Topic: Past ICO SCAM Analysis (Read 969 times)

ICOs in 2018 Collect Nearly $14 Bln, Double of 2017 Funds: Report



Reports say that during the first half a year a huge figure of $13.7 bln was raised via ICOs

The reports were published by a well-reputed auditing company PriceWaterHouse (PwC) and Crypto Valley Association.

This year around 537 companies conducted an initial coin offering (ICO) and some first unicorn ICOs completed this year. Good examples are Telegram which raised $1.7 bln and EOS closing on $4.1 bln.

Last year, in 2017, 552 projects carried out an ICO and raised $8 bln. In 2018, except Telegram and EOS, 535 coin offerings took place and they collected almost $8 bln.

A top PwC manager said in an interview that this year the ICO sector became more stable and its focus on best business and legal practice improved.

Report details, ICO locations

The document says that ICOs are becoming more confident and popular once again, especially mixed models combining seed venture capital investments with ICOs to follow.

Curiously enough, in the UK this year as many ICOs took place as in the US and more ICOs in the UK are planned than those in the US.

More ICOs were carried out in Singapore than in the US  since the latter saw the pressure of the Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in this industry.

Also initial coin offerings took place in Switzerland, Estonia, Lithuania, France and Germany– as for Europe. In Asia, these events were conducted in Singapore as mentioned above.

Besides, some companies raised funds promising digital tokens in the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands.

Among other countries hosting ICOs were Israel, Hong Kong and Singapore. Some ICOs surely took place in Japan, Russia and South Korea but the report does not mention them.

ICO rules in various jurisdictions

In the US you are allowed to collect only $1 mln cap through an ICO. If you want to raise up to $10 bln– Europe would give you a warm welcome. In that area you will get total certainty on behalf of the regulators and exempt the ICO from accredited investors’ rules.

Many startups prefer to get a seed investment from venture capitalists, $100,000 to $1 mln, and then move on to ICOs. They feel safer and more confident that way. Although sometimes venture investors do not care about the actual product, but all they want is just sell their tokens 10 times more on exchanges later on.

Conclusions

The report says that around 65 percent of ICOs are about to deliver the product, five percent just planning so far, 10 percent do not have any product yet and 20 percent are struggling.

Generally speaking, the figures are positive and one may say that the ICO phenomenon is speeding up both in quality and quantity.

Blackmoon Ready to Upset Wall Street: Past ICO Review



Is it possible to invest in IPOs though ICOs?

Blackmoon is bringing tokenized investment funds that can be bought and sold to the market. You might be scratching your head and asking, “What is a tokenized investment fund?” It is just as it sounds, they are baskets of investments, funds and other financial instruments that have been turned into tokens and thus represent a value unto themselves. They are also referred to as security tokens.

Essentially, this allows participation in the traditional market though smart-contract enabled Blockchain technology.

Finances

Blackmoon had a two-day ICO Sept. 12-13, 2017, which brought in $30 mln in funding. The token, known as BMC, is ranked by CoinMarketCap at 353 and is, at time of writing, trading at $0.62. It debuted at $0.86, which is a decrease of 39 percent. Its all-time high was $2.36 on Jan. 10, 2018. Since that high, it has remained relatively stable by comparison with many other cryptocurrencies.

Investment tokens on the horizon

Blackmoon has already tokenized its first IPO. Yes, that is not a typo, you read correctly, IPO. Quoting directly from their website: “Blackmoon is the first company in the history to tokenize an IPO in this way and it allows cryptocurrency investors and users access to the Xiaomi Corporation IPO.” So as a token investor, you can take part in the IPO indirectly by purchasing the tokens that have tokenized the IPO. There are more investment types on the way, too.

Portfolio tokens

Blackmoon has three tokenized investment funds in the works for release. Think of these as tokenized investment funds with varying levels of risk. The first one is a one-day-most-volatile strategy. It promises to generate the returns corresponding to the yield of the crypto assets with the largest volatility. In other words, it wants to be more volatile than Bitcoin in one day.

The second token is a top-20-market-cap strategy, by putting the top 20 coins by market cap into a basket. Its strategy is to generate the returns corresponding to the yield of the cryptocurrencies with the largest capitalization.

The third coin combines cash and the top six coins by market cap to provide less volatility with cash as the buffer.

ICOs are for everyone

ICOs open the door to everyone to be able to invest, not just accredited investors. This levels the investment playing field for everyone and allows for more participation.

“Historically participation in an IPO has generally been a prerogative of institutional traders, but now with the democratization of the market and availability of new tools, it has become available for everyone. We have provided cryptocurrency holders the option to participate in the performance of Xiaomi stocks without leaving the Blockchain universe, and this is what Blackmoon has been all about from the start, ” said Blackmoon CEO Oleg Seydak.

The verdict

While it might seem hard for some to grasp the idea of tokenized IPOs and other funds, this way of investing is only going to grow as more and more people take advantage of these new investment opportunities, for which they were not “accredited” to participate in before.

If all goes well with the launch of the tokenized funds, we might see Blackmoon lead the way in the tokenized investment funds for the time being. However, once the market of tokenized assets is established, competition will creep up out of nowhere and things will get innovative and interesting.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Plain Payment System Slightly Dressed Up: Past ICO Review



In review: payment processor with a rating system for users, nothing new here

Trust. It is the glue that binds the world together. Without it, we would not be where we are today. However, trust in trade between a buyer and a seller has been a challenge stemming from ancient times: is the product going to work? Will the buyer pay in full? Is this a scam? These are some of the questions that are always running through the minds of buyers and sellers.

Monetha is a refreshingly new take on an age-old problem in a desert full of generic payment solutions all vying for your business. That’s what they want you to think, but after close inspection, there is nothing revolutionary here.

Pay to play, play to pay, don’t get played

Monetha raised $35 mln in a one-day token sale on Aug. 31, 2017. It’s sale token price was $0.16. The token entered the market 50 percent higher than the ICO price at $0.30 per token, hitting an all-time high of $0.55 in January 2017 before crashing down to $0.04 at the time of writing.

Despite raising more than $30 mln, the company’s market cap is only $8.8 mln, rather curious for a company that is going to revolutionize the payments sector.

On a further note, if you do the math, only 50 percent of the tokens issued in the ICO went to investors. Only half the tokens are in circulation, meaning that half are in the hands of the company.  In this model, investors are really only getting 16.5 percent of the revenue.

Invitation pending

Monetha has a functioning product, an app for iPhone and Android that allows the user to create a profile for buying and selling and gets rated on the deals done.

The rating helps other buyers and sellers know if the individual is reputable or not, but don’t most sites have this anyway?

The platform works with e-commerce sites.

However, the caveat here is that in order to make the transaction through Monetha, both users have to have accounts on the platform. If the buyer or seller wants to buy or sell something form/to someone who does not have the app, then they need to invite them to join to transact.

Something that is easier said than done. Imagine, you are are selling some items and you are asked by the buyer to set up an account to sell them. Most times, you are going to ignore that invitation, because:

1) You might not know what it is.

2) Being solicited by a stranger on the Internet to join something is the first sign of something being sketchy.

3) You might not have the time to be bothered to set up an account just to sell some old mirror from your house.

Fees, contracts, here come the problems

Monetha charges 1.5 percent fee on all transactions, of which one percent goes to the company and .50 percent to cover the “Voucher Smart Contract” which maintains the ecosystem.

They accept payments in many ERC20 tokens and reward users with Monetha for using the platform, but with prices as low as they are now, they better be giving away a lot, or it’s just going to seem like a worthless points system, where the points are worth fractions of a cent- not impressive.

We reached out for comments about how the rewards system works but did not get a response.

Not so special after all

Don’t judge a book by its cover, and that is true about websites and promotional materials. Always do your homework, and what looks too good to be true, usually is!

Monetha makes some pretty cool claims about what they can do, but when you get down to it, it’s really nothing that special that you can’t do with PayPal and eBay.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Leadcoin Leads on Dive to the Bottom: Past-ICO Review



So you’re tellin’ me I can buy your lead?

Leadcoin doesn’t seem to be leading the way for much, with a CoinMarketCap rank of 635 and a token price that plummeted from $0.087 initial price on March 27, 2018 to the current price of $0.005! Almost a 100 percent drop in value.

Despite poor token price performance, Leadcoin did manage to raise $50 mln in a 10-day ICO during March 1-11, 2018, on the premise that Leadcoin will revolutionize marketing and business practices. Haven’t we all heard that one before?

So you’re tellin’ me I can buy your lead?

The premise behind Leadcoin, founded by Shmulik Grizim, is to allow the buying and selling of hot, unused leads between businesses.

Sellers get value for their unused leads, leads find the right solutions, and buyers can buy hot leads. Everyone wins.

The everyone wins scenario finds its way into so many Blockchain-based companies these days. Sure it sounds like a good idea, but so do a lot of things until they are executed or attempted to be executed.

At this point in time, the system is not live yet so, we are in that awkward period after an ICO, where a company is sitting on a ton of cash but there is no product yet.

Sometime in Q3 2018, which is just around the corner, we should expect to see the launch of the first node, Webydo according to the website with integration to Salesforce and Hubspot by Q4.

Leader of the pack

Shmulik Grizim is the Founder and Heads up three other technology companies within the SaaS, web design and digital marketing industries. Grizim’s most recent venture, Webydo, is a patent-protected web platform with a global network of more than 300K users. Essentially, it's a cookie-cutter website building platform without using code. Grizim specializes in building new technology corporations from the ground up, constantly searching for solutions that promote the creation of a better web for all. So he is building up new companies, letting them get started and then moving onto the next project. He is a serial Entrepreneur with his sights always set ahead on the next project. Hopefully with his sights still set on Leadcoin taking off.

Why the sharp decline in price?

We wanted to learn more about why Leadcoin dropped so much after the ICO and asked,  “Since Leadcoin’s token entered the market, the price dropped hard and then has remained at a low level and has gradually been in decline, can you give some reasons to why this is?”

While it could be market conditions or lack of confidence by investors, we were unable to get a response as to why the token has been suffering such a hard time.

Nevertheless, investment sites have given Leadcoin a “bad” investment rating and some giving it an “E-”. Perhaps, once the first node is turned on and the network starts to function it will start to increase in price, or as so many times we have seen in the crypto market, Leadcoin might continue this dumpster dive further, let’s check back after Q4.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Hello i'm the co-founder of Bits2u, I understand that PeruCoin has been poorly stated (and we regret it), but, what I do not understand is how you can think that bits2u is scam if we arrived paying more than 2 years without problems, it is more, if you wish you could see our tests Payment: https://bits2u.com/payments.html

Regards,
Bits2u Team

Nucleus Vision Wearing Privacy Shades: Past-ICO Review



Nucleus Vision might need to get its glasses checked as price plummets and test market testimonies are absent

Nucleus Vision (NV) offers a way to track and reward walk-in customers in brick and mortar stores, which makes up a majority of transactions still, in today’s marketplace. Upon entering a store, Nucleus sensors register the customers phone and prompts them to share their information with the store in reward for Tokens. The Nucleus tokens can then be exchanged for discounts within the store.

It is similar to the rewards programs many stores offer, but instead of clogging your keychain with tens of barcode tags, which need to be scanned at the point of sale, NV puts and app on the smartphone and a sensor in the store.

The sensor can be used to gather data from customer as he/she enters the store to personalize the shopping experience for the customer. This will in theory increase conversion and drive organic growth, a win-win for the customer and the business.

Doing the math

NV had a two-day ICO sale from February 26-28, 2018 and raised some $40 million that is $20 million per day!

The token sale price was $0.0416. The price has fallen to $0.0145 at the time of writing. It is ranked 143 by CoinMarketCap and has market cap of $63,197,356 USD, daily trading volume of $1,215,610 USD and a circulating supply of 4,326,245,098 NCASH and a total of 10,000,000,000 NCASH.

Launch and Sensor Deployment

NV was founded back in 2013 and only just recently had its ICO. In 2017 it started deploying its sensor in test markets. For the second half of 2018, it plans to enter into India and South East Asia with 2,000 and 5,000 sensors deployed, respectively. It currently has a small footprint in only 25 stores and has identified more than 100,000 users.

NV plans to expand into North America by Q1 2019 and continue to ramp up expansion over the next four to five years.

However, despite them being in 25 stores now, they offer no names nor do they provide testimonials about how the product is working from either the stores of the customers using it.

Software and sign-up headaches

How many times do you just want to go online to a site and order one thing and be done? It’s a fantastic feeling when you can “shop as guest” without registration. For NV, The customer must register and authenticate with each individual store. Seriously?

Even though stores can share the gathered data with other locations, the user must confirm this every time. Ugh, so if I want to run in and out and I forget to agree, then I will lose my bonus, right?

Such a headache. In the promo video they show the guy going into the store and get a reward just for showing up. This is kind of false advertising. They make it seem like a cool process when you go into the store, but in reality it appears to be more complicated than that.

This registration and authentication process is quite inconvenient and requires a lot of maintenance from the customers and will get a big thumbs down from users. If the customer does not want to “check-in” at each store, then the retailer will not be able to tailor the experience to meet the needs and both parties will be dissatisfied.  When asked about this in an email, no response had been given by NV.

Top Heavy Management Team

While there are lots of high level management executives on the team, there appears to be only one lead technical developer managing a handful of other developers. Blockchain is a relatively new technology and needs to have a team of dedicated professionals to prevent and/or solve problems as they appear.

Final Thoughts

As the token price falls further, it gives some indication of the trajectory of the company, dowards. According to the website many Q1 2018 goals have not been completed and with lack of testimony from the test market, it makes one wonder how progress is coming and if things are working as planned.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Green Energy Competition Heats Up Down Under: Past-ICO Review



A weak roadmap, strong competition might push WePower out of Oz

The tokenization (what isn’t getting tokenized these days) of electricity is one major use utility that has recently caught on in the Blockchain space. A number of similar projects have surfaced, with a major competitor, Power Ledger, vying for one of the same green energy markets in Australia.

High competition in this space plays a positive role overall as the driving force of innovation, but the implications for any individual company, including WePower (WP), mean market dominance is not guaranteed.

We reached out to WP concerning the competition with Power Ledger by asking: “How do you perceive Power Ledger? A company you can with alongside with or a direct competitor?” However, we did not receive a response.

Throw another bill in the bank, mate!

ERC20 WPR token raised $40 mln in the initial ICO on Feb. 1, 2018. There was a presale that lasted from Sept. 22, 2017 to Feb. 1, 2018. So the company had a lot of time to raise the funding.

The token entered the market at $0.20 and then slid down to around $0.049 per token a 77 percent loss since its debut. It has a market cap of $22,281,006 and a rank of 284 with daily trading volumes around $460,130, according to CoinMarketCap.

Team is not from Oz

The company is Lithuania based with an office in Estonia. They are working on power projects in their respective countries as well as, most notably in Australia and Spain- it’s pretty sunny in these countries.

- Nikolaj Martyniuk Co-Founder

- Artūras Asakavičius Co-Founder

- Kaspar Kaarlep  CTO

- Jon Matonis Blockchain advisor

- Eyal Hertzog Blockchain advisor

- Heikki Kolk is Energy IOT Expert

Incentives

WP’s main goal is to make green energy projects easily financed by allowing it to come from the community and individuals as opposed to the traditional top-down method of financing.

The financing model created by the WePower ICO incentivizes both producers and energy buyers to use the platform.

For producers, the model helps to increase return on equity by 20-25 percent, according to the website.

For consumers, buyers purchase energy upfront on the market for a reduced cost. Since the energy rights are held within a smart contract, energy that is not used is liquid and can be sold in the market.

This is tokenization in action right here, making things that are not normally liquid, ready to be sold at a moment’s notice.

Buyers, therefore, have access to cheaper energy, using only what is needed and reselling the rights to access the surplus.

Not much news, where are we on the roadmap?

While WP has some cool stuff going for it, there is not much action in the news about them and the most recent article on the website is from October 2017.

This is not a good sign and can explain why there has been a recent dip in the token price. Investors are always ready to run when there is no news.

On the website, the roadmap does a poor job at outlining any goals or where they stand now in terms of completion.

Furthermore, the competition with Power Ledger may be a bit tough to handle as they are already established in Australia and the Australian Government granted the Power Ledger $2.57 million AUD for a two-year research project to take place in the City of Fremantle, just southeast of Perth.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past-ICO Review: Stox Tied to Bancor’s Sinking Ship



Stox started out white hot, but it was tied to Bancor and that brought the curtain down on the token

When the ICO took place, it was a sure bet that investors were placing their stock in Stox, a open source decentralized prediction market platform based on the Bancor protocol. This platform allows users to make predictions on pretty much anything that can be predicted, such as sporting outcomes, elections, whether; you name it, you can probably predict it on Stox.

Financials

Gibraltar-based Stox ran an ICO on Aug. 2, 2017 that lasted for one day and raised between $27 and $30 mln in funding. However, the token, which was launched two days after the ICO closed, on Aug. 4, 2017, has been in decline since its entry into the market. It debuted at $1.21, peaked at $2.60 on Aug. 25, and then fell sharply to $0.42 by the start of October 2017. It saw a price surge in December 2017, and reached $1.66 but fell down to $0.36 at the time of writing, demonstrating that investors have shied away from this once white-hot ICO. For a prediction-based platform, what has investors spooked? There doesn’t seem to be a prediction section on how well Stox will fare on its own website.

