As neither of the two founders have any tech experience, what were they designing and implementing exactly?
Looking at the backgrounds of Crumb and Sebag, they have no technical experience, no start-up experience, no dev experience.
Sebag seems to be a speculator on precious metals via various companies that have not done particularly well. His latest, before Bitgold, Inc, Loma Vista, was founded almost four years ago and has done nothing, produced nothing. From all I can find online it's just an empty shell. He's got a bunch of other ventures of which he is the Founder-- Natural Resources Holdings, Braavos Capital, Essentia Equity--that also don't seem to have done anything from what I can tell online. Am I wrong about that? Natural Resources Holding was another reverse-merger into a public company--an Israeli one that used to be dedicated to printing. Forgive my ignorance about all these complicated transactions, but it strikes me as more finance shenanigans than the building of real companies that provide real goods and services to real people. Am I wrong.
As for Crumb, he also has no technical or devops experience and very little start-up experience. The latest venture he worked for--of which he seems to still be CFO if Linked In is to be believed--was spun out of notorious patent troll company Intellectual Ventures. It is called Coffee Flour (
www.coffeeflour.com). At least it's a start-up that offers a real product. Is Josh going to continue working at coffeeflour? Is there any relationship between Intellectual Ventures and bitgold?
Josh also lists himself as Co-Founder of Loma Vista-- the publicly listed company that Bitgold,Inc is being merged into. Here's how Loma Vista is described on Bloomberg:
Loma Vista Capital Inc., a junior mineral exploration company, engages in the discovery, exploration, and development of base metal and precious metal mineral deposits in Canada and internationally. It has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Dorothy Lake project that comprises 26 claim units covering an area of 416 hectares in Meen Lake Area, Ontario. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in Toronto, Canada.
I also read that Loma Vista gave up their Dorothy Lake project in order to merge with Bitgold, Inc.
You'll forgive me if it all seems a bit fishy-- a company without a product or service (just a countdown clock), raises $3.5mm from the Soros children, then a month or so later opts to reverse-merge into a public shell company. This is not the way tech start-ups are usually built, as you are maybe aware.
Also, can you please explain this SEC Filing. It seems to indicate that Bitgold has raised or is seeking to raise 600k from US investors. Are those the Soros children?
I'm sorry if this comes across as overly-skeptical. The bitcoin community has suffered through so many scams that I really hope these guys are legit.
And there have been so many hacks of poorly-architected sites and systems that I really, really am concerned about the total lack of devops and tech start-up experience of Sebag and Crumb. So far i have made over 500$ in the ref system and havnt got paid yet , not until the first of next month.