The early sale was done, so we will just have to live with it. Breaking the rules of the IPO may not look so great, and for precisely the reason that BEECoinFan mentioned. Those over the cap and with a chance of still getting IPO coins then had no chance whatsoever.
As I just have PM'ed BEECoinFan, our main goal with this move was to protect the buyers, looking to swap their Bter accounts. We felt it's a reasonable compromise to slightly advance the trades (due to Bter being the major genesis block destination), especially after seeing the poll thread responses. It also why we did our best to refund these who had their CRSALE pending ASAP, so they could get their BTC back for other opportunities.
I do agree that we could have communicated it better, and perhaps the outcome of the opinions would be different then.
We are learning from this experience, and will apply additional communication mediums next time to reach as many buyers as possible, when such important decision is needed.
Glad to see that those people who wanted instant profit took top priority in what your company wanted to protect. (As you had to protect their BTER accounts) instead of sticking to the Terms and conditions laid out to the people who's bitcoin you held for over 2 weeks after issuing them CR TOKENS.
As other members have pointed out your poll
a) Allowed all bitcointalk members (including multiple accounts, and non investors to vote)
b) Assuming all 62 yes votes were legit you only had 13.4% of investors voting YES hardly a majority.
Still disgusted in the way you decided to Break one set of terms and conditions but not another (even though they could have been fixed without breaking the second set) I sincerely hope that your team does not continue to conduct business in this manner as I view it as unprofessional and was hoping that you would be a coin that could be considered new technology leader and not bending to a minority's Quick profit mentality.
I would like to just briefly respond to this.
Our team stated from the beginning that we wanted community involvement and input in regards to the development of Crypti. We have made it a point all along to gauge community feedback and try to adapt as appropriate as well as communicate the reasoning behind any changes.
All changes that were made went along with our community minded focus. I understand that in that situation some people will be upset, but we felt like it was the right approach. Early on in development like this, there are a great many opportunities for worthwhile collaboration and input that we didn't want to miss out on.
The initial terms of the pre-sale were actually unlimited investments. There was a refund policy instituted as a requirement by BTER so that if the distribution and pre-sale purchases were too high and the dilution become too large, the investors could refund their investment. This was a function of the unlimited investment amounts.
As we listened to the feedback and talked to the community, it was clear that the majority of investors wanted a cap on investments. There were 2 or 3 very vocal members who did not, but we decided that the majority input was important to us and so we adjusted the parameters of the pre-sale to reflect that desire.
After the cap was announced (after the start of trading) and we started getting closer to the 750 BTC, people started asking about what would happen to investments over the cap (as BTER had left more shares for sale than the pre-sale allowed). At this point we also listened to the community feedback and decided that we would implement a system in which amounts over the 750 BTC would be held to take the place of any amounts refunded as we still had a large portion of the 30 day sales period to go and were almost sold out at the 3 or 4 day mark.
We ended up hitting the 750 BTC at the 4 or 5 day mark, 25 days faster than we had anticipated (we honestly didn't know if we would reach it at all) and ended up with a long waiting period until launch. 2 days into the waiting period there were barely any refunds and BTER approached us in order to discuss early trading as they were worried about all of the requests they were getting for early trading and people trying to sell BTER accounts in a less than secure manner.
Once again we decided to consult the community and get feedback on what was the best option. Let me be clear here, the poll did only show a relatively limited number compared to the total 450+ investors, but the resounding choice on the forums by the majority of those who commented was to start trading. This might be a bit hard to tell by the sheer number of actual posts by the opposition, which were constant and very vocal. I am not saying that is a bad thing, but when you go back and read users and pay attention to the names involved, there were 3 or 4 very vocal members opposed to the trading and the rest pretty much said, let's do this.
As has been our MO from the start of this, we listened to the community feedback and took it into consideration during our internal debate and vote and decided that it was the best option.
This entire process happened over a period of 1-2 weeks. We made it clear from the beginning community feedback is important to us and we mean it. We can't make every person happy and so the decisions are made by us based on what we feel is the best decision and what the majority of the community feels is in their best interests.
I am sorry that you ended up on the negative side of this process and I really do feel bad about certain aspects of the way it all developed. That being said, we have now moved past that point and cannot turn back.
We are open to suggestions as to how you think we can change or improve our communication, decision making process, or just in general relationship with the community. We are internally keeping notes of what we have learned and how we think we can improve and are always looking for feedback.