Mayweather: prominent ICO proponent

Floyd Mayweather has been known to promote ICOs. He posted on Instagram about Stox, where he flashed a suitcase of $100 bills and boasted he will “make a $hit t$n of money … on the Stox.com ICO.” This is not the first time Mayweather has promoted a crypto. He also promoted Centra Tech, which ended up on CryptoComes’ Top 10 ICO Failures. Does celebrity promotion lead to the demise of companies using an ICO? It’s an iffy statement. It could be the fact that Stox rode on the coattails of Bancor, even basing its smart-contracts on Bancor’s model.

Do your homework before investing

Since Stox is based on the Bancor model, then it is understood why the price will go down. It is because any token created from Bancor will be tied into Bancor’s price. Bancor’s price is suffering since its debut in July 2017. Here is the reason why, taken from my Bancor Past-ICO Review here on CryptoComes:

According to Professor Emin Gun Sirer, Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, Bancor will continue to trail the market and its lack of price discovery will diminish any smart tokens created from it.

This, in essence, will keep those coins [referring to any coins developed from Bancor’s Blockchain] from growing beyond that of Bancor’s price, remember they are tied together. In other words, the tokens created off Bancor have no chance to thrive. When the parent coin is going down, Bancor will take them down, too. Tim Draper, billionaire venture capitalist, and backer of Bancor argues otherwise that it will give liquidity to the market. If you bought Bancor, then liquidity is great, because you will want to sell it as fast as you can.

There you have it, it is the Blockchain Stox is based on that is dragging it down. The technology is cool and the users are enjoying the platform, who doesn’t love to take a gamble and place a bet, but its the parent Blockchain dragging down the token.

Better to lead, than to follow

While there are many tokens out there that are based on other Blockchains, such as Ethereum and EOS, these have been proven and accepted by the Blockchain community to be the proper places to build from. In many cases, the axiom, “it is better to lead, than to follow” plays to truth, if Stox did not follow Bancor’s model, it might have had a better chance at improving it’s token price, but alas, it is tethered to Bancor’s sinking ship.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Airtoken Loans out of Thin Air: Past-ICO Review



No smartphone, no Airtoken, no loan

Airtoken has a unique concept for underdeveloped countries and people without credit or access to a bank account. The parent company Airfox has created an app that turns a smartphone into a virtual bank.

The “bank” is part of a network of users that allows people to build credit and get loans from others and then pay them back over time, allowing the user to start a business or cover emergencies, etc. According to the website,

AirToken is an Ethereum-based ERC20 digital utility token that facilitates the transfer of mobile airtime, data and currency, as well as payments for goods and services, with minimal friction and fees.

Financials

A month-long ICO ran from Sept. 19 to Oct. 19, 2017 and raised some $15 mln in capital for the company.

Airtoken entered the market on Oct. 10, 2017 at $0.0161 per token and reached a high of $0.0822 per token before fall all the way down to $0.01103 at the time of writing.

The token has, like so many others, not fared well.

Airtoken is ranked at 456 by CoinMarketCap and has 1,050,000,000 AIR in circulation and a total supply of 1,491,492,558 AIR. Deployment plans are large for this coin.

The app was already released for use in Brazil and the team has plans to deploy to the rest of South America and beyond.

Marketing and Developing Countries

With the lofty goals for almost global deployment is part of the reason why we are not seeing higher token prices. Also, Airfox is not really adverting in developed countries because its service is geared for people without access to bank accounts and credit. These people are not going to be the ones investing in the token, they are going to be the end user. The only way Airtoken can achieve success is by mass adoption. This will be a bit tricky for the company as it is not the only provider out there offering credit, payment services, and microloans. Besides a handful of competitors in the cryptosphere, there are tons of other “off-chain” companies and nonprofits in this industry.

No smartphone, no Airtoken, no loan

Finally, another challenge that Airtoken will have to contend with is that many people may not even have access to a smartphone to use the app.

While smartphones have become more widespread since the initial launch of the iPhone in 2007, many still struggle to afford the seemingly basic technologies that are taken for granted in the developed world. Access to a smartphone could be a serious barrier to mass adoption that the company is seeking.

Wait and see, wait and see

While the intentions of Airtoken are good and great for the developing world, lack of awareness in the developed world is hard on the token price and the rather competitive market for microloans is large, coupled with access to technology could be the factors that are preventing Airtoken to take off. Perhaps, more time is needed for further implementation.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

So sad)
We've still got a lot stories, and I guess it's never ending with ICO

How about Perucoin?
It has "scam" written all over it IMO. Just look at the shoddy design of the OP

This ICO is supposed to raise $5M to $13M funds to buy a factory and a mining farm of 1000 to 2000 ASICS to show Peruvians how crypto mining works... but you know what? These are the same people who run https://bits2u.com/ a cloud mining service! seriously? a cloud mining company in need to buy 2000 ASICS to put them in public exposition? Aren't they supposed to own those machines already?

Also, they are promising up to 200% yearly profit at bits2u, what a joke.
More hilarious stuff: apparently they used to have a FAQ with the following question. "where do you get your profit from?" and the answer was 50% BTC mining, 30% PTC... and 20% HYIP. Can you believe it?

Their Perucoin token sale ends mid August, and I'll be surprised if they don't run with both Perucoin and bits2u's funds by then.

Am I missing something obvious here? Or perhaps most ICOs are scams and this is not news to anyone? To be honest I'm out of the ICO loop

JET8 More Ads in Your Instagram: Past-ICO Review



Gig economy marketing will spam social media to death

The marketer’s dream: get your target audience to participate in marketing and push products through social media with stickers that users can put on their Instagram accounts or special frames from their pictures with product branding.

That is the premise behind JET8, a Singapore-based marketer that is rewarding users with tokens for promoting brands. The tokens can be redeemed for purchases in stores such as 7-11, Alfamart and Circle K around Asia. The SEC and the IRS in the US are going to have a field day with the token.

Financials

While the company was founded back in 2014, the token was not launched until March 8, 2018, two days after the ICO ended.

The ICO ran from Feb. 28 through March 6 and raised some $32.7 mln.

The company has had close to four years to build its own brand and identity before launching the ICO and while it had a good ICO, the JET8 token has not seen much action.

It entered the market at $0.0347 and over the course of a month fell to $0.01, losing two-thirds of its value before being lifted up to $0.022 for a short period and again falling, then surging back up in May and now sliding down to $0.0136 down about 86 percent from its all-time high, which was its debut.

Tokens that that have downward trends after their initial release tend not to fare well over time. There is a reason that investors are selling them off.

Let’s look into what it could be.

The good and the bad, the marketer will sell you them both

While the design is novel and in an era of the gig economy, many people will think, “why not become a gig advertiser and get paid for it?”

Leave the Uber car at home and start taking selfies and adding badges and frames to push products and get rewarded for it. While you are at it, get your Uber car wrapped in an advert and take pictures of it and add your own badge for extra rewards!

Before I continue, I am not endorsing this kind of action, nor promoting shameless advertising tactics. However, it is this very action that will start to ruin it for everyone.

Rampant adverts will desensitize the masses

Herein lies the problem. Advertisers will reap rewards at first as users push ads to get rewarded. Then, the magic fades and people will start to get sick of their friends’ endorsements, the practice will become despised and hated and it will die off as quickly as it appeared.

Furthermore, if such a system came to the US, you better believe that Uncle Sam is going to get his cut. The redeemable tokens are going to be seen as cash by the IRS and they are going to want to tax it as income, and later introduce a sales tax to tax anyone who uses it to pay for goods or services.

As you may already know, governments are slow to react, and JET8 advertising will already be in its waning twilight when the government implements its tax on the crypto. That tax will be the final nail in the casket, as people are already moving away from the app and now the government wants to jump in and take a cut. The remaining users are going to drop that like a hot potato.

While it has a lot of cool marketing angles, JET8 does not leave much for people to have in the long-term future because sending pictures to each other is one thing, but sending pictures every day or every few hours with an advert is another issue that no one wants to be spammed. With the longevity and sustainability of this project diminishes. JET8 is not going survive the fall.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Top 10 ICO Scams



ICOs boomed in 2017, but so did the scams. Here is a rundown of the biggest ICO scam heists

1. Pincoin and iFan $660 mln
2. Plexcoin $15 mln
3. Bitcard $5 mln
4. Opair and Ebitz $2.9 mln
5. Benebit $2.7 mln
6. Bitconnect $700,000
7. REcoin and DRC $300,000
8. Confido $375,000
9. PonziCoin $250,000
10. Karbon $200,000

If 2017 is known as the year of the ICO, then it will also be known for the year of the ICO scam. Over the past few years in which ICOs have been running, there have been some scams here and there.

However, with all the attention that crypto started to receive in 2017, this limelight cast a shadow for the scammers to hide in and grow. With some good web development and marketing skills, scammers were able to swindle millions of dollars from poor investors.

Let’s have a look at some of the biggest scams, ranked by amount of money stolen.

1. Pincoin and iFan $660 mln

Two coins under one company called Modern Tech, which is headquartered in Vietnam, but the coins are located in Singapore and Dubai, respectively, might just have become the largest ICO scam in history.

The two coins combined have suckered some 32,000 investors out of more than $660 mln when they refused to make cash payouts.

On calls from the duped investors and some local government backing, the companies have gone silent, the first sign of guilt. Should it be proven that they made off with that much money, they will be the largest ICO scammers to date.

2.Plexcoin $15 mln

This Quebec-based scammer got the book thrown at him by Canada and the US in a cross-border scam that allegedly raised more than $15 mln.

The scammer and founder of Plexcoin, Dominic Lecriox, promised investors that Plexcoin would be able to do the same things Bitcoin can do, except his would be much faster.

This was back in the days before Bitcoin launched the lightning network, which significantly sped up transactions and reduced the abhorrent miners fees the ballooned over the last quarter of 2017.

While Canadian courts fined his company $100,000 for contempt of court and a two-month jail sentence, the US and SEC are still trying to get a piece of him, however, still held up in court.  

3. Bitcard $5 mln

It is hard to say whether Bitcard had malevolent intentions when it launched all the way back in 2014, with big promises to completely overhaul business, government, trading and transaction software.

While it had a good hook to catch and reel in investors, it was lacking a way to go about doing what it promised.

There was no white paper and inconsistencies on the website. When complaints started to appear, the team vanished and so did the $5 mln they raised after the ICO.

4. Opair and Ebitz $2.9 mln

These are two ICOs that were launched by one clever scammer, only knows as Wasserman to defraud investors not once, but twice in a unique scheme that tied the two together via domain rerouting.

Opair was to be a decentralized debit card system that ran on its own token. Ebitz was rerouting its domain though Opair. Opair was shut down after some investors doing their due diligence found out LinkedIn profiles were fake. But Ebitz, which billed itself as a better Zcash, ran a bit longer before shutting down and vanishing with almost $3 mln total between the two.

5. Benebit $2.7 mln

Benebit was going to offer a way to get more points, similar to credit card rewards with tokens through this scam. However, fake LinkedIn profiles did these scammers in, too.

They stole photos from an all-boys school and used the photos to create the team on LinkedIn. I guess some investors were tipped off by how young the team was and that they all wore the same clothes. Nice try, but the scammers did not think that one through very well.

6. Bitconnect $700,000

While Bitconnect had been accused of being a Ponzi scheme a few times before, it finally stuck when the SEC moved in ordered a cease and cease and desist against the company. Users of the platform were able to lend and make interest on Bitconnect tokens, which had a Ponzi-based referral system.

Since its closure, Bitconnect is facing a class-action lawsuit from users who were duped out of their money.

7. REcoin and DRC $300,000

Two coins one creator, sound familiar? Real Estate Coin and Diamond Reserve Club (DRC) were supposed to take the next step and be backed by real-world assets, real estate and diamonds, respectively. However, founder Maksim Zaslavskiy overclaimed too much and the SEC came in shut him down and arrested him because his two companies were, in fact, empty shells, and the ICOs were considered securities and not related to the blockchain. Zaslavskiy was arrested in late September 2017. The SEC has an ongoing investigation into this case.

8. Confido $375,000

Not much to report on this “smart-contracts” based hoax, which never came to fruition because the founder said that he was in some legal troubles, which were unmanageable and that he had threats on his life.

Perhaps the two are related? If you steal other people’s money there are bound to be legal implications and threats of death. Think twice before you commit fraud!

9. PonziCoin $250,000

Why on earth would you invest in a coin that bills itself as “the world’s first legitimate Ponzi scheme?!” Well, there were enough duped investors to dump a quarter million into this Ponzi scheme.

This was intended as a joke and perhaps a hard lesson to those out there who don’t do research on what they invest in. According to the website, the show is over and the money has been returned? For a while it was funny.

10. Karbon $200,000

Karbon was supposed to be a decentralized social marketplace. Is that similar to the Facebook page where you and buy and sell things with your neighbors?  

However, what it turned out to be was just a poor folk depositing money into an account with no hope to receive anything in return, little did they do.

More details on ICO HERE

DomRaider is a no Bidder: Past ICO Review



The auction is over for domain auctioneer despite a well-funded ICO

Who doesn’t love a live auction? Items up for bid on stage, the auctioneer is intensely scrutinizing the crowd for the next bidder. A hand goes up. A bid is taken. The price increases. The intensity thickens as more and more people compete for that desired item, whatever it may be- a golden Bitcoin perhaps?

France-based DomRaider (DRT) is seeking to disrupt the auction world for domain names but has run into trouble as its token price slides and there seems to be no one at home updating the website or sending out communications.

Financials

DRT’s month-long ICO from mid-September to mid-October 2017 raised $41.8 mln, a hefty sum. The token entered the market at $0.049 and at time of writing is trading for $0.016, a major fall of 67 percent. It is not looking like a very good sign for DTR. Additionally, there is a circulating supply of 591,500,000 DRT and a total supply of 1,300,000,000 DRT, which will dampen the price further. 

Red flags

ICANN is a very centralized system of controlling domain names and DRT is seeking to disrupt it.

How? Well, it’s hard to say because there is no white paper on their website and the link, if there ever was a link there, to the uses of DRT is also non-existent.

You can, however, search it and you are linked to DRT’s blog to access it. But that is a rather unprofessional manner of constructing a website for a company, as potential investors should be able to find things such as a white paper and how a product works without much effort. A final red flag is the poor use of English grammar. DomRaider is looking like no bidder.

Significant risk admitted

If you do manage to find the white paper and read it, you will see that the company has gone to great lengths to protect itself by stating the following:

- The Initial Coin Offering (“ICO”) project presented by the company DomRaider is an unregulated fundraising operation. It poses several risks to buyers, in particular, that of losing all amounts traded for tokens issued by DomRaider.

- DRTs will not be reimbursed in the event that the DomRaider Auction Service is not ultimately developed or does not operate on a permanent basis. DRT owners acknowledge that this is a significant risk that they accept

The developers are aware that this auction house could go up in smoke and that if it does, with a downwards trending token it just might, they have taken the precautions to protect themselves legally if anything were to happen.

No news for months

The most recent news item on the website was from Feb. 22, 2018 and in addition to that there is a “coming in April” banner still up.

It appears there is not much going on at DRT headquarters as the token price slides and the spider-bots are spinning their digital webs around the corners of the site.

While intentions might have been good, this is looking like another failed ICO.

(Gavel strikes table) This auction is over.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Fitness Monetized: Past ICO Review



Fitness tracker monetization attracts investors and Dallas Mavericks for partnerships

Lithuania-based Lympo has developed an app to monetize fitness tracking and create an ecosystem around it where all participants are fairly compensated.

This sounds like a dream come true on paper, but will the app be able to work as promised?

Not so sure, as the app is slated to be ready in 2020. With a long wait time, fitness enthusiasts may look somewhere else.

Financials

The 11-day ICO ran between Feb. 17 and 28 this year and raised $16.8 mln. The token entered the market at $0.02 and at the time of writing is trading at $0.114 an increase of 450 percent in only four months, impressive!

There are one bln tokens in circulation and it has a market cap of $88 mln. A recent price surge is due to it recently being listed on Bitfinex and Ethfinex and signing deals with the Dallas Mavericks.

Love/hate

Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban said to Bizjournals "the Mavericks found clear alignment with Lympo’s mission to create a healthier world by utilizing the latest technology to encourage fitness and healthy living in a whole new way."

The Mavericks deal is ironic because of Cuban’s stance against cryptocurrency. However, it was announced last year the Mavericks will begin accepting crypto payments for thing such as tickets, and merchandise. This an ironic turn of events coming from a guy who hates Bitcoin.

Fitness monetized

According to the website, Lympo is building an ecosystem that allows for users to be rewarded with Lympo tokens for healthy lifestyles and achieving fitness goals.

