Digging deep into the capital game of Rollman Management: Hanging VC sheep heads, selling marketing dog meat

Author: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

Yesterday, Web3 social media platform Wunder.Social announced the completion of a $50 million financing, led by Rollman Management. The news comes from CoinDesk, which also mentioned that Wunder.Social plans to launch tokens later this month. Against the backdrop of the continued downturn in the primary market, this large-scale financing is quite eye-catching, and the project parties and venture capital institutions are little known, further deepening people's doubts about the authenticity of financing.

Rollman Management is not the first time it has appeared in the media. The institution, founded in 2022, only started to make frequent moves at the end of 2024. In less than five months, Rollman Management has invested in 11 crypto projects, with an investment amount of more than 20 million yuan. The cumulative investment amount exceeded US$200 million.

At the same time, Rollman Management's portfolio projects are relatively low-profile, and most of the projects are located in Europe, Australia and other places. The financing history is only Rollman's very abrupt large-scale financing. At the end of the financing press release, most of these projects will be in IDO or token sale soon. In addition, Rollman Management invests almost every investment separately and has never invested in cooperation with well-known venture capital institutions.

Extensive business

According to the official website, Rollman Management Digital is a global investment network and consulting company that provides services in mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, real estate and digital assets to family offices, high net worth individuals and entrepreneurs. It is described that Rollman's business has a wide range of business, providing strategic planning consulting, investment and trading, marketing, customized bank consulting solutions, institutional-level Web3 services, etc.

Among them, the institutional-level Web3 service scope is almost all-encompassing—a comprehensive solution covering over-the-counter trading (OTC), banking, hedge funds, venture capital, marketing, cryptocurrency/artificial intelligence mining, financing, issuance platforms, market makers, liquidity providers, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and centralized exchanges (CEXs). Rollman Management also provides marketing strategies for projects to help them increase visibility and promote customer interaction.

Portfolio and style analysis

According to data such as RootData and Cryptorank, Rollman Management currently has 11 investment portfolios, as shown in the figure:

"Investment commitment" is a word that needs to be vigilant. Literally speaking, it means that the project party promises to invest a specific amount in the project party. But there is a lot of room for manipulation behind it.

Previously, ChainCatcher had dug up GEM Digital, a venture capital firm with a similar investment style to Rollman Management. The project manager once said that GEM Digital had contacted the project through email and promised to invest US$50 million, but when signing the investment contract, the project party found that GEM stated in the contract that it would not directly make payments, but that the investment funds would be filled by the profit after selling the tokens.

Related Readings: Behind the most "rich" crypto venture capital agency GEM Digital : A hidden and bizarre capital game

Rollman Management's "Investment Commitment" may be different from GEM Digital, but its investment style is generally similar to GEM:

1. High-frequency, large-scale "investment commitment": Rollman Management has relatively diversified investments, involving social, RWA, AI, infrastructure, and DeFi tracks, with a median investment amount of US$20 million. Among them, nearly half of the projects invested in VitalVeda, Tea-Fi, Candao, etc. are investment commitments rather than normal investments.

2. Choose low-profile projects: In addition to the Elastos Elai Cloud project that was founded earlier and because it was founded in China, there is some popularity and updates in the Chinese region. Other projects have almost no news before, and the published projects have almost not been launched on mainstream exchanges.

3. Use media to create momentum: Rollman Management related investment news is mostly published on mainstream platforms such as Cointelegraph and CoinDesk. Most of them are published on Cointelegraph (the word "sponsored" is marked in the press release), and they are simply templates to publish financing news. The structure of the article is highly similar, and it is obviously written by Rollman. (You can click here to experience the project name: AstraAI , Tea-Fi , Eventflo )

Rollman has only one investment news purpose - token marketing for projects . Rollman takes advantage of the crypto community’s sensitivity to financing messages. Spreading "huge investment" news through authoritative media, attracting market attention and even driving up token prices. Of course, even if the project has not issued coins, there will be plans to sell tokens such as IDO soon.

4. The tokens invested in the project show a "pump smash" pattern: the token prices in Rollman's invested projects have shown a trend of rapid price increase and decline after the news was released. For example, on November 21, 2024, Rollman invested in AstraAI, its token price rose from a high of $7.7 to $25, and its token price is currently $4.

On January 30 this year, Rollman announced his investment in Elastos, and the Elastos token also experienced a rapid increase, from $13 to $21.

Hang VC sheep heads and sell marketing dog meat

Overall, Rollman is more like a conservative version of GEM Digital, and its cooperation projects are mostly unissued projects. Therefore, compared with GEM Digital's model of relying on favorable pull-up, Rollman is essentially promoting tokens for project parties through investment behavior.

"Pump and Dump" was extremely common in the early days of cryptocurrencies, especially during the ICO hot period, when many projects attracted funds through false propaganda and exaggerated financing news, and then ran away or collapsed. The practices of institutions such as Rollman and GEM Digital can be seen as an "upgraded version" of this strategy, putting on the legal cloak through "investment commitments" and using media and low-profile projects to achieve systematic operations.

The current crypto market is weak, and the primary market is in a cold environment. Project survival is even more difficult, especially projects with no background or reputation. Therefore, there is a market when there is demand, and the supervision is not yet perfect, especially the definition and constraints on vague behaviors such as "investment commitment". This provides operational space for institutions such as Rollman.

ChainCatcher here reminds industry participants (including investors, project parties, media and retail investors) to be vigilant against such investments and avoid becoming victims of capital games.