $29,999 and receive 20% on level 1, 15% on level 2, 10% on level 3, 5% on levels 4 to 6, 2.5% on levels 7 to 10, 1.5% on levels 11 to 19 and 1% on levels 20 to 25
- invest $30,000 or more and receive 24% on level 1, 18% on level 2, 12% on level 3, 6% on levels 4 to 6, 3% on levels 7 to 10, 1.8% on levels 11 to 19 and 1.2% on levels 20 to 25
Monthly New Market Development Bonus Scheme
The Monthly New Market Development Bonus Scheme (MNMDBS) rewards Prance Gold affiliates for generating downline investment.
- generate $10,000 in new investment volume across three unilevel team legs ($30,000 total) and receive $1200
- generate $30,000 in new investment volume across three unilevel team legs ($90,000 total) and receive $3600
- generate $100,000 in new investment volume across three unilevel team legs ($300,000 total) and receive $12,000
- generate $300,000 in new investment volume across three unilevel team legs ($900,000 total) and receive $45,000
- generate $500,000 in new investment volume across three unilevel team legs ($1,500,000 total) and receive $75,000
- generate $1,000,000 in new investment volume across three unilevel team legs ($3,000,000 total) and receive $150,000
Note that NNMDBS qualification criteria resets every month.
Rank Rewards
There are five affiliate ranks within Prance Gold’s compensation plan.
Prance Gold rewards affiliates for qualifying at each rank as follows:
- Baron (generate three unilevel team legs with $30,000 investment volume in each leg) – 2% ROI bonus
- Viscount (have three Barons in your downline) – 4% ROI bonus
- Earl (have three Viscounts in your downline) – 6% ROI bonus
- Marquis (have four Earls in your downline) – 8% ROI bonus
- Duke (have four Marquis’ in your downline) – 10% ROI bonus
Although not clarified, I believe these ROI bonuses are tacked onto the end of regular contracts.
Joining Prance Gold
Prance Gold affiliate membership is free.
Participation in the attached income opportunity however is tied to a minimum $1000 investment in USD, bitcoin or tether.
Conclusion
Given the awkward company name and official marketing channels using Japanese, it’s obvious whoever is actually running Prance Gold is fluent in Japanese.
Whether this means Prance Gold is being operated from Japan is unclear. What is clear is that most of Prance Gold’s investment volume is currently coming out of Japan.
Prance Gold represents it generates ROI revenue via cryptocurrency arbitrage.
No evidence of trading revenue being actually used to pay affiliates is provided.
Being a passive investment scheme, Prance Gold’s MLM opportunity constitutes a securities offering.
Prance Gold provides no evidence it has registered with Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, or a financial regulator in any other country.
This means, despite anything else, Prance Gold is operating illegally the world over.
The reason Prance Gold doesn’t register with financial regulators and provide legally required audited accounting reports, is because the company operates as a Ponzi scheme.
New investment is used to pay existing investors, with the scheme collapsing once withdrawals exceed the rate of new investment.
The math behind Ponzi schemes guarantees that when they collapse, the majority of investors lose money.
Update 16th October 2020 – Prance Gold Holdings has collapsed.
The company has ceased paying withdrawal requests, claiming its accounts held at various cryptocurrency exchanges have been frozen.