Additionally, Lympo wants to ensure that all data is used by all industry stakeholders and everyone is rewarded fairly. Lympo’s goals are the creation of:

1. a Lympo Fitness Wallet
2. a Marketplace
3. a Lympo crowdfunding platform

The wallet would be used to store users’ rewards, which they could later spend in the marketplace on things such as hiring personal trainers and health service providers. The crowdfunding platform exists to serve as an investment platform for which new data-driven companies could invest into new apps to upgrade the Lympo experience. While this may sound great, and all stakeholders will be fairly rewarded, there is no definition of what that means?

How many tokens will a user get by running a mile or going to the gym? How much it cost for an hour of personal training?

This information is not available and it is reminiscent of a credit card points scheme, where $1 equals one point, but when you go to put that towards your balance, 100 points equals $1. Marketing ploys at their best.

Time is not on anyone’s side in crypto

While this is still a new app, there is still some time required until the technology goes lives and it can be used.

The recent add on some exchanges and the announcement of their first partnership are some major milestones for this startup.

However, the company must get their app up and running or all these big partnerships and announcements will be for nought.

The full release of the app and software is slated for 2020; a long, long time away in the cryptosphere.

On one hand, this gives them time to get the project completed correctly, but on the other hand, it puts investors on edge; seeing things happen so quickly in the cryptocurrency world, 1.5 years is a lot of time to wait.

Time is of the essence with crypto. If you are unable to maintain positive attention, then you will not be able to succeed.

By saying things will be ready to go almost two years later, leaves questions in many minds. In the meantime, investors could lose faith, competition could push Lympo out, lack of communications to the media makes people wary: is the company still working towards goals? Is there infighting? Is this a scam? Many will ask these questions. 

Lympo.lt was founded by Ada Jonuse, which was the initial platform to bring together individuals with personal trainers in Lithuania.

Jonuse is the founder and CEO of Lympo. She leads a team of 11 others that make up the base of the company.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Basic Attention Token Fails to Get Full Attention: Past-ICO Review



Basic Attention Token garners just that, basic attention as it fails to follow through on technological developments

May I have your attention, please! That worked, didn’t it? Are you still reading? Good. Then you might want to hear a bit more about how Basic Attention Token (BAT) would like to disrupt the traditional advertising market.

However, has not nearly captured, forgive the pun, it’s just too easy, the attention of the market to do so. Before we get into the technical aspects, let’s have a look at the books. Now, this next section should have your full attention, because it is about money.

!Attention! Financials

BAT had its ICO on May 31, 2017 which lasted for one day brought in $36 mln in funding. The must have gotten some people’s attention to raise that kind of money.

The token debuted at $0.36 and one year later is at $0.28 a loss of 22 percent, ouch! It seems it lost almost a quarter of the initial attention it had received; the excitement dwindles away.

BAT has one bln tokens in circulation with a maximum of 1.5 bln, and there is 500 mln currently uncirculated. It is also an ERC20 token based on the Ethereum Blockchain. It is ranked 58 by Coinmarketcap.   

At this point, 25 percent of you stop reading

But I hope you will continue as I hope this next bit gets your attention, it sure did for the middlemen that are to be cut out of the advertising cycle of BAT gets its way.

It won’t, however, so don’t worry. What it would like to do is create an ecosystem on the Internet where users and publishers can reward each other for either looking at advertising or supporting quality content.

The system is essentially three parties: advertisers, publishers, and users who can directly affect each other based on advertising or content.

Users can block ads or they could get paid in BAT to view ads by publishers or advertisers. In turn, the users could reward the publishers with BAT for quality content.

According to the website: “Digital advertising is overrun by middlemen, trackers and frauds.” The site goes on to list why the publishing industry is dying with the following points.

- Google and Facebook take 73 percent of all ad dollars and 99 percent of all growth.

- Revenue is recently down 66 percent.

- Bots inflicted $7.2 bln in fraud last year.

- Over 600 mln phones and desktops run ad-blocking.

- Publishers cannot seamlessly monetize value-added services.

They have some points, but they have some flaws

Sure, publishers suffer a lot in the wake of the digitization and automation of their trade, but creating a limited ecosystem, where users have the option to block out all the ads is not going to help.

Even still rewarding them with tokens is not going to be the answer either. If getting likes on Facebook and Instagram is hard, imagine how much harder it is going to be if you want someone to pay for your content or in this case give a “tip” for great content.

In reality, it is just not going to be as good as it sounds on paper.

Then there are the technical problems, too. As part of the system, you need to use Brave Browser, a lot of people are not so easily swayed to switch browsers, especially if it is not one they heard of. Does anyone remember Opera? I used it for about a week before going back to Chrome. If they want to succeed, then they need to be able to operate plugins.

You had my attention at… but lost it quickly thereafter

It is a really well-meaning idea, but it only works on paper, sadly. I think we are going to see BAT fall into competition with other coins that do similar things and other advanced ad blockers out there that block ads, delete cookies and, and keep prying eyes out of your browser.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Status, a Community Project That Raised over $100 mln: Past ICO Review



Blockchain OS is on its way. Are you ready for the next level of computing?

Status OS  is a lite client of Ethereum. It is a small operating system that has encrypted services such as web browsing, chat, and payments - in Ether only.

The ICO raised $102 mln during a one day only sale on June 14, 2017. The entry price per token was $0.0366 and it is now trading at $0.95273.

The platform is based on the Ethereum Blockchain. This means that users can design their apps via smart contracts. Status is thus also connected to the Ethereum peer-to-peer network and can exchange data via the decentralized network.

Status’s Light Client offers a good opportunity for many users to work with the Ethereum Blockchain without having to download it completely.

The Status platform sees itself as a community project that functions via an open source system. Anyone who wants to participate can work on the platform. This ensures that users ensure the network design. Interestingly, Status sees itself as a new form of social media platform.

Seven dapps and more to come

That sounds like a lot of functions, so what can Status do for me?

There are seven dapps on Status so far, with more to come in the future. First, it is possible to receive, send and save Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies. Status has an eWallet built into the dapp so you can use it for payments, sending or receiving money.

Also, users can also trade in Ether or use it as a means of payment in shops, provided that that store will accept payment in ETH.

The app provides the service to use its own encrypted and mobile identity to make digital interactions more secure. When you visit the site, you can download many different dapps which are all associated with Status and can be used within the Status OS app.

Messaging, payments, smart contracts and more

Additionally, there is an encrypted messenger, such as telegram, which can be used to send or receive Ether, complete Smart-Contracts and simply chat with friends.

In regards to payments, the Status Hardwallet is a particularly innovative solution as currently no other hardware wallet or mobile wallet in the industry supports transaction settlement through NFC.

Since the wallet will be compatible with all major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether, and ERC20 tokens, users outside of the Status network will be able to use the Status Hardwallet to store and transact using other cryptocurrencies.

Seven dapps within the OS:

uPort
Declare digital independence. uPort is a self-sovereign identity system.

Gnosis
Crowd sourced wisdom. Make complex predictions on the go with an easy to use prediction market.

Oasis Exchange
Enjoy a near-instant decentralized digital asset exchange between ETH and ERC20 tokens.

Ethlance
The decentralized jobs marketplace. Hire or work for cryptocurrency, with no fees.

Aragon
Create unstoppable companies and organizations, and value without borders.

Etherisc
A decentralized insurance platform. Buy a policy on the go, and be paid claims automatically.

Ujo
Ujo is a home for artists. Create and control your creative content, and share it with the world.

The low down

This is a new take on the traditional OS for sure, but what we won’t know is how it will be received when it launches. When it comes to any product or service, it is the metrics and the number of units sold that matter to the market and to, most importantly, the investors. While the token is not worth much, it does not mean that the company is not worth anything. Until then, investors and users alike are awaiting the release of the software. Only after that point will Status be able to prove its status.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Now we are trying to explore big projects, how much did it collect?
I will take it to notes..

Did you find anything about Crederoom? No one have heard from the team since last January.

Past-ICO Review: Kin the One You Didn’t See Coming



Seeking to take over the crypto economy with a messenger app, Kin is coming

Social media plays a major role in the modern lifestyle and since the creation of Facebook people are trying to find ways to monetize the interactions on social media, either by selling users’ information to advertisers. This has become the world we live in with the Internet being an intermediary for almost everything we do now and social media plays a big part.

Enter Kik, a Canadian social-chat app that runs on Kin to create an ecosystem that rewards developers and creators on its platform with valuable incentives leading to a quality user experience without using advertisements. Let’s look at the financials before we dig deeper into the technology.

In Black or Red it’s Hard to Tell

Kin ran a 14-day ICO from Sept. 12-26, 2017 and amassed an astounding $98 mln! It has a market cap of $144 mln and circulates 756 bln tokens out of a limited supply of 10 tln tokens. The current price per token is $0.000191 up from the introductory price of $0.0000093, which is about a 93 percent return on investment if you would have bought during the initial release.

ERC20 to change to Stellar

In an interesting turn of events, the ERC20 Kin token will be shifting over to the Stellar Lumens Blockchain. This was announced late in 2017 by CEO, Ted Livingstone. The changes have already started to appear. Kik Messenger has moved to fork Stellar while also developing its own Blockchain that would combine the best of Ethereum’s Blockchain as well as Stellar’s Blockchain to come up with a scalable proprietary network for Kin.

Trustless system to evolve

By using a permission-nodes based system, Kik has established a zero-fee Blockchain network that will eventually hand over control of the network to the users. This will be done by working with partners who will eventually own a large percentage of the trusted nodes. By this design, the development team at Kik hopes to develop a trustless ecosystem that truly decentralizes control of the platform. However, it should be noted that there is still room for error because if becoming a partner is based on holding a large amount of Kin tokens then there is a chance that only the rich. In terms of Kin token holdings, will be able to control the system and that is putting too much power in the hand of only a few which is a dangerous situation.

Goal to be most used crypto

The Kik messenger app debuted in 2010 and has some 300 mln registered users, of which 40 percent are US teenagers, according to TechCrunch.  With a group of people that large, it would be easy for Kin to become the most used cryptocurrency, if you have 300 mln users interacting with each other every day.

It will be interesting to see how younger users use Kik and Kin in conjunction with the messenger app, as most younger people don’t care about crypto, they just want a cool messaging app so they can chat with their friends and send goofy dog-face photos. There will, of course, be some major usage but if the majority of the users don’t care about Kin, does this become an all-for-nought enterprise? Time will tell Kik and Kin make the changeovers from Ethereum to the Stellar Lumens Blockchain. Moreover, the rewards engine is a big factor that can have a major impact how people will interact with the app. When the rewards start getting doled out in Q3 2018, behaviors may start changing when users start making some money.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Top 10 ICO Failures of 2017



ICOs like businesses fail too, here are some of the biggest failures of 2017

It is true that 50 percent of all businesses fail, and that is also true of ICOs- they are businesses, too. From 2017, let's take a look at the top 10 ICOs that failed the hardest, due to bad business practices, founder quarrels, poor products, or scams run by con-artists.

1. OneCoin

OneCoin could have its own article, but for the sake of space, we’ll summarize the story here. OneCoin was a true Ponzi scheme concocted by Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian national who has been previously connected with other Ponzi schemes. She founded two companies OneCoin Ltd. in Dubai and OneLife Network in Bulgaria. Between the two companies, which sold investment educational material. Later when questioned by authorities, OneCoin claimed that it only sold educational materials and was not selling tokens, when in fact they were. Buying into the “educational packages,” which were blatantly  plagiarized materials, the victims received OneCoin tokens which were used to “mine” OneCoins. Long story short, Europol got involved, the only exchange where OneCoin was worth anything (OneCoin’s own exchange) shut down and the OneCoin became zerocoin- worthless. Charges were later brought against Ignatova in India in April 2017, at a OneCoin recruiting meeting. There are accounts of her arrest several times in various countries in 2017, however these accounts appear to be false and Ignatova is at large. In Late January 2018, Bulgarian police raided the office in Sofia and officially shut it down.

2. Enigma

It is still a mystery of who hacked Enigma, which was a legitimate business at the time. Engima was rather boastful about its security and new encryption techniques ahead of its ICO. However, its security seemed subpar when all of its systems were hacked mailing list, website, and Slack channel were hacked. The hackers used the above to reach out to potential investors about a “pre-ICO sale.” Despite warnings about a scam, many still invested at hackers made off with $500,000 worth of ETH. The CEO then looked pretty bad because his account was hacked because he did not set up his two-factor authentication. Whoops.

3. Droplex

A pure rip off QRL. Without any effort, scammers copy pasted QRLs white  paper and GitHub code to their site and only replaced QRL with Droplex. When people started to become aware, the scammers slowly reacted by changing the code. In the end, the lazy scammers’ haul was about $25K. Not bad for cheaters, but in the end cheaters never win; karma will come around.

4. Coindash

Israel-based Coindash was another hacking victim. Hackers either created an identical website or diverted the wallet address to make off with more than $10 mln in stolen ICO funds. The company still managed to raise about $6.4 mln and promised to send tokens to those who donated to the hackers inadvertently. Despite this once a hack happens and money is stolen, reputations are forever damaged and it near impossible to reverse the damage.

5. Veritaseum

Hacked or inside job? Veritaseum, a p2p personal banking company, lost $5.4 mln to alleged hackers. However, it was unclear what really happened as there were many red flags about the company’s website, the technology used, and many cries from Reddit about these things and the general shadiness of how the story unfolded and the rather weak defenses the company took. The final nail in the coffin was the large sale of Veri tokens and massive price increase around the time of the sale--someone got rich fast. Who could that be?

6. Parity

Wallet hack, yes your wallet can be hacked too! Finding a vulnerability in the multi-signature wallet issued by Parity. Parity is used for building Dapps and comes with a wallet. The hacker made off with $30 mln! But the gains did not last long as other hackers were able to trace down the pathways and recover most of the funds that were stolen.

7. Swisscoin

If it’s Swiss, its usually superior quality, right? Well, not for Swisscoin, this project had more holes in than Swiss cheese. Swisscoin was touted as an instant payment system with interest-free payments. I have heard of fees for making money transfers, but who pays interest on transfers, unless they were sending loans...Logic interrupted… regardless of what they were trying to do. They were busted by the Swiss police and $500,000 of stolen cash was found, as well as a stash of weapons and ammunition. The scammers face 12 years in prison.

8. Slot N Slot

While it is not a new idea to have a Blockchain-based, trustless gambling gaming website, what is new is one where the founders come forward and cancel the ICO because they were not going to be able to satisfy investors. The following is from the Slot N Slot team: “At the current stage, we lack the confidence that the project can be a success, and enforcing the crowdsale in such conditions is an irresponsible decision. For this reason, we are retracting the crowdsale (ICO) for the project.” At least they were honest.

9. Centra Tech

US Boxing Champ Floyd Mayweather gave some PR to Centra Tech, which launched an ICO in the fourth quarter of 2017. It raised nearly $32 mln. However, the founders and owners of Centra Tech are being changed by the SEC for selling unregistered securities. The charges were brought when the SEC discovered the company has no agreement with either MasterCard or Visa to support their prepaid cards (there were part of their business model) and also for having falsified impressive biographies and creating false or misleading marketing materials. The SEC won this round by technical knockout.

10. Ahoolee

A search engine for products just does not seem like a good idea, when you can just search via a general search engine.  This was just a bad product with no interest. CEO Sergey Ryabov said in a statement that “We will repack the product. Perhaps we will rebrand it. Bring the globality of our idea to investors. We will conduct the pre-sale and ICO according to the usual market scheme, attracting large investors in advance. Actually, everything is just beginning!

While there are many more that failed, this was just a glimpse into why and how so many ICO fail after launch. The reasons behind the failures are the same ones that countless other business suffer from. While there is a lot of hype behind all the failures, don’t let this fool you, there are plenty of successes out there too.

You may find our ICO Reviews HERE

Past-ICO Review: Finney, the Blockchain Phone Ahead of its Time?



The Blockchain-powered phone is here, but is the world ready for it?

Sirin labs have used Finney as an ICO to raise some massive funding to run a project on Blockchain-powered devices such as smartphones and computers, citing that traditional operating systems are vulnerable to hacking and leave users exposed to risk.

Finney is the name of the smartphone that is currently in development, and in April 2018, it was announced that electronics manufacturer Foxconn will work with Sirin to produce the phone.

There is another Blockchain enabled phone called Solarin and ultra-secure Blockchain phone and Sirin labs have an all-in-one Blockchain computer.

For the purpose of this article, we will stick to Finney only.

By the numbers

The Finney ICO raised some $158 mln during the massive buying fest that was in December 2017; Dec. 12-25 to be precise. The Sirin Labs’ token (SRN) debuted at $0.90 and subsequently plunged to $0.32 per token, a loss of 64 percent of value.

While the idea of a Blockchain-powered phone is novel, will there be mass adoption of the technology that fast?

The Finney phone is sold via Sirin Labs’ website for $999, which is rather expensive, but the newer iPhones are in a similar price range. However, its advanced big brother, Solarin, is selling for a whopping $13,200! That is not a typo: Thirteen-thousand two-hundred dollars. 

Phone features

Finney, Solarin and the all-in-one computer will all be powered by IOTA’s Tangle technology. The following are features that will be found on the Blockchain-based phone.

