A Louisville-area company that sold cryptocurrency-mining devices has filed for bankruptcy.
Launch Pad LLC, doing business as SyncroB.it, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Kentucky on Aug. 3.
Chapter 11 protection enables a business to restructure its creditor obligations to keep the business alive and pay back its debts over time.
The Shepherdsville, Kentucky-based business has 7,037 creditors, most of whom are individual consumers — from across the globe — rather than businesses, according to the filing. It has about $7.6 million in liabilities and $271,435 in assets.
Launch Pad manufactured and sold Helium hotspots. Helium, a San Francisco-based blockchain company, aims to develop a public, long-range wireless network via those hotspots, and in exchange, the hotspots mine tokens, a form cryptocurrency, compensating hosts. (Helium migrated to the Solana blockchain earlier this year, transitioning HNT tokens to IOT. But that's another story.)
According to its Medium account, SyncroB.it launched its "Gateway" devices in May 2021 and began shipping that July. By September 2021, the company said it had filled 10,000 orders. SyncroB.it devices are priced between $120 and $224 on Amazon.com, but the company no longer has its own website.
Instead, the web address of SyncroB.it takes you to another platform, Nebra, which is mentioned in the bankruptcy filing. Launch Pad says it has potential claims against Nebra for breach of contract and tort.
As detailed in this Reddit thread, many users have claimed their SyncroB.it hotspot has stopped working, and Nebra has shared information about how to transition SyncroB.it devices to using Nebra firmware.
Firmware is a subset of software that helps control hardware devices, and in this case, Helium hotspot makers have to continuously push out new firmware to keep devices operational.
Launch Pad's largest creditor is the Zephyrus Network LLC, another company dedicated to building out the Helium network. It is owed $180,236 as a part of a judgment, the filing states.
The address Launch Pad listed in the bankruptcy, 358 Westside Drive in Shepherdsville, is home to another business, Flavius May Custom Trim Carpentry, according to Google.
I have reached out to Launch Pad's attorney, Charity Bird of Louisville-based Kaplan Johnson Abate & Bird LLP, about the filing. Brandon May, a member of Launch Pad, signed the bankruptcy filing. This story could be updated.