Blockchain Features

- Shield OS:

- Secure P2P resource sharing

- Built-in cold-storage crypto wallet

- Distributed Ledger Consensus

Sirin Labs Cyber Protection suite

- Behavioral-based Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)

- Blockchain-based, full tampering proof

- Physical security switch (for wallet protection)

- Secured communications (VoIP, text, email)

- Three-factor authentication: Biometric, Lock Pattern, Behavioral

Phone specs

- 5.2-inch QHD Display

- 256GB of internal memory storage

- 8GB RAM

- Wi-Fi 802.11ac

- BT 5.0

- 16MP Main camera

- 12MP Wide-Angle selfie camera

Furthermore, Sirin Labs plans to deliver a “decentralized app store run by the community” where “cost-bearing apps are based on a secure P2P resource-sharing system, which distributes fees between users and developers.”

However, which community are they talking about? This leaves a lot of questions to be answered.

Lofty sales goals

While the media has been relatively quiet about the Finny phone, it was announced in April that the Switzerland-based company said that it’s already received more than 25,000 pre-orders, and hopes to sell between 100,000 and a few million units in 2018.

Further down the line, the plan is to license its tech to other hardware brands; Sirin is said to have been in talks with Huawei about that. Foxconn is the manufacturer of Apple’s iPhone and Sirin Labs had stated that the phones should be shipping out in October of this year, putting them well within striking distance of hitting the goal of selling almost a few million units. 

The Blockchain phone ahead of its time?

While it is hard to say whether the world is ready for a Blockchain-based phone, many people think Blockchain is only Bitcoin, it does have some unique uses.

Should the company be able to achieve their goal of selling more than one mln units, then there could be some support for the phone and the continued manufacture of it. But if Sirin Labs does not sell their intended number of phones to reach their goal, then the phone was ahead of its time and the market was not there.

This will be a continuing story as we await the release of the phone in October and see if a Blockchain phone is really something the masses want to buy.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: TenX Puts Crypto on Debit Card, Hodlers Beware



Spend crypto with a debit card and an app but what about the fees?

TenX is making crypto more of a tangible payment system by creating actual debit cards that are linked to a TenX wallet.

The company has a forthcoming banking license in the works and intends on taking its everyday payment system mainstream. With technology like this, it is surprising that the company did not raise more in its ICO; it raised $80 mln, which is still a substantial amount of capital, but for the innovative service it is offering, it is surprising that it was not able to garner more support.

The token started out strong, entering the market at $0.83. The TenX token has been on a steady decline since its release with an all-time high of $5.26 during the 2017 December rally down to $1.01 as May 2018 closes out.

The token price might not go to the moon, but the debit card might end up in a few wallets.

Who is using it?

While it is a step in the right direction to get crypto to become more of a mainstream and daily use commodity, there are still the Hodlers out there, who are seemingly never going to spend their crypto. This technology would not appeal to them.

However, for the people who do want to spend crypto TenX provides that service via a debit card and an app. TenX’s motto is: “At TenX we work on making any Blockchain asset spendable instantly.”

TenX works with credit card providers to connect the COMIT transaction network to a payment card, allowing you to quickly and safely convert cryptocurrency funds into card transactions.

Currently, TenX supports Bitcoin, Dash and Ether, but the system is capable of supporting most Blockchain assets and the company plans to expand offerings in the future.

Conversions, fees, the general cost of doing payments

While the idea of using crypto is novel and exciting for many, there are a variety of fees that, to many consumers, would be off-putting.

When you can use your debit or credit card to do the same thing for free, why would you want to pay the fees and have crypto conversions to another crypto and then into fiat? Therein, lies the biggest problem.

There are too many conversions and too many associated fees and costs. While the site states that there are zero percent conversion fees, there are surely costs, but they are being absorbed by the company.

TenX does offer an incentive, similar to what the credit card companies do, but users get a different incentive than cash back or points.

TenX distributes tokens in the amount of 0.1 percent of purchases. Additionally, a reserve of 0.5 percent of the payment volume on the network is periodically distributed to holders of PAY tokens in proportion to their holdings. TenX plans to distribute this incentive monthly at first, with hopes of increasing distribution frequency in the future.

Looking into it further, there is discussion on Reddit on who is using the card, and it seems many people are using it in Australia successfully. There appears to be no public information on how many users TenX has.

We can only assume some pilot programs are running around the world with limited numbers of people signed up.

Building base, gearing up

While the company has some innovative ideas on how to spend almost any crypto via debit card and app, there will be competition from the likes of Bitpay and mainstays such as Visa and Mastercard, if they get into the crypto payments game.

There could be a lot at stake, but without risk, there is no reward.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: Filecoin the True King of the Crypto Hill



While Filecoin raised the most out of any ICO to date, its technology is not novel and it will face competition

...And that hill is the pile of cash it sits on valued at $257 mln raised in its ICO which ran from Aug. 10, 2017 to Sept. 7th, 2017. It had a funding goal of $40 mln and its initial token price was $5. The token has done well, doubling to $10.67 which is an ROI of 113 percent if you got in for a five spot.

Decentralized storage

Blockchain is all about decentralization, it is about keeping what is yours, yours, by breaking it apart and giving it to various strangers around the world to hold onto. This sorta sounds like and Indiana Jones’ adventure.

By decentralizing, you are keeping your data safer than if it were all stored in one central location. If the hackers breach security at Google, then your drive contents are going to be compromised.

If you cut your data up and disperse it, it will be a lot safer.

However, that comes with its own downside, if you lose your encryption keys or passwords, your bits of data are going to be lost forever, untraceable and unclaimable. While it is not a new idea, Filecoin has won over investors with well-planned marketing strategies, which are ever so important in the 2018 ICO sphere.

Filecoin is a project that was started by Protocol Labs, which has a mission to develop tools for the Internet.

Their belief is that the Internet is humankind’s most important invention and their intention is to develop advanced tools to develop and assist society.

There are 15 core members of the team, too many to list here, and more than double the number of contributors working with Protocol Labs.

Note that not all these individuals work on FileCoin. Filecoin is only one of four other projects the company is currently developing.

IPFS as opposed to HTTPS

Perhaps you have not heard of Interplanetary File System (IPFS), which is a developing technology to replace the current Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. Here is a quick lesson on what IPFS does when you add a file:

- Each file and all of the blocks within it are given a unique fingerprint called a cryptographic hash.

- IPFS removes duplicates across the network and tracks version history for every file.

- Each network node stores only content it is interested in, and some indexing information that helps figure out who is storing what.

- When looking up files, you're asking the network to find nodes storing the content behind a unique hash.

- Every file can be found by human-readable names using a decentralized naming system called IPNS.

Enter the Gladiators

While Filecoin is pretty neat, raised a ton of money, and has a great team behind it, it is entering a market with many competitors.

Filecoin is not a one-and-done solution, if someone can do the same work for a cheaper price, then well you know the story; they are going to go for the cheaper price.

It looks like 2018 and beyond will start to see the successful ICOs battle it out for market control in the new emerging blockchain economy. The second half of 2018 and well into 2019 and beyond will see a rise in competition among the providers of similar services.

It will be an interesting time to observe how these companies compete and how it affects token prices.

Furthermore, and what is most important is that these companies first get the products or services on the market before we can start to see the business plan in action and if this token-based model can compete with the companies on wall street.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

ICOBench says 53 M $

and as I said offcial thread of MobileGo pointed 53 M $ too

Who to trust?)

WRT MobileGo

https://icodrops.com/mobilego/

It's gonna be interesting, have Petro already finished tokensale?

Can u find anything on the Venezuelan Petro ?

Past ICO Review: How Aragon Freedom Fighters Gained Traction




Fighting for freedom in the digital age, how one startup wants to liberate the world

Everyone knows someone who talks a mile a minute, while how about an ICO that raised a million dollars per minute for 26 minutes?! Shocked? Go ahead and pinch yourself, you are not dreaming. Aragon raised 25 mln in 26 minutes, it hit its record 26-min ICO on May 18, 2017. Aragon entered the market the same day at $1.49 per token and has risen 184.5 percent up to 4.24 at the time of writing. It has a market cap of $112 mln and ranked at 135 on CoinMarketCap.

Create and run an organization out of the box

Aragon is a Dapp on the Ethereum Blockchain, ERC20 token, that allows the user to create, run and manage a decentralized organization. The company’s motto is to put power back to the people. According to the website, “We want to empower people across the world to easily and securely manage their organizations. We provide the tools for anyone to become an entrepreneur and run their own organization, to take control of their own lives.”

The company has essentially created a smart-contract Blockchain software that works without having a Blockchain expert on staff.

Blockchain experts are not just growing on trees! Not having a Blockchain expert on staff is cited as one of the many reasons why companies are hesitant to enter into the new space. Blockchain is a powerful tool but with great power come great responsibility. Many company heads are fearful of putting up any sensitive information that could remain on the chain forever.

How is it different? How is it not?

Oh? So it’s like the others? You can use it to vote, hold elections and keep contracts in place? Yes, that’s right, just like the others, which in a large sea of competition, it is easy to get lost or confused with others. So what sets Aragon apart from the others? FREEDOM! The team behind the tech are concerned about the future at the crossroads of technology and humanity because technology is either going to lead to a more transparent, free, open society or it will aid more oppression, surveillance and confinement of society.

The team would rather not see that and so they chose to fight for freedom and fight they do by offering easy to use tech for organizations to become decentralized and stick it to the “digital man.” This idea has become popular with many in the cryptocurrency community because of its ability to increase efficiency, and participate in the first decentralized autonomous organization focused on digital jurisdiction, upgradeability and functional governance.

El Grupo

Luis Cuende

Is listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Tech review. He founded Stampery, a time-stamping project in the Blockchain ecosystem. His has experience working with the likes of the Estonian government, Microsoft and Telefonica.

Jorge Izquierdo

Having created various popular applications, with accolades ranging from receiving a Thiel fellowship and a WWDC scholarship by Apple at a tender age of 15 as one of the most promising young app developers.

Gaining traction? Supporters, yes. Projects?

While it does not sound as exciting as asking oracles to peer into crystal balls and predict the future, the company is growing its following. More than 750 organizations are using the Aragon’s testnet and the Slack channel has more than 500 members.

While Aragon is building a following online, there are still some features that need to be implemented such as digital arbitrage. Additionally, the token price has been rather stable, only showing growth in the past two months - perhaps due to support from the Slack users? If Aragon cannot implement its software, it is not going to go anywhere fast except faded memory.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: BOScoin Great Tech, But Who Knows About it?



Easy to read and write contracts are great, but is there public attention?

South Korean-based BOScoin or in long form, the Blockchain Operating System is an ERC20 based coin that has “trust contracts” regarded as easier to understand and write by humans. The network is self-evolving, in which each node has a vote and the nodes of the network vote on software updates and other matters. The nodes are referred to as congress. The block size is dynamic and the block interval is every five seconds. BOScoin can process 1,000 transactions per seconds which give it much-needed bandwidth.

Impressive ICO, lackluster token performance

BOScoin had an ICO on May 10, 2017 and raised $12 mln from it. The token started trading much later on Oct. 25, 2017 at $0.71. Since then it has seen some great gains in January 2018, up to $5.00 at some points, but has since then fallen down to $0.19 at the time of writing. Its market cap is $85 mln and its CoinMarketCap rank is 166.

Trust contracts are easy to write, easy to read

The big differences here are the trust contracts are written in Timed Automata language, which makes it easy to read and write a BOS smart contract, because they are understandable before they are executed. A problem that many are seeing today with smart contracts is that the programming language is hard to understand, which makes the contracts hard to read or write in code. That, in its turn, leads to the need of having to hire someone who can decipher the language.

Solidity is the programing language of Ethereum’s smart contracts. It is a contract-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts. It was influenced by C++, Python and JavaScript and is designed to target the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Leaders of the Pack

Changki Park- Former Samsung employee who worked in financials before. He also created Paxnet, an information portal for South Korean investors, which has had some success.

Yezune Choi- He is the inventor of the trust contract and has more than 20 years of experience in software development.

It’s a sure-unsure bet

BOSCoin has some interesting features and it could have potential for wider adoption. However, it is still relatively obscure. The need for a user-friendly smart contract system presents the market with much opportunity.

However, one drawback is that the existence of Ethereum and its success in the market means that people may choose to develop on it instead, for fear of betting on something that could fail. This tried-and-true approach is something that is detrimental to BOScoin.

But the user friendliness is something that could win over a lot of people, and get them to say “hey, this is a great tool to write smart contacts and not need someone with a Blockchain background to do it.” This saves time, money, and allows more people to get into Blockchain technology without the high level of knowledge.

Finally, the obscureness of it and lack of attention sometimes harm a coin’s reputation, because there is no one else using it, so there must be something wrong with its mentality.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

It can be so about Bankex. 0,5 M$ is not such a big difference, if we are talking about 10th place.

I found 53M $ in MobileGo thread

https://icodrops.com/bankex/ Bankex raised over 70.5Mill $, so it should be over Tron...

MobileGo did 100+Mill

Top 10 ICOs by Funds Raised, From Filecoin to TRON



The top 10 ICOs by funds raised have a combined total of $1.4 bln

1. FileCoin $257 Mln
2. Tezos $232 Mln
3. Paragon $183 Mln
4. Finney $158 Mln
5. Bancor $153 Mln
6. Status $102 Mln
7. Kin $98 Mln
8. Elastos $94 Mln
9. TenX  $80 Mln
10. Tron  $70 Mln

The past year has had much excitement in the crypto market with ICOs becoming a mainstream event and seeing a lot of headlines in the news. The following is a review of the top 10 ICO by the amount of funds raised.

1. FileCoin $257 Mln

The true king of the crypto ICOs, FileCoin raised the most. FileCoin is offering a decentralized storage service with ultra-competitive rates for users. Other users can rent out their storage space for payment in filecoin. The token is trading at $11.21 down from a high of $27 in December 2017. Currently, they are accepting early miners in the pilot program. It is too hard to tell if/when FileCoin’s decentralized storage system will get off the ground.

2. Tezos $232 Mln

Tezos erupted onto the market with its astounding $232 mln ICO, but quickly lost control of most of its funds due to infighting and now trying to stave off pending legal cases. These legal cases are based on infighting between partners, which has caused the company to halt work. In more recent developments, some of the partners have gone rogue and pushed ahead with development. Despite the deluge of bad news, that would usually decimate a company’s stock price, Tezos token has appreciated, causing some to believe that it will actually be worth something in the end.

3. Paragon $183 Mln

Despite raising more than $100 mln during the ICO, the token price tanked a day after the launch starting at $1.68 per token and falling to $0.48 only three days later. On Dec. 21, 2017, there seemed to be something of a pump and dump when the token price surged to an all-time high of $4.11 and then crashed back down $0.52. Paragon is currently trading at $0.28 at time of writing. It suffers from the debilitating effects the Marijuana grey zone that is found in the US: some states approve it, but the federal government says its illegal. This is a big no go for financial institutions that are obedient to the feds.

4. Finney $158 Mln

Sirin labs have used Finney as an ICO to raise some massive funding to run a project on Blockchain-powered devices such as smartphones and computers, citing that traditional operating systems are vulnerable to hacking and leave users exposed to risk. Finney is the name of the smartphone that is currently in development, and in April 2018, it was announced that electronics manufacturer Foxconn will work with Sirin to produce the phone. Furthermore, Sirin Labs plans to deliver a “decentralized app store run by the community” where “cost-bearing apps are based on a secure P2P resource-sharing system, which distributes fees between users and developers.” However, which community are they talking about? This leaves a lot of questions to be answered.

5. Bancor $153 Mln

The Bancor Protocol is a technical revolution allowing tokens to be converted without matching two parties with different wants. The magic is in the math, with a simple formula balancing buys and sells so that every token in the network maintains a formulaic relationship to others. The result is continuous liquidity regardless of trade volume or exchange listings. When Bancor token debuted on July 17, 2017, it entered the market at $4.49 per token. By November 2017, it has crashed down to $2 per token losing 50 percent of its value in four to five months.

6. Status $102 Mln

Being Ethereum’s browsing tool for searching and making payments, on the side of representing a messaging application, Status has raised a substantial amount of funding despite not being too well known outside of the smaller circles. Status trades at $0.11 up from the entrance price of $0.06 from late June 2017.

7. Kin $98 Mln

The Kin Ecosystem Foundation aims to bring all digital communications under one umbrella, such as chat apps and social networks. The ERC20 token will be used for all transactions in the Kin Ecosystem. It has attracted the attention of many investors, as it raised a substantial amount in its ICO. However, in March it was announced that Stellar would be taking over as the payment system: “Kin transactions will now take place side-by-side on Stellar and Ethereum, unlocking faster transactions for digital services, while continuing to provide liquidity to Kin holders,” according to a press release on PR Newswire. This raises doubts about whether the currency can function as no Dapps of Kin have been launched.

8. Elastos $94 Mln

Elastos’ technology attempts to create a new kind of Internet, powered by Blockchain technology. On this new Internet, people will be able to own digital assets and generate wealth from them. The goal is to create an Internet that allows users to access articles, movies and games directly, without going through a media player or another platform intermediary. Elastos will use Blockchain technology to issue IDs for digital content, making it possible to know who owns which digital assets. It recently had its ICO in February 2018, since then the token price has returned close to its introductory price of $44.

9. TenX  $80 Mln

TenX is making crypto more of a tangible payment system by creating actual debit cards that are linked to a TenX wallet. The company has a forthcoming banking license in the works and intends on taking its everyday payment system mainstream. With technology like this, it is surprising that the company did not raise more in its ICO. The TenX token has been on a steady decline since its release with an all-time high of $5.26 during the 2017 December rally down to $1.25 as of mid-May 2018. The token price might not go to the moon, but the debit card might end up in a few wallets.

10. Tron  $70 Mln

Tron made a big splash onto headlines in December 2017, as its technology is set on decentralizing the entertainment industry. The idea was to enable compensation for content creators, such as singer/songwriters, artists, bands, performers, and anyone who is an entertainer. Hitting an all-time high in December at $0.25, it has crashed to only $0.07 and remained there, as there has been lots of controversy on whether this is a scam or a legitimate token.

You may find Past ICO Reviews HERE

Thanks again! We have already made corrections on site and here on forum

you can just check their twitter account:

https://twitter.com/polkadotnetwork/status/923830921563910144
posted: 27th October 2017:



Polkadot
‏@polkadotnetwork
14 Oct 2017

or have a look here:

https://hacked.com/ico-update-polkadot/

Investment Details
Type: Dutch Auction Crowdsale
Pre-Sale: Ongoing
Opening Sale: Oct. 15, 2017
End Date; Oct. 28, 2017
Platform: Native
Token Release: Genesis Block (Q3 2019)
Total Supply: 5 million out of 10 million total allocated to Genesis
Payments Accepted: ETH

Thanks. We will explore

the only ICO in your list i put money in.
there wasent a year-long ICO. that not true. it took place between 15 OCT – 27 OCT 2017.

Past ICO Review: Crystal Ball Cloudy For Gnosis



A crystal-ball crypto? Not exactly, but crowdsourced predictive analytics does hold some truth

In a short time, Blockchain and cryptocurrency technology have come a long way, but  crypto that can predict the future? Now, that might sound like a late night psychic scam, but this Blockchain is looking back into the past to better gauge the future. Gnosis, Greek for knowledge of spiritual mysteries, is centered on the prediction market.

Financials

Gnosis entered the market over one year ago on May 1, 2017, at $51.64, at the time of writing, it is trading at $96.39, almost a 100 percent gain! Not bad for a soothsaying crypto. The one-day ICO held on April 24, 2017, raised $12.5 mln in capital for Gnosis. The market cap is $106 mln and the CoinMarketCap rank is 143.

So you mean to tell me, you can see the future?

Prediction markets are sometimes called information markets, idea futures, event derivatives, decision markets or virtual stock markets. In essence, a prediction market is a vehicle for aggregating information about the expected outcome of a future event. How does the system work? Participants receive a set of tokens reflecting each possible outcome and may then trade these with either other market participants or a market maker. This is essentially betting on the outcome of said event.

The current market price reflects the probability of the specific outcome to occur. The set of outcome tokens has to cover all possible outcomes so that the probability of all outcomes adds up to 100 percent. Once the event outcome is known, the winning outcome has a probability of 100 percent and is worth one, while all other losing outcomes have the probability of zero percent and are worth zero. Gnosis uses the crowdsourced information to make predictions about the event.

There is an old anecdote about the more people guessing the weight of a cow, the more accurate the number will be. Besides the crowdsourced guesses, an ultimate oracle would settle the outcomes of the events and thusly the disputes. However, the oracle should be an independently controlled mechanism to achieve the most fairness.

Dual-token system

Gnosis incorporates the use of two ERC20 tokens, Gnosis (GNO) and Gnosis Wizard (WIZ). The GNO token has a fixed supply of 10 mln GNO tokens. The company plans to charge for the use of certain services that operate on the core platform. Fees will be payable in ETH, BTC or WIZ. This is similar to the gas model on the Ethereum smart contracts: pay to play. According to the website and some further investigating,  WIZ is generated by holders of GNO. WIZ tokens will be pegged at or very near $1. It’s important that the WIZ token maintain low volatility to serve as a vehicle of collateral on the platform.

Crystal ball cloudy for Gnosis

While the company has been around for over five years already, according to their timeline, there are still many implementations to be done before the software is up and running. It appears that Q3 2018 will be the time that the technology will be fully operational.

Out of many of the ICOs of 2017, it is one of the few that has managed to keep its token price above the ICO debut price, showing it has potential. However, on the flipside, it is a crowdsourced-predictive analytics system. A crowdsourced system could only be as good as the crowd participating in it. Care to cast a wager on Gnosis? Will it succeed? Will it fail? Choose wisely, chosen one!

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: MedicalChain in Severe Pain After Overdose



The trillion-dollar healthcare industry is ready for Blockchain, but data and patient privacy are at stake

Doctor, doctor, give me the news! I have got a bad case of MedicalChain blues! Medicalchain is just as it sounds, a Blockchain used to maintain medical records. It was developed in the UK by an innovator, who had been working in the UK’s National Health Service, and discovered a better way to maintain medical records.

Financials

MedicalChain had a big ICO, where it raised some $24 mln in 30 days from Feb. 1, 2018 to March 1, 2018. The ERC20 token debuted at $0.25 and started its downward trend to $0.17 at the time of writing. It had a market capitalization of $32 mln and 500 mln medtokens in circulation. It is ranked 297 on CoinMarketCap. It is currently listed on Huobi Pro, Kucoin, Gate.io, Coinbene, and QRYPTOS exchanges.

Take control of your medical records

Medical records are similar to your “permanent record” from high school, which your teachers used to threaten you with. “This transgression will go on your permanent record from which it can never be expunged,” teachers used to say. 

They got your records with information about you, but you are never allowed to see them nor have them in your own possession. But unlike the high school records, in the U.S. at least, all you have to do is ask for a copy. But what is stopping us from doing that? Trust?

MedicalChain claims to give you back the ownership over your personal information. A decentralized platform that enables secure, fast and transparent exchange and usage of medical data, it introduces utilization of Blockchain technology to store patient health records and maintain a single version of the patient’s true data.

MedicalChain aims at enabling healthcare agents such as doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists and insurers to request permission to access and interact with medical records. Each interaction is auditable, transparent, and secure, and will be recorded as a transaction on Medicalchain’s distributed ledger.

Moreover, no privacy is lost in this process; MedicalChain is built on the permission-based Hyperledger Fabric architecture which allows varying access levels; patients control who can view their records, how much they see and for what length of time.

So far MedicalChain is only accepting reservations for its services in the UK. However, it would like to expand to the United States and globally.

Hot market 

The US is a hot market in all aspects medicine because of all the hospitals, healthcare organizations, and the massive industry itself and ancillary markets. Despite the cornucopia of partnerships that are readily available in the US, Medicalchain is not seeking to partner with hospitals and healthcare organizations or government, but instead is approaching the patients directly and offering for them to have their records on their platform regardless of which healthcare organization they belong to. This is in general and not only directed at the US.

The team

Dr. Adbdullah Albeyatti

Dr. Albeyatti graduated from Imperial College London as a doctor in 2011. He has always had a passion for innovation and problem solving and has developed solutions to inefficiencies he found whilst working in the UK National Health Service.

Mo Tayeb

Mo is the co-founder and chief operations officer of MedicalChain. He is a graduate from Brunel University from where he obtained a degree in e-commerce. He also holds an Executive MBA from University of Oxford, Saïd Business School.

Newborn learning to walk or bedridden cripple?

MedicalChain has a great service for a multi-trillion-dollar industry that grows larger each year. It is still very new to the market and needs more time to evolve before its trajectory is set. However, the depreciating medtoken is a worrisome sign to some or a buy signal to others. 

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: On VeChain Success Train



VeChain promises to verify products, link up logistics and end the black market

Singapore-based VeChain, a non-profit organization, was founded in July 2017 as a solution to product identification management with Blockchain technology: a unique ID for every product, combing Blockchain and encrypted ID. One month later the token was launched. Starting at only $0.23 on Aug. 21, 2017, VeChain has increased by 2,091 percent in eight month’s time up to about $5 and is ranked now 15 by CoinMarketCap.

Don’t get lost in logistics

VeChain is a Blockchain-as-a-service company that primarily focuses on supply chain logistics. In conjunction with developed smart chips, it essentially uses Blockchain and the Internet of Things to track products in real-time, keep counterfeit products out of supply chains, and allow retailers and wholesalers a glimpse at how products performed in various quality control tests.

VeChain suggests a solution to make every product traceable and verifiable. For the consumer, this means you will be able to verify that what you are buying is the real thing.

For example, wines, whiskeys, and down to the exact ingredients that went into making these fine products can be verified by using the tracking technology. Diamonds, pharmaceuticals, the list goes on. With verifiable products and ingredients, consumers will have confidence in what they buy. As more commerce moves online so will the money.

A system like this would weight heavy on the black market of knock-off goods, leading the way for its eventual consolidation and potential destruction.

VeChain currently works with:

- Luxury goods

- Liquor

- Auto

- Retail

- Agriculture

- Cold-chain logistics

- Logistics  

It’s all who you know

VeChain has been partnering with some large, well-known companies, which is really drawing some attention. It first partnered with Norway-based global assurance service company DNV GL to allow retailers to track products in real-time. But the big news was its  February 2018 announcement that VeChain and German car manufacturer BMW would be teaming up. In particular, VeChain will aid BMW in tracking its auto parts supply chain so as to eliminate child labor.

Partners:

- PWC

- DNV GL

- BMW

- Michigan State University

- Oxford University

The stress test

VeChain is the very first digital currency to pass the Cryptocurrency Disaster Recovery Plan (CDRP), according to PwC. The CDRP acts as a stress test for the crypto market, with the most serious and likely threats to virtual coin holders being examined such as loss of login info, virus infiltration, system crashes on virtual wallets, hardware damage, private keys compromised, etc. It was determined that VeChain responses to these threats were sufficient so as to protect the assets of token holders. This is similar as to what banks have to test for after the 2008 financial crisis but specific for digital assets.

New economy

Overall, VeChain looks like a success story from hundreds of failing ICOs. However, it is interesting to wonder if the ICO is the precursor for the next level of fundraising for new companies. As many companies start to move toward Blockchain adoption and development, the ICO just might replace the IPO in the next 10 to 20 years. It is hard to say how the market will function in the future, but there is no doubt that Blockchain and cryptocurrencies will be a part of the new economy of the future.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: How Cobinhood’s Arrows Have Missed the Mark



Cobinhood’s tokens grew at amazing rate, but identity crisis and lost of banking access made it miss the target

It has been a rough ride for cryptocurrency exchange provider Cobinhood. Not only did the stock, and now crypto, exchange Robinhood sent them a cease and desist order because of similar name touting the same services, the Taiwanese company lost access to banking services for its customers. Meaning users could not send or receive fiat transfers to the platform.

To remedy this, Cobinhood has accepted stablecoin Tether, which is tied to the US Dollar at 1:1. Cobinhood’s claim to fame is its zero-trading fee. Before diving deeper, let's look at the ICO financials.

Big break out, bigger bust

Cobinhood’s ICO ran from September 13, 2017 to October 22, 2017 and raised $13 million. The entry native token price was $0.04 on September 30, 2017. At the time of writing, the price per token now sits at $0.08, a 100-percent growth.

While 100% looks like an amazing rate, it should be noted that Cobinhood hit a high of $1.52 on January 10th, 2018, a 3,700-percentage gain! But then over the course of a month, the price tumbled down to $0.25 by February 10th, and continued its slide to the present day.

Note that the token started trading before the launch of the exchange on December 17, 2017. CoinMarketCap rank is 305

Without bank access, buying crypto isn’t easy

Cobinhood’s banking partners decided at the start of 2018 that they would not do business with the exchange. It is assumed that this reasoning came about due to the nature of many banks not wanting to work with cryptocurrencies. This essentially strangled the exchange and put a burden on the users.

To remedy this, the exchange announced that it would enable Tether-based buys and sells. In other words, the user would have to hold Tether off exchange to make purchases on the exchange. This led to a crypto-for-crypto buys and sells. If you know anything about exchanges, then you know that this adds on more costs, fees, and waiting time for the user and this is not ideal.

Despite the Name, it Hangs in the Game

Despite the name and the issues with competitor Robinhood, it seems to be a technologically sound exchange. The company has taken several measures to ensure a quality experience with the exchange.  when the company performed a stress test to push the platform to its limits, the exchange averaged 1,154,284 orders and 10,142 order book updates per second for each trading pair — making it the first cryptocurrency exchange capable of true high-frequency trading. A rather impressive feat, considering the largest exchange Coinbase has had several meltdowns over the past 6 year when trading volume skyrocketed.

The Team

Popo Chen - CEO and Founder
Chen Tai Yuan is a 26-year-old serial entrepreneur who earned an Electrical Engineering master’s degree at the age of 22. At the age of 24, he founded 17 live streaming, a leading live streaming platform across Asia with more than 5M daily active users. In three months, 17 live streaming raised 10M USD.

Wei-Ning Huang - CTO and Co-Founder
Wei-Ning has three years' working experience at Google. Before that, he was an active open-source contributor and worked in the open-source space for more than five years. He specializes in building large-scale web applications with demanding throughput and availability. Wei-Ning is also an early adopter of cryptocurrencies, having five years of cryptocurrency trading experience and deep understanding of the blockchain technology.

Tony Scott - Advisor to Cobinhood and Former U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer
Tony Scott was the third U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer, serving from 2015-2017. During his tenure, he was involved in leading various digitalization and blockchain-themed projects as well as improving the cybersecurity of government.

The Bottom Line

Cobinhood is an interesting case because it has many users and a strong technology platform, and advised by the former U.S. CIO. 

However, the red flags are big ones: name contesting with Robinhood, loss of banking partners and thus the ability to buy and sell fiat, adding more steps and fees to a complicated process for new users. The native token has suffered much in the past few months almost returning to its starting position. The ICO raised a good bit of funding, but the subsequent hits have damaged the reputation.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: Qtum Wants to be Ether, But it’s Built on Bitcoin



What financials show for a hybrid between Ethereum and Bitcoin protocols?

Throughout the many Past ICO Reviews, a common trend has emerged: many tokens are ERC20, which are built on the Ether Blockchain. This should not come as a surprise because many innovative Blockchains with tokens want to do something more than be a payment-services solution. To do that, smart contracts come into play and Ethereum is the smart contract’s king. So it is no surprise why so many companies build on Ethereum.

What is surprising is that Qtum is not an ERC20. It is built on Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) transaction model combined with a proof-of-stake consensus model. The developers stated that these elements of the Blockchain make it better suited for business-enterprise systems.

Financials

Qtum entered the cryptocurrency market early in 2017 with a March ICO that raised $15 mln. While it seems small compared to what has been raised over the past six to nine months, it was the fourth biggest ICO in terms of funds raised at that time in March 2017. Token prices debuted at $6.40 in March 2017 and at the time of writing are up 202 percent to $19.34. CoinMarketCap has it ranked at 18.

But now comes the questions that every cryptocurrency fears to hear: what is it good for? What can it do?

Hybrid functions and subsequent tokens

One of the primary goals of Qtum is to be able to bridge the Bitcoin and the Ethereum world. What makes the software unique is that Qtum’s core technology combines a fork of Bitcoin Core, an Account Abstraction Layer allowing for multiple Virtual Machines, including the Ethereum Virtual Machine and Proof-of-Stake consensus aimed at tackling industry use cases.

21 Dapps and counting

Qtum has 21 Dapps on its page that are either working or a prototype. Many of them are their own coins and platforms such as Energo, which is built to measure and regulate clean energy produced within local microgrids- this model empowers consumers and allows community members to directly exchange energy in a system unburdened by the constraints of a traditional grid.

Designed with stability, modularity and interoperability in mind, Qtum is a toolkit for building trusted decentralized applications, suited for real-world, business oriented use cases. Its hybrid nature, in combination with a first-of-its-kind PoS consensus protocol, allows Qtum applications to be compatible with major Blockchain ecosystems while providing native support for mobile devices and IoT appliances.

Quantum Team

Patrick Dai graduated from Draper University and was previously employed by Alibaba.                                         
Neil Mahi has 20 years experience developing software and has four years experience in the Blockchain space.
Jordan Earls has been developing software since he was thirteen. Jordan has reviewed over 100 altcoins and identified multiple exploits in coins.
Patrick Dai, Qtum Project co-founder, said that Qtum intends to become a smart contracts platform for business. The Qtum project will make it easier for companies and industries to develop practical applications on top of Qtum. The project envisions a future consisting of automated business practices and seamless machine-to-machine communication. In March 2017, it was announced that PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PwC) would partner with Qtum.  “Having PwC, which has broad expertise across industries and a global network, support Qtum will help us fulfill our mission,” said Dai. Furthermore, the hybrid nature of Qtum will allow it to interact with Ethereum- and Bitcoin-based Blockchains for better compatibility capitalization.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: Ask the Oracle From Middleware



How a superior decentralized oracal technology reels from FUD

ChainLink is what is known as middleware or software that acts as a bridge between an operating system and a database, for instance. ChainLink allows smart contracts on various networks to connect to the resources they need to be successful.

In this era of getting rid of the middleman, ChainLink, while it has good application intentions, is going against the grain. Let’s dig into the financials before talking tech.

Big ICO, small price performance

ChainLink entered the market on Sept. 20, 2017 at $0.15 per token. It broke $1 in January 2018 for about 10 days hitting a high of $1.35 before falling, and falling back down into the depths. At the time of writing, it the price per token sits at $0.52.

Despite raising, some $32 mln during its month-long ICO throughout September and October, the token has not performed well despite the advanced technology. Betamax was also more advanced than the VHS tape but failed to achieve success despite its technological superiority. Some say it lost due to a rumor linking it to Porn- FUD from a bygone era?

Further compounding the price stunting has been all the FUD that has raked up and thrown into the media. There was a point where ChainLink was being called a scam. It seems that buying and selling the rumor is more the norm in the crypto-trading sphere, than buying or selling on the actual news. The FUD really put a wet blanket on the price.

A third factor is its partnership with SWIFT, while it might seem like a great partner, the idea behind cryptocurrency is to do away with antiquated, expensive payment systems. Unless, SWIFT will try to use Blockchain as a way to reinvent itself and become competitive with cryptocurrencies?

ChainLink tech: decentralized Oracal nodes

ChainLink is a decentralized oracle solution that bridges the gap between what is going on in the world and the Blockchain-based smart contracts. While smart contracts can only be executed internally on the Blockchain, there needs to be something that links external APIs to the Blockchain, so smart contracts can execute automatically based on real-world factors.

The problem with oracles are that they are centralized or owned by a company. There is a potential for bias in the information being transmitted by the oracal to the smart contracts.

When a third party provides the oracle service for executing smart contracts, that trustlessness or decentralization disappears.

ChainLink’s solution to this problem is that it is the oracle: decentralized oracles powered by Ethereum-based ERC20 tokens are what makes ChainLink the middleware. The data being sourced from the decentralized oracles is unbiased a not from a sole source but multiple sources which allows for better consensus and verification.

Dynamic Duo

ChainLink is run by two key players Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis. Nazarov began his career building peer-to-peer marketplaces, going on to the investment team at FirstMark Capital. He joined the cryptocurrency revolution in 2011. Ellis was previously a Software Engineer and Team Lead at Pivotal Labs, where he worked on securing sensitive HIPAA compliant data and building scalable payments automation software.

ChainLink offers a lot of fascinating technology but fails to deliver due to overblown FUD which has marred its reputation. While it has raised some $32 mln from the ICO, it could perhaps better market itself for a better market position. On Coinmarketcap, it is ranked at 103.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: Aeternity For All Eternity?

Claiming to be better than Ethereum, Aeternity is rising up, but what does it do?

The scalable Blockchain platform was launched out of Germany on June 1, 2017. The initial token price was $0.68 and now, at the time of writing, is trading at $4.70 per token, a 591 percent gain!

The ICO raised some $24 mln from approximately 8,000 investors over a two-week period. The mission behind Aternity is similar to many of the ERC20 tokens out there: to be similar to Ethereum, but better by introducing more complex technologies layered on top of the smart contracts system.

Premise of technology

Aeternity offers a network of state channels, which enables the exchange of value with anybody in the world in a trustless way.

Users can interact privately with each other and businesses can keep their records off-chain and not in public view. Additionally, users can have infinite almost instant transactions because the Blockchain is needed for adjudication or transfer of value. Furthermore, to facilitate the use of the smart contracts, Aeternity uses oracles to feed data into smart contracts which require it to transact.

Commodity prices, stock prices, weather conditions, the list is limitless on what parameters can be set by the smart contracts. The Aeternity Oracle Machine provides real-world data to the Blockchain. Each user can ask questions about the environment, surrounding the smart contract and the oracle provides the answer.

A consensus mechanism comes into play in case of disagreement. However, Aeternity takes an unusual step in having two consensus mechanisms on the Blockchain.

Danger of dual consensus mechanisms?

Oracles are generally singular, centralized data streams that often brings in security risks. To determine whether a supplied fact is true a new consensus mechanism has to be placed on top of the existing consensus mechanism. However, this strategy does not add security and if attacked it can be made to produce “false” values.

The development team of Aeternity is well aware of these security risks and is working on converging the two consensus mechanisms into one. This approach will reduce costs and increase security. By planning to decentralize the oracle, Aeternity will actually tighten the security of the network and the smart contracts developed on it.

The following excerpt  is taken from the website and describes the advantages of Aeternity:

“We present a highly scalable Blockchain architecture with a consensus mechanism which is also used to check the oracle. This makes the oracle very efficient because it avoids layering one consensus mechanism on top of another.”

It reads further: “State channels are integrated to increase privacy and scalability. Tokens in channels can be transferred using purely functional smart contracts that can access Oracle answers. By not storing contract code or state on-chain, we are able to make smart contracts easier to analyze and faster to process, with no substantial loss in de facto functionality.”

The team

The CEO and Founder of Aeternity, Yanislav Malahov, who had been working on Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin and had envisioned using powerful algorithms for Ethereum. Now, he is using these algorithms for Aeternity.

There are 47 employees listed on the website, all of whom have a deep interest in Blockchain and a breadth of other related skills. Overall, there is a positive outlook on this company, which has risen up into the top 30 on coinmarketcap.

You may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: Nebulas Not as Cloudy as Appears


Search engine for Blockchains? It will be needed soon to find the right Dapps

The token sale for Nebulas ended on Dec. 16, 2017, and it raised some $60 mln. It currently has a market cap of $345.5 mln and the token price is increasing in value since the ICO. The token debuted before the official ICO and it was trading at $4.58 when it entered the market in August 2017. At the time of writing, it was sitting at $9.71 per token, a 112-percent gain!

Nebulous Blockchain searches- no more!

One of the main problems that Nebulas tries to solve is searching for relevant decentralized applications (Dapps). As Dapps become more and more prevalent, being able to find the right Dapp to meet your needs will be harder and harder. That is why the value ranking will be vital in sorting Dapps. It will be akin to page rankings on a search engine, but for Blockchains and Dapps instead.

No forks at this table

The elimination of hard forks or fundamental programming codes changes that affects how the Blockchain functions. In the past year, there have been countless hard forks that have created new cryptocurrencies, and thusly, “parent-child” rivalries, such as the most notorious case, Bitcoin and it’s hard fork of Bitcoin Cash.

The latter, supporters like Roger Ver say, is the original Bitcoin! Without the hard forks, it makes it easier to manage a Blockchain and its nodes, the originator of the programming code, does not have to worry about miners and coders going rogue and splitting up the Blockchain. The idea behind the no forking is that the system should upgrade over longer periods of natural changes to the protocols and policies.

3 Pillars of Nebulas

The following are descriptions, taken from the website, of the three core technologies that will allow Nebulas to develop continuously and naturally.

1. Value Ranking: Nebulas Rank (NR) provides a measure of value for every unit in the Blockchain. It is the core ranking algorithm and was open sourced. The algorithm is based on liquidity, propagation of users' assets, and the interactivity between users. NR is used to rank addresses, smart contracts, Dapps and other entities on the Blockchain.

2. Self-evolving: Nebulas Force (NF) enables Nebulas to respond to new demands without forks. It provides the Nebulas Blockchain and its distributed applications built on top, the capability to self-evolve. In this way, developers are able to make changes, incorporate new technologies, and fix bugs without needing to hard fork.

3. Native Incentive: Nebulas Incentive (NI) rewards devoted Nebulas developers and virtuous users. Incentives are the driving force of Blockchain evolution. The Nebulas Incentive includes Developer Incentive Protocol (DIP) and Proof of Devotion (PoD).

Development team

The China-based team behind Nebulas has some developers who are responsible for creating Antshares or what is now known as NEO.

Hitters Xu- Founder and CEO of Nebulas, Founder of AntShares, now known as NEO, a Blockchain pioneer in China, the former Director of Ant Financial's Blockchain Platform, Alibaba’s financial branch and part of Google's Search & Anti-Fraud team.

Robin Zhong- Nebulas co-founder, former architect of Ant Financial's Blockchain Platform, former Senior Development Director of Dolphin Browser, Leader of Game Division.

Aero Wang- Nebulas and NEO co-founder, initiator of OpenIP and IP Community, a serial entrepreneur in Blockchain industry.

With a strong development team, mission, vision, $60 mln raised, and most importantly an actual purpose, Nebulas has some strong potential.

Ypu may find other Past ICO Reviews HERE

Past ICO Review: How Real Product Failed to Boost Token Sales

Small company offers microloans to stimulate economic well-being of developing nations, but its ICO results are mixed

The developing world has a challenge: people have the skills they need to start a business and bring themselves out of poverty, but there is no easy way for them to get the credit to buy the capital equipment they need to get started. According to Micromoney’s website, “100 out of 196 countries in the world serve as a home for two mln unbanked people, who use cash only, do not have any credit history and do not have access to any financial services.” Here is where Micromoney steps in.

It is an automated open-source credit and big data bureau that promises to provide instant credit check and microloans to users in 15 min via their smartphone. The platform also claims that users can pay lower interest rates and earn better credit scores the more they use the platform.

Crypto backed by a real product

Micromoney claims it is backed by a real product unlike many of the other cryptos out there. The following are important points made by the company:

- Built on Ethereum
- Smart contracts eliminate the intermediaries and provide fast service
- Open source software that is free and transparent  
- Financial inclusion of more than two bln people
- Create a digital identity
- Massive future growth and expansion into more than 100 countries

The ICO

For a small company founded in Cambodia, the token sale commenced on Oct. 17, 2018 and raised $10.5 mln. Despite what the company wants to do, the sales figures are a bit lower than expected. Despite that, the company has grown and expanded since its founding in 2015.

Short timeline of achievements

2015 — Cambodia: In December 2015, the company started with: $30,000 of initial capital, three employees, first 20 customers, and all the processes were executed in Excel and Google Docs.

2016 — Expanded into Myanmar. Work began to develop the Decentralized Credit Bureau, grew to 35 people working for the company. 23,000 unique registered users.

2017 —Expanded into Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand In 2017, the team increased to 85 people now 95,000+ unique registered users.

2018-- The company expanded into the Philippines and is ready to expand into the following countries:

- Hong Kong
- Vietnam
- China
- Malaysia
- Singapore
- Nigeria

The above countries have a large populace which will truly benefit from microcredits and loans. This will help raise the standard of living in these counties, too. The more people that can get the loans to start their businesses, the better their financial situation, which should spread to others and raise the quality of life over time.

The team behind the coin

Sai Hnin Aung -  Co-founder, COO. Serial Entrepreneur, experienced business development professional, investor, strategic leader, and executive with more than 18 years of experience in microfinance & financial services, new loan products initiative, risk management, business start-up, financial analysis.

Anton Dzyatkovskiy -  Co-founder, IT & Scoring. Lending Director in Everex, a payment crypto.

Token trading unimpressive

Micromoney (AMM) entered the market on Dec. 17, 2017 at $0.50 per token. In January, it rocketed upward to a high of $2.42 per token before falling back down in late January to $0.81 and then remaining relatively flat through March and April. At the time of writing, AMM is trading at $0.30 per token, rather unimpressive for all the expansion and growth taking place.

The coin is currently ranked at 747 on Coin Market Cap. On the one hand, this is a small company that is working in developing countries, on the other it has some great potential should it take off and continually grow and expand its operations. Perhaps, another ICO would be the shot in the arm this company needs to raise its profile among investors and the general public.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-how-real-product-failed-to-boost-token-sales

Past ICO Review: Paragon the Dope Dope

Anytime you mix drugs and cryptocurrencies, there is always disaster.

Anytime you mix drugs and cryptocurrencies, there is always disaster. The same goes for Paragon, a company that launched an ICO back on October 25, 2017. Despite raising more than $100 mln during the ICO, the token price tanked a day after the launch starting at $1.68 per token and falling down to $0.48 only three days later. On Dec. 21, 2017, there seemed to be something of a pump and dump when the token price surged to an all-time high of $4.11 and then crashed back down $0.52. Paragon is currently trading at $0.28 at time of writing.

While it is a novel idea to have Paragon run on ERC20 smart contracts, the world is just not ready for legal marijuana. Despite the gains it is making in some states in the US, it is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government, which keeps out major institutions, such as banks, which are key to helping the industry run. The fact that only a small percentage of the world’s population are using crypto, combined with an illegal substance spells disaster for the producer. That’s a train that is just not getting out of the station. Furthermore, its a bit of a crowded market out there in the marijuana crypto space.

What Paragon was designed to do

According to their website, the smart contract block train is supposed to cover two aspects of the so-called legal or medical marijuana industry: 1) linking the customer securely with a doctor who will write a prescription for the patient and then 2) remit that information to a dispensary to verify the product, and the entire supply chain, lab testing of the said product, ID verification of the patient, and the secure payment from the patient to the dispensary.

The team behind the smoke

Jessica VerSteeg CEO- Formerly Miss Iowa. Her motive behind Paragon was born out of tragedy, when her NFL boyfriend, who played for the New York Giants became addicted to opioid painkillers after suffering five concussions. This unfortunate addiction later led to his suicide. The idea is to promote Paragon as a non-addictive alternative painkiller.

Egor Lavrov, chief creative officer, is a Russian public relations specialist who earned his millions in web-based projects in Russia and abroad. He runs several online projects, of which Paragon is just one of them.

Lavrov and VerSteeg are married to each other.  

The lawsuit: Paragon up in smoke

In February 2018, Paragon was hit with a lawsuit, claiming that it violated the securities act. The lawsuit states that approximately between Aug. 15, 2017, through Oct. 16, 2017, the defendants raised at least $70 mln in digital cryptocurrencies by offering and selling unregistered securities in direct violation of the Securities Act.

It also stated that on Nov. 2, 2017,  Paragon ICO investors received an email updating them that during the Paragon ICO crowdsale they had collected 533 BTC and 8,092 ETH- worth approximately $7.3 mln and $10.2 mln, respectively, as of Jan. 12, 2018. Unfortunately, these amounts did not include any of the cryptocurrencies they collected during the Paragon ICO presale.

The presale, according to several sources claims, that the presale of some $33 mln was raised by family and friends only. There were no outside parties involved in the presale. Is that considered private gifts?

Cards stacked against

With the pending lawsuit and the gray area of marijuana, it is easy to understand why the token price has fallen so fast. While the idea of Paragon is nice on paper, the world is not ready for legalized weed just yet, and therefore, Paragon is ahead of its time.

Other Marijuana related cryptos



- Potcoin

- Tokken

- Hempcoin

- Cannabis Coin

Source: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-paragon-the-dope-dope

Past ICO Review: Polkadot, Wait, What Does it Do?



A Blockchain that offers scalability and interconnectivity, but yet with no inherent purpose raised $345 in 2017 in an ongoing ICO.

It’s a rather curious case about Polkadot. If you ask around, not many have heard of the coin, which has raised some $345 mln! The ICO started on October 14, 2017 and was finished in just three days, on October 27, 2017.

This is a bit of a mysterious coin because its position is that it is a Blockchain designed to be just that: a generic Blockchain without any special purpose.

The following passage is an excerpt from the white paper:

Polkadot is a scalable heterogeneous multi-chain. This means that unlike previous Blockchain implementations which have focused on providing a single chain of varying degrees of generality over potential applications, Polkadot itself is designed to provide no inherent application functionality at all.

Rather, Polkadot provides the bedrock “relay-chain” upon which a large number of validatable, globally-coherent dynamic data-structures may be hosted side-by-side. We call these data-structures “parallelized” chains or parachains, though there is no specific need for them to be Blockchain in nature.

What Polkadot attempts to do is to take create the scalability and interconnectivity that is missing in the Blockchain sphere.

Three pillars of Polkadot

Governance

Polkadot holders have complete control over the protocol. All privileges, which on other platforms are exclusive to miners, will be given to the relay chain participants (DOT holders), including managing exceptional events such as protocol upgrades and fixes.

Operation

Game theory incentivizes token holders to behave in honest ways. This mechanism rewards good actors while bad actors will lose their stake in the network. This ensures the network stays secure. This ensures the network stays secure.

Bonding

New parachains are added by bonding tokens. Outdated or non-useful parachains are removed by removing bonded tokens. This is a form of Proof of Stake.

The founder

Gavin Wood is the co-founder and former CTO of Ethereum. He is also the founder, CTO, and Chairman of Parity Technologies Ltd, which is supplying the development team behind Polkadot. He is also the founder and President of the Web3 Foundation, which aims to nurture technologies that can benefit the envisioned Web3 ecosystem of a truly decentralized Internet.

Year-long ICO continues

So what we have here, is essentially a generic Blockchain that has not even had a genesis yet. The genesis block is supposed to occur in Q3 2019. Strangely, the website states there is an inherent risk that it might not happen at all:

Due to the decentralized nature of Polkadot, there is no guarantee that the Polkadot genesis block (to the extent that it is developed) will be deployed as intended or at all. As DOTs are native tokens to Polkadot, they will not come into existence, whether as part of the Polkadot genesis block or otherwise, if there is no deployment of the Polkadot genesis block.

Frozen funds lead to stalled plans

We might not see that genesis block after all.  The company developing Polkadot, Parity Technologies, reported that there was a significant vulnerability in the Ethereum parity wallet library contract and some 68 percent of the ICO-raised funds in ETH are frozen.

The funds were raised during an auction that took place for three days after the opening of the year-long ICO. At the end of the auction, the final DOT price was 0.109 ETH meaning that a total of 485,331 ETH was raised from the sale of the five mln tokens.

At the time of writing, the above ETH figure is worth some $345 mln. A very impressive figure from just an action. Despite the frozen funds, the team at Parity Technologies insists that they will meet the Q3 2019 launch date on time. This coin still has potential, yet its practical use case still must be proved for a better understanding of what it is supposed to do.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-polkadot-wait-what-does-it-do

Past ICO Review: Mysterium, an ICO as Mysterious as the Name

Mysterium offers a decentralized VPN powered by users renting out unused network capacity.

Lithuania-based Mysterium is a decentralized, private VPN powered by Blockchain technology. It is an Open Sourced Network allowing anyone to rent out their unused network traffic while providing a secure connection.

Bubble ICO: popped quickly, bubbled up again, burst

The Mysterium ICO debuted May 30, 2017 and raised more than $13 mln in the one-day ICO sale. The Mysterium token entered the market at $2.45. One month later, at the end of June, it was down to $1.66. At the end of July, it was down further to $0.74, sinking to $0.48 by the end of November, before rocketing up to more than $4.00 in January!

The gains were brief, as it came crashing back down below $1.00 in January and has stayed there since that time. Mysterium was listed on Bittrex before it was removed earlier in 2018, possibly due to the crash in the price. According to the Mysterium team on the Reddit ADA in March 2018:

When the MYST token has been integrated in the VPN and nodes with the payments system we will be able to apply for relisting. We are also in the final stages of negotiations with several exchanges for listing. As mentioned previously we will be listed on at least one medium size exchange and a decentralized one. MYST is currently listed on: centralized- Liqui, BigONE; decentralized - IDEX, ForkDelta.

Additionally, according to the Mysterium Website, there will be a second ICO sometime in 2019. Perhaps, the second coming of an ICO will help lift the company back up.

Much potential, but lack of action scares investors 

It is rather surprising that Mysterium did not do better considering the privacy services that it offers to users:

- Focus on network participant benefits

- Private data is decentralized

- Obstructed access of your data for third parties

- Perfect competition sets fair price

- Essentially, you get paid to rent your unused network capacity

Since the first ICO almost one year ago, Mysterium has been pretty quiet about what is developing. A second AMA was held on April 19, 2018 on Reddit, but there have been no updates as to what questions were selected and answered. Investors need to see the progress of the technology to realize the potential to invest.

Possible prosperity ahead

While Mysterium might seem like one of the many ICO losers, it had a massive spike in January before falling back down. That spike makes it stand out in the crowd of failed ICOs. A second ICO on the horizon and a pending response to the Reddit AMA give hope that Mysterium will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix.

Furthermore, this coin was designed to facilitate more secure internet usage. Aside from working on establishing entirely private internet usage, Mysterium focuses on providing the users of its technology with an internet connection that is solid, stable and secure. Globally, the internet is challenged by many regimes and oppressive governments, and not everyone has an established fast internet connection, or any connection at all.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-mysterium-an-ico-as-mysterious-as-the-name

Past ICO Review: The DAO Split ETH and Subsequently Destroyed itself

The DAO: the Ethereum-based coin that hard forked Ethereum and blew itself out of existence

The DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization - was one of the spectacular ICO failures. After collapsing, it simply ceased to exist. It is not searchable on CoinMarketCap. An error in its software code was exploited by hackers and $50 million of its $168-million ICO-raised funds were stolen, leaving investors frenzied to sell and get out as quick as possible. The result was a massive price collapse, subsequent delisting from exchanges and eventual abandonment.

The short-lived DAO was a game changer, as it burst forth to introduce a paradigm shift in the way of thinking about finances in the digital age. The now-defunct DAO was meant to operate a venture capital fund for the cryptocurrencies and decentralized space.

The lack of a centralized authority would reduce costs and, in theory, provide more control and access to the investors. This is a massive benefit for investors who want to reduce trading and maintenance fees.

Smart complex contracts - maybe too complex?

DAO operated a complex Smart Contract code with many features. The contract system would have allowed companies to make proposals for funding. Once a proposal was white-listed by one of the curators, the DAO token holders, or investors,  would then need to vote on the proposal.

If the proposal got a 20 percent quorum, the requested funds would be released into the white-listed contractor's wallet address. This idea was revolutionary in the way that investors could make proposals and then be funded by democratic voting principles. This was great on paper, but when it came to coding it, problems arose.

Code carefully

When the DAO smart contract was created, the coders did not take into account the possibility of a software command known as a recursive call. The fact that the smart contract code first sent the ETH funds and then, only after sending the funds, updated the internal ledger balance, meant that the code could be exploited to drain accounts for more than the balance. In this case a recursive call could keep taking funds from the account before the ledger had a chance to reconcile itself. This is what allowed hackers to steal some $50 mln worth of Ether.

Soft Fork, Hard Fork, DAO is done

To remedy the hacking situation and correct the coding, action was taken by the Ethereum community with the use of a soft fork in the software coding that was designed to essentially go back and void all past transactions on the blockchain, including the hack which transferred the $50 mln worth of Ether.

The complex smart contract had what could be called an escrow account that all transactions had to pass through and wait 28 days before being allowed to be cashed out. While the hacker waited for his transactions to clear the soft fork took place and voided his withdrawal.

Or, this is what was supposed to happen, but did not. Further drastic action had to be taken and a hard fork was proposed. The hard fork would allow all the transactions to be voided and essentially reverse the withdrawal of all DAO back into Ether at 100 DAO to 1 ETH. 89 percent of the community supported the hard fork. With that step, DAO was done and Ethereum split into two tokens: the Ethereum we know today and what is known as Ethereum Classic.

While the DAO really had some great innovation behind it, its own coding and structure brought it down. The idea of an automated venture capital funding system is so so novel that it is bound to appear again under the guise of a new name and better coding.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-the-dao-split-eth-and-subsequently-destroyed-itself

Past ICO Review: EOS, an ICO Success Story

An ICO that has succeeded despite banned distribution in America is gearing up

Out of the many ICOs that fail, EOS is not one of them. The ICO is 345 days long and raised some $700 mln during the first phase of the ICO. The most recent reports indicate that the ICO raised 5,148,884.15 ETH, that is more than $2.833 bln, or 5.2% of all ETH currently available. That makes EOS the largest fund-rasing ICO to date! EOS token opened up at $1.03 and at time of writing is now worth $11.29 a gain of 996 percent.

If you invested $10,000 at the opening price, you would now have almost $110,000! Not bad for about a year’s wait.

What Drives EOS’ Success?

EOS has been successful due to a number of factors.

• It is an ERC20 compatible token, which is distributed on the Ethereum Blockchain pursuant to a related ERC20 smart contract. Ethereum’s smart contracts offer a lot of versatility for cryptos built on that platform, which lead to better business-related uses.
• EOS incorporates a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus protocol. This protocol is similar to a republic whereby members of the community delegate the responsibility of verifying transactions to elected witnesses. In other words, this is a crypto that is not mined but rather is based on producers, who create something.
  
• EOS can process millions of transactions per second through horizontal scaling. This is a major achievement over Bitcoin and Ethereum Additionally, this will make it possible to create Dapps that are indistinguishable from their centralized counterparts.

EOS Team, Rockstars of the Cryptoverse

Not only do the above capabilities help EOS to rise to the top, but there is also an amazing team of Blockchain and crypto professionals behind the company.

1. Brendan Blumer- CEO: Brendan Blumer is the Founder and CEO of block.one, the publisher of EOS.

2. Daniel Larmier- CTO: Launched Bitshares and Steem

3. Ian Grigg- Partner and financial cryptographer

4. Brock Pierce- Partner: Former child actor, he created the first ICO token, Mastercoin, aka Omni.

This C-Suite has been able to fund and drive EOS on the proper path and lead it to success. However, there have been some issues in distributing the ICO and token.

US Citizens are not allowed to buy ICO tokens

No ICO is perfect, in fact, there is a big problem for EOS in the United States. US Citizens and US. Entities are not allowed to buy EOS coins because the US is in the midst of trying to regulate ICOs, and for good reason, because many of them are scams.

Block.one does not believe that the distribution of EOS Tokens or the EOS Tokens themselves are securities, commodities, swaps on either securities or commodities or similar financial instruments.

The EOS Tokens are not designed for investment or speculative purposes and should not be considered as a type of investment. Nevertheless, US citizens, residents and entities should not purchase or attempt to purchase EOS Tokens due to the rules laid down by the SEC.

Author’s note: Being US-based, I went over to the EOS website and low and behold, it is true I am not allowed to click the link to purchase EOS tokens. However, you can easily get around this with a VPN.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-eos-an-ico-success-story

Past ICO Review: How $1 Worth Company Manages $50 Mln ICO

Even if this project is a Titanic, their comms team is not playing waltzers on the deck good enough

What if I told you there is an ICO with tokens whose utility was to facilitate online eSports tournaments and wagers?  A further discount in a discount crypto-based games store? In an unofficial Android-only store? What if the proceeds of their token sale were officially meant to support an ecosystem where the token publicly offered, wasn’t the center, but rather being “a close cousin” of the principal currency of the project? With a team that already have been involved in several other projects, and constantly adding new things?

Doesn’t sound like a treat for you? For me neither. How much do you think this ICO would score? Zero? Hundred Thousand? Million? Ten Million? Billion?

MobileGo, “The first crypto-centric Mobile Gaming Platform and store for in-game purchases,” scored more than 50 mln bucks at the time.

Let’s fast forward MobileGO year since the end of their ICO.

Share capital $1

According to the Corporate Registry of the Republic of Serbia, Gamecredits, d.o.o. (Serbian for LLC, limited liability company) has a share capital of 100 Serbian Dinars (about $1.04- that’s right, exactly one dollar and four cents). The company has been registered on June 06, 2017, a week or so after MobileGo ICO closing date.

Its founders are two Russian citizens: Mr. Sergey Sholom, presented as a CEO of Gamecredits (he isn’t officially), and Mr. Alexei Migitko. Actual managing director of Gamecredits d.o.o, as Serbian authorities are concerned, is Mr. Migitko.

According to the Serbian corporate law, unless there’s proven misconduct and misappropriation of company’s assets by its founders, they are not responsible for its debts. Coins and tokens aren’t even obligations.

Product

None so far. As far as the original whitepaper is concerned, the company is several months late to deliver. MobileGo’s community manager Jack Kuveke, when asked to comment on the issue, said:

“Our roadmap changed due to new partnerships. So we began working on a new store version to be released this spring which will have an integrated Unity distribution system to allow unity games to publish to our store easily. This spring to summer [2018 - Cryptocomes] is when first mgo features and our store will see releases.”

Mr. Kuveke refers to the deal Gamecredits stroke with Unity, the gaming platform, signed in November 2017. An important achievement for the company indeed. Yet, the roadmap hasn´t been updated since. “We will have a new timeline/roadmap released in the fast-approaching future,” said Mr. Kuveke to CryptoComes on April 19, 2018.

Questionable assumptions

MobileGo means to differentiate itself from the competition (at least two other cryptocurrency projects have issued Unity support after Gamecredits/MobileGo did) by offering a possibility to publish Unity games in their own crypto-centered store. MobileGo store is thought to attract developers offering lower commissions and quicker payouts than Google’s or Apple’s. Unity didn’t announce partnerships with other projects as it did with Gamecredits though.

So, MobileGo´s strategy is, apparently, to have gamers install an alternative app store, available, obviously, for Android only.  At least 50 percent of the funds are expected to be spent on marketing (i.e. acquisition of the user base).

The white paper says that in China there are more than 200 successful alternative app stores; that makes its authors think that there is a potential for alternative app stores in Europe, and North America, where currently 98% of play stores are monopolized by Apple and Google.

Well, the reason that alternative markets flourish in China is simple: Google PlayStore is banned, and the most successful alternatives are owned by Tencent, Baidu, China Telecom and other giants of the Middle Kingdom.

MobileGo’s white paper has made a questionable assumption. Specifically, they implied that it is as easy to acquire a user for a game as it is for an app store. It seems that they’ve omitted an entire stage of the sales funnel- their user acquisition costs would be higher than projected. And remember, even Amazon, with all its power, is barely visible compared to PlayMarket.

Present imperfect

Attempts of a cargo cult Elon Musk knock-off media appearances aren’t exactly playing out for MobileGo CEO. Mr. Sholom travels quite a lot, participates in forums organized in UN and UNESCO offices, mingles with Serbian Royal family (Serbia is a republic, and the descendants of the royalty are purely ceremonial figures) and delivers pretty much the same speech since the end of the ICO.

MobileGo´s community team stopped showing up in Bitcointalk thread of MobileGo where some participants have grown increasingly critical of the project tardiness and lack of communications. “We are restructuring our communications channels,” said MGO’s spokesperson when asked for the motive of the decision.

The main website of GameCredits has a prominently displayed link to a Chinese exchange that stopped operations late 2017. The team either don’t care or don’t know. A final touch is the motto that GameCredits’ PR person brandish on the official website:

“The less you ask, the happier I will be.”

Credit is due to GameCredits though, they were fully collaborative when I contacted them to check out a couple of details when preparing this article.

Anyway, despite all their desire to look otherwise, the overall impression of MobileGo is that the project is messy, riddled with imperfections and non-professional. The communication team seems to be seriously out of their league; during the first stealth phase, the communication is arguably the most important task and the comms team didn’t exactly match the challenge of doing that as one may expect from a company that worth 50M dollars.

Let me put this straight: even if this project is a Titanic (and especially if this is a Titanic), their comms team is not playing waltzers on the deck good enough. And only God knows what is happening in its engine rooms. 

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-how-1-worth-company-manages-50-mln-ico

Past ICO Review: What Remains From Bancor’s Initial Boom



Bancor offered greater liquidity to the cryptocurrency market, but did it live up to its promises?

The name Bancor is reminiscent of a large corporate bank, an institution that you could trust putting your savings into. But not everything is in a name. Big banks can go bust, too. Remember that diversification is key.

Big Bang

Bancor entered the market with a boom in July 2017 by raising $153 mln in only a matter of hours. Investors loved what they saw, a new ICO and a new kind of coin called smart tokens.

Eyal Hertzog, co-founder and product architect of  @Bancor, explained its approach to helping online economies scale horizontally:

“Since online economies use their own unique currencies, economic growth means that participating businesses will see the value of their tokens grow, enabling them to scale their operations as well.”

According to the Bancor website, the benefits of the so-called smart tokens are as follows: the Bancor Protocol is a technical revolution allowing tokens to be converted without matching two parties with opposite wants. The magic is in the math, with a simple formula balancing buys and sells so that every token in the network maintains a formulaic relationship to others. The result is continuous liquidity regardless of trade volume or exchange listings.

A “Smart” Token knows when to leave

Bancor protocol enables anyone to create a new type of digital coin called Smart Token, which can hold and trade other tokens. This allows the Smart Token contract to serve as its own market maker, automatically providing so-called price discovery and liquidity to other coins.

So effectively, Bancor has created an exchange that will automatically price and trade any cryptocurrency that the user wants to list with it, as well as tokens. The company says it will always have enough liquidity to make the market because the currencies have to build a reserve in Bancor tokens. Remember, new tokens are tied to Bancor.


Shower your neighbors with tokens

While it seems useful in some regard, the logic is still a bit fuzzy and lost when you get down to the matter. There is a reason why 50 percent of ICOs fail.

The website claims that you can issue token for your neighborhood. This would allow us to go back to medieval days where every town had its own currency, and that would not be too useful, considering how far we have come since that time. The exchanges would be kings with all the commissions and fees they would make from all the conversions to transact.

Sinking ships suck down survivors

According to Professor Emin Gun Sirer, Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, Bancor will continue to trail the market and its lack of price discovery will diminish any smart tokens created from it.

This, in essence, will keep those coins from growing beyond that of Bancor’s price, remember they are tied together. In other words, the tokens created off Bancor have no chance to thrive. When the parent coin is going down, Bancor will take them down, too. Tim Draper, billionaire venture capitalist, and backer of Bancor argues otherwise that it will give liquidity to the market. If you bought Bancor, then liquidity is great, because you will want to sell it as fast as you can.

Boom to bust

When Bancor token debuted on July 17, 2017, it entered the market at $4.49 per token. By November 2017, it has crashed down to $2 per token losing 50 percent of its value in four to five months.

On January 17, 2018, the token price spiked up to an all-time high of $10.27 per token, only to suffer a major crash, as the whole crypto market fell to the bears later in the month and the entirety of February. As of writing, the token as sunk to lows in hovering around high $2, low $3 range, still below that of its initial-entry-market price of $4.49.

Source: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-what-remains-from-bancors-initial-boom

Past ICO Review: Tezos, Crypto King for a Day



What happened with Tezos, one of the largest ICOs to date, which lost control of most of its funds due to infighting

The unlaunched token entered into CoinMarketCap on Oct. 2, 2017 at $1.66 per token and despite the failings of the rest of the organization, which is facing numerous lawsuits and serious infighting, the token is trading at, as of writing, $3.05, an 84 percent jump in value since its debut.

However, the token has still not been officially launched or made available to the public for purchase, so no one actually owns these unreleased tokens. It’s too bad that this infighting has kept investors from their money and earned gains.


Crypto King for a day

Tezos erupted onto the market with its astounding $232 mln ICO, but quickly lost control of most of its funds due to infighting and now trying to stave off pending legal cases. The biggest issue is the fact that the company is a Swiss-American cheese sandwich that is entangled in Swiss law.

According to Swiss law, the foundation is to be independent of the company and it holds the purse straps in this operation, leaving the other partners out in the cold. Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, the ones in the cold, are the holders of the Tezos source code via a Delaware-based company, Dynamic Ledger Solutions.

To gain back control of all the ICO-raised capital, the Breitmans have been trying to oust the head of the foundation, Johann Gevers. Of course, he was not having it and was fighting back, accusing the pair of character assassination.

Fighting for control

Since the start of February 2018, Gevers has restructured the board and added a new member in an effort to continue to fight. However, later in the month, it was announced that the entire foundation board, Gevers and two others, have voluntarily resigned.

This resignation has opened the way for Tezos’ community members to step in and take over. Under the assumption that the token could officially be released to the public and that the investors get back their contributions- remember that 85 percent gain!

According to the press release on February 22, 2018:

“The foundation is preparing itself to assist in the timely launch of the Tezos network.”

Radio silence on release

After all the shake-ups in February and promise by Breitman to “go rogue and release the token in the new few weeks,” Tezos tokens remain behind a thick wall of glass, tantalizing those who invested, only to see their investment grow but be unable to pluck it like a ripe green plum.

While there were many promises made to deliver, investors are growing tired of hearing excuses after a nine-month wait since the ICO closed. Usually, investors get their tokens within a month or two after the close of the ICO investment period.

Furthermore, there have been allegations made that technical progress has not been made, due to the fact that there are no funds to pay developers which have abandoned ship.


Silver lining: hope and appreciation

Despite the deluge of bad news, that would usually decimate a company’s stock price, Tezos token has appreciated, causing some to believe that it will actually be worth something in the end.

However, given the lawsuits and empty promises that Tezos was to go rouge and release the token, nothing has happened in six weeks from this promise. Leading many to believe, this token, like the many others before it and after it are destined for the ICO dustbin. 

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-tezos-crypto-king-for-a-day

Past ICO Review: Borderline Porn May Help Substratum to Bootstrap


This ICO is a good tech, but are perverts the only ones who are really willing to pay for the freedom of the Internet?

If Silicon Valley’s scriptwriters aren’t secretly paid by the Blockchain community, they should be. Look how many successful ICOs more or less replicate Pied Piper’s idea from the series- you remember that, hosting insurance company’s critical data on fridges worldwide, decentralized Internet and so on?

Filecoin. Storj.  And Substratum. The last one, a relatively modest player in terms of amount raised (about $13 mln), offers not a decentralized file storage, but rather decentralized hosting and content delivery network, with integrated cryptocurrency payment platform for the hosted services. This means one can host their content and receive payments for it in a decentralized manner.

Road ahead

Their concept seems to be well-thought, and the white paper foresees the most obvious questions.

Sort of Tor-meets-AWS thing, where anyone can host a portion of someone else’s content on a node run even on their PC, and earn money every time this content is served to someone. Accessible, unlike Tor, for non-initiated, from a normal browser, with no plugins or extensions. $SUB token is used to pay off people who provide CPU time and disk space for the decentralized network.

Screw the establishment! Hail Net Neutrality! Long live the freedom of expression! At this point, Silicon Valley set gradually transforms into Mr. Robot’s. Fade off.

Yeah, right. Well, now shake your head and try to breathe out the hypnotic atmosphere of official telegram groups; these mostly look like a boys’ band fan club chat.   

Make no mistake, Substratum is a good performer, and seemingly a good tech. It has more than decent team. They keep their roadmap ($SUB people expect the public beta this April). They maintain communication. They didn’t erase their whitepaper after the token sale ended. They don’t change the idea.

There are even rumors that the team intends to run ads on CNN, CNBC and Fox Business News soon (which may, in theory, attract users to the network and/or $SUB buyers). That’s all good, or as good as one can get in a market as immature and untamed as ours.

But how big is the market for the problem they offer to solve? Do they have a chance to become a global operator? Or will Substratum be confined to a niche, as a solution for the gray zone of the Internet? How many paying people are actually willing to pay for the Internet “to be a free and fair place for the entire world?’

“Your margin is my opportunity”

I’d respectfully disagree with Substratum’s white paper’s authors though when they say that “The primary issue with web hosting in its current form is that is incredibly expensive! It can cost upwards thousands of dollars per month solely to host the site files—this doesn’t include any maintenance costs or additional security. This makes it incredibly difficult for small or medium-sized businesses to have a strong web presence without incurring significant costs.”

Well, a small or medium-sized business normally doesn’t need “a strong web presence” that incurs that kind of costs. If that’s the market they aim for, well…

Substratum white paper claims that, since they will only charge for click, not uptime as AWS, they’ll be able to reach a level of prices “less expensive than current industry standard hosting.” Larger hosting companies margins are pretty high (Rackspace’s EBITDA margin was above 35% before it became private in 2016, and stopped publishing quarter results - the NOPAT margins were much lower, about 7.8% though), so, as Jeff Bezos said, “your margin is my opportunity.”

Individual nodes won’t have the kind of overheads, taxes,  infrastructure or costs of a hosting company, so the assumption of much lower price is feasible.

Another question is whether node owners would settle for that technically feasible lower price. They don’t have the scale of the large company, so they must be kept motivated.

Imperfections

Notwithstanding that, some users will install a node without commercial interest, to browse Substratum network (like they do in Tor) in a decentralized mode, especially in countries with a high level of Internet censorship and state control. It is unclear whether these non-professional participants will be enough to keep Substratum running. Substratum will install and run several supernodes to maintain the network to address this issue in early stages of network growth, though.

Neither it is clear how much resources one should commit to earning a meaningful income. It will be a function of the number of sites in the network and the traffic to them from the region which is close to the node. The latter is important because Substratum protocol attempts to provide data from the geographically-closest nodes.

Another possible problem that remains would be the volatility of the token, i.e., susceptibility to price manipulation, so that either hoster’s expenses may increase in an unforeseen manner, or, vice versa, nodes income may fall. Prolonged periods of token price instability may disrupt the network and make it unreliable. This is true for many projects, of course.

Also, the network architecture may be susceptible to fraud to a certain degree. If the node owner determines what content it stores (nodes aren’t supposed to know that, in Substratum architecture), a fraudulent scheme is imaginable: false bit traffic is generated, which is then “served” by the node, who then claims rewards.

If the node or group of nodes is big enough, it may theoretically accumulate enough content to be selected by Substratum DNS with a high probability, so this kind of spoofing operation is possible.

The Internet is for porn

All good inventions of the human race are first used either for killing fellow humans, or to distribute pornography or prohibited substances. There’s almost no exceptions from this rule, and Substratum certainly isn’t one of them.

I am sure that, the obvious market for Substratum services, that will help it grow in the medium term, will be specialty and fringe online porn, and illegal/fringe pharmacy/drug sales. Anonymous hosting + anonymous content delivery + anonymous payment platform = that’s practically an invitation for porn peddlers and drug dealers.

I am not a moralist, so I see these businesses as acceptable as any other unless someone gets hurt against their will.

Substratum’s team claim that there’d be an internal governance procedure of the network allowing to take down obviously malicious players (like child pornography) from the network. If that doesn’t happen, the network may attract the unnecessary attention of the state or states.

Many of the Hollywood celebrities were engaged in porn before they became famous. But many others never left porn, and never had the luck to enter the spotlight. What fate awaits Substratum?

The state and the states will be watching Substratum unless it is well-governed from within, or even if it is.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-borderline-porn-may-help-substratum-to-bootstrap

Past ICO Review: How Anti-Stupidity Crypto Project Has Reached its Goals by Completely Failing



A failed crypto project that raised north of $19 mln, managed to increase the average IQ of the cryptomarket by removing a significant bunch of people too stupid to opera

I grew up in a plattenbau neighborhood, in a micro-district inspired by Le Corbusier. It is fashionable to despise this architectural style, but I must admit that I secretly love factory-built assembled plattenbau projects.

The thing is, I love them on the design sketches, on maquette miniatures, I love them in the imagination of their architects, I love them on 70s postcards of an idyllic, innocent urban landscapes of heartland’s France towns social housing developments (which we know ended up eventually converting into ethnic ghettos and welfare-subsidised slums).

They say mass-production buildings and vast spaces create ghettos. They blame Le Corbusier for their misery. Nonsense. Le Corbusier and his disciples aren’t to blame. The residents are.

Beautiful, well-thought projects of well-organized, frugal, cost-effective communal life was given to the people who weren’t enlightened enough to grasp the concept. They’ve brought their ignorance and prejudice to the bright world of the hopeful future, so that future never happened. If the same kind of people were given palaces as social housing, they would turn Versailles into a ghetto.

Well, 2017’s ICO rush have something in common with plattenbau. Technology isn’t to blame for humans’ stupidity. You may blame regulations, you may blame the lawlessness, you may blame whatever external factor there is, but sometimes, an ICO like that hype acts as a great equalizer, a machine to redistribute money between the stupid and the smart.

I have no pity whatsoever for the people who invested into the thing called BitcoinGrowthFund, that is said to have raised some $19 mln in May 2017, and is among the biggest ICOs of 2017. They got what they deserve.

A website with no information on the team, with a laughable white paper, no advisors got that kind of money.

The idea offered to the investors was essentially an investment fund: “you buy our coin, and we invest money into mining of cryptocurrencies with potential.”

They’ve had a wallet on the site, which showed the increase of the investment, but many people complained that when a withdrawal was attempted, the transaction simply did not take place. “Withdrawal of your money is more important than investing as if we cannot withdraw what is the sense of investing,”  asked one poor soul on bitcointalk. Mua. Ha. Ha.

Seems legit

Legally this is not a scam at all, and it took almost no effort to fool so many people. These people were quite straightforward: “MCAP tokens are not participation in the Company and MCAP tokens hold no rights in the said company. MCAP tokens are sold as a functional good and all proceeds received by Company may be spent freely by Company absent any conditions. MCAP tokens are intended for experts in dealing with cryptographic tokens and Blockchain-based software systems.”

They were telling the truth from the very start. BitcoinGrowthFund web is not updated since November 2017.

Even if sneaky Hindus behind this gig have spent every single penny they’ve raised on coke and New Dehli’s finest escorts, it’d still a better use for the money than it was in the hands of their so-called investors.


Criminally stupid

Normally, I’d keep preaching that ICOs should start adopting regulations, better corporate governance, and so on and so forth. Not now. No regulation wouldn’t have helped here. It is like blaming plattenbau developments for ghettoization. Technology and laws aren’t to blame. People who invested in this kind of crap have to blame only themselves.

Don’t be like these people. Invest smart.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-how-anti-stupidity-crypto-project-has-reached-its-goals-by-completely-failing

Aaahhh yes - the polybius/hashcoins scam just goes on & on......

BCT moderators deleted the official polybius thread from the English section, so all that's left now is the russian thread which is full of shills or suckers who lost everything.....

Past ICO Review: Why You Can’t Take Polybius To the Bank



A banking project named after a video game of death, decides to become something else after raising $32 Mln

It’s in the name. The original dark meme that have given Polybius name its fame was indeed coin-related, but not the type of coins we are now accustomed to: not cryptocoins, but pennies.

Polybius, as urban legend has it, was a secret experiment of the US government, a coin-operated arcade game with a psychoactive and addictive effect.

First published on coinop.org (sic!), the creepypasta about Polybius, told the story of an obscure arcade game machine, regularly visited by men in black, who took note of high-scorers, is scary enough.

Players allegedly suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including amnesia, insomnia, night terrors and hallucinations, says the Wiki article describing this dark legend. Approximately one month after its supposed release in 1981, Polybius is said to have disappeared without a trace. There’s no proof that the game ever existed. I swear that I haven’t edited it to suit the story.

Our hero today is Polybius’ namesake. Seriously, the brave pack of adventurers behind the Polybius project named it literally after a legendary video game of death that never existed.

Despite this fact, the project raised about $32 Mln in 2017 on the promise essentially to be a bank. Now, the initial whitepaper isn’t accessible from the main website.

What the team forgot to mention

Let me spell it for you: Polybius’ team have decided they will not be a bank, but rather something else. After raising the money on the promise to be a bank, and not something else. Citing a EU directive that was adopted by the EU Parliament two years before their ICO as a new circumstance.

Delovõje Vedomosti, a respected business news publication from Estonia, where Polybius is incorporated, interviewed Polybius CEO a couple of weeks ago. The interview is a pure gem. Let me quote some, ehm, quotes.

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition


Polybius CEO meant XS2A (Access to Account) set of requirements, a part of PSD2 directive. Of course it's adoption timeline  was known to be arcane and ever-changing, and still is. But, it was clear to anyone in the industry that PSD2 was going to become a law across the EU in the short-to-medium perspective.

Polybius token sale started on May, 31, 2017, and closed on July 5, 2017. PSD2 has been approved by the European Parliament in 2015. XS2A was being discussed in the banking and industry way before Polybius project was being “gestated”. It was a major point of interest way before Polybius  was even concieved. On June 5, 2017 it was even in the “Forbes” (US, not even European edition!) for God’s sake.

And Polibius CEO has a nerve to say that PSD2 have somehow changed the rules of the game for them. It was on the table all the time - not always clear, changing sometimes, but it was there.

Unidentified Fintech Object

Now, let’s see what is the team is up to. The interview continues: “Plainly speaking, with a window that big, we don’t need a door anymore, so we can concentrate on what’s important - on aggregation of payment and financial instruments”.

Basically, Polybius now is not a bank, but rather a service that allows their users to aggregate their financial products across various banks, using banking API prescribed by PSD2, - a single banking app for all accounts and services that person uses. This app will analise user’s spending habits, and offer them tips on how to acheive their financial goals. Essentially, a sort of meta-banking app comes to mind. Good, but does it worth $32M?

“How will you earn money?”, DV’s reporter asks. “Some services will be free, some  premium”, - reponds Mr. Turygin, before dropping a bomb that will surely send ice waves up their tokenholders’ spines. “Also, people’s financial information is a very powerful profiling source, that can be monetized by means of ad traffic.”

But the final chill is still to come.

“What kind of marketing needs tens of millions?”

”How will you spend thirty two million dollars?”, - asks the reporter. “On the team, IT support and development. But the larger part will be spent on marketing”. He said that. He said that. HE SAID THAT.

“What kind of marketing needs tens of millions?”, - the reporter is seemed to be clearly  stunned.

“The quality one. Conferences, television, Google, social networks. To run a successful ICO, hundreds of thousand dollars are needed. Funds are needed to develop the project, and make the world know about it, loudly. A successful fintech product launch, requires an enourmous expense, so millions are required to make a true quality product”.

I could rest my case here, ladies and gentlemen, but there’s the last one. Polybius website states that they are hiring the “Chief Legal Counsel”. Maybe, just maybe, if this was done 2 years before, things would be different now?

Looking into the crystal ball

What kind of future expects Polybius and the money of their investors? If we were in the year 2000, I’d look for Aeron chairs purchase for their offices - seeing that, I’d be sure the project was doomed.

I don’t know what’s the equivalent for Aeron these days, but if we somehow learn about lavish spending on office furniture, or even worse, the excited interviews in interior design magazines about how great and nice and easy and comfortable Polybius’ offices in Brussels (they have moved to Brussels, hell yeah) are, I’d be sure these people are done with.

Lessons learned

This market cries for regulation. What happened here? The team have changed the idea which they have more than successfully sold to crowd investors, after raising the funds. The effect of this change on the revenue is unclear. Token holders had no control over this decision.

ICOs: start regulate yourself before the government does. Make it a rule to have an independent director or two on your board with a veto power, to represent token holders. Voluntarily enforce corporate governance principles. Or daring expirementators and intrepid pioneers like Polybius will freaking drag us all to the bottom.

The link: https://cryptocomes.com/past-ico-review-why-you-cant-take-polybius-to-the-bank

This thread is about past ICO.
We are reviewing blockchain projects that have already finished their coin offerings.
What were the great mission and purposes at the beginning and how the things are going on now?

Here you can find all our investigation reports