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An Ethereum Startup Just Vanished After People Invested $374K (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A startup on the Ethereum platform vanished from the internet on Sunday after raising $374,000 USD from investors in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fundraiser. Confido is a startup that pitched itself as a blockchain-based app for making payments and tracking shipments. It sold digital tokens to investors over the Ethereum blockchain in an ICO that ran from November 6 to 8. During the token sale, Confido sold people bespoke digital tokens that represent their investment in exchange for ether, Ethereum's digital currency. But on Sunday, the company unceremoniously deleted its Twitter account and took down its website. A company representative posted a brief comment to the company's now-private subforum on Reddit, citing legal problems that prevent the Confido team from continuing their work. The same message was also posted to Medium but quickly deleted.
"Right now, we are in a tight spot, as we are having legal trouble caused by a contract we signed," the message stated (a cached version of the Medium post is viewable). "It is likely that we will be able to find a solution to rectify the situation. However, we cannot assure you with 100% certainty that we will get through this." The message was apparently written by Confido's founder, one Joost van Doorn, who seems to have no internet presence besides a now-removed LinkedIn profile. Even the Confido representative on Reddit doesn't seem to know what's going on, though, posting hours after the initial message, "Look I have absolutely no idea what has happened here. The removal of all of our social media platforms and website has come as a complete surprise to me." Confido tokens had a market cap of $10 million last week, before the company disappeared, but now the tokens are worthless. And investors are crying foul.
"Right now, we are in a tight spot, as we are having legal trouble caused by a contract we signed," the message stated (a cached version of the Medium post is viewable). "It is likely that we will be able to find a solution to rectify the situation. However, we cannot assure you with 100% certainty that we will get through this." The message was apparently written by Confido's founder, one Joost van Doorn, who seems to have no internet presence besides a now-removed LinkedIn profile. Even the Confido representative on Reddit doesn't seem to know what's going on, though, posting hours after the initial message, "Look I have absolutely no idea what has happened here. The removal of all of our social media platforms and website has come as a complete surprise to me." Confido tokens had a market cap of $10 million last week, before the company disappeared, but now the tokens are worthless. And investors are crying foul.
This is the track record of the Initial Coin Offering. And people keep putting money into them.
a fool and their bitcoin are (always) easily parted
Sorry.... you weren't acting like investors if you bought ICO tokens that don't even represent legal shares of a business with so little information and so little in the way of business documentation and personal guarantees OR audited financials, and you should have been more careful.
That's just a good ol' fashioned scam; let the ICO buyer beware.
I invested in it and got burned. That hurts since i only make $50,000 in IT in Silicon Valley. I guess lesson learned - don't invest in startups that you don't know.
People not learning that crypto currency is a frickin' scam. No sympathy.
This is how it's *SUPPOSED* to work, no?
So, Confido was a Confidence Game? The name even means "I trust" in several Romance languages...
Ponzi scheme makes some people rich by taking money from "investors"
More news at 11.
"The message was apparently written by Confido's founder, one Joost van Doorn, who seems to have no internet presence besides a now-removed LinkedIn profile."
Founder of internet-based currency, has no internet presence to speak of. Yeah, "Joost van Doorn" doesn't exist.
When people do so little due diligence or research, we can't really call it investing. People gave their money away. People can cry foul or whatever all they want. That money is gone.
We're really getting into the territory where it is legitimate to ask, how did people so gullible acquire anything of value in the first place?
The founders of the PerpetualMotionem and FasterThanLighteum coin projects, both based on highly sophisticated mathematics, are still taking investments.
And better pray the power company doesn't tip off the police about your "grow operation"
Climate change is real, the earth is heating up and dumbfucks sending a nuclear reactor worth of power for e-Monopoly money are the cause.
"Confido sold people bespoke digital tokens that represent their investment in exchange for ether..."
It sounds like the investors got exactly what they paid for.
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So, if I put a sign that says "Blockchain" on my lawn, will idiots then come and give me free money?
The people who scammed by Madoff got scammed because they were greedy. Same deal here.
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Confido tokens had a market cap of $10 million last week, before the company disappeared, but now the tokens are worthless.
Just like Beany Babies, Pokemon Cards, and Zimbabwe currency.
Some new eCoin pops up and steals hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars. Back in 2012 this was common business and the people that fell for it were fucking idiots.
In 5 years have we learned NOTHING? You people are morons!
This is beyond gambling, beyond speculation. This is into "wishing well" territory.
For some it may be a good lesson cheaply purchased. Some... not so cheaply.
Maybe they should take a look at something like this.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Climate change is real, the earth is heating up and dumbfucks sending a nuclear reactor worth of power for e-Monopoly money are the cause.
I seriously lol'd at this. Just imagine a BTC farm being powered by a coal fired power plant ..... hah! They are the problem!
Seriously though, if you spend $15000 on a mining rig, how much time / energy to mine 3 btc? Does the energy bill compare against running a heater to warm your house, as opposed to using the mining rig as the heater? Lastly, can I get one or two of your 1080ti cards you're wasting on monopoly money to run my games?
To heck with bitcoins; that rig will get me some serious SETI@Home points!
Unregulated market for the $374K win! Proof that companies can regulate themselves and if wall street regulations weren't so burdensome wall street companies could score like Confido!
They bought ether and then complain when it disappeared into thin air!
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NSFYL... Not Sorry For Your Loss.
Another name... Micro and Soft and Windows.
Yeah, "invested". In quotes.
That's a nice word for it.
Do you have ESP?
to disappear with and live fairly decently in much of South America, where, there is very little reciprocal laws governing extradition. Chile, Argentina, Uruguay are all nice places, with Chile being the best overall. Even modern Colombia is a nice place to live (have done it). These places are not quite Europe or America, but they all have fast internet, ultra-cheap rents, and access to 99% of the amenities one could want.
There's inherent risk in everything. Investing means you are banking your money on making money off the back of someone else. Can't bitch too hard when it goes wrong since "that's just business". I still don't condone it, though.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
"And investors are crying foul."
And speculators are crying foul.
HA HA!
Doorn, not Doom.
DOORN.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The Eather
Surely some helpful moderator can tell me where to send all my monies to get in on this miraculous bitcoin gravytrain?
Then who the hell is the old guy on the other side of the glory hole??
Oh... JIMMY Buffet he says.
http://cache.lovethispic.com/u...
Yep, same as *your mother*
Can someone write an cryptocurrency instructable on how to scam preppers and libertarians?
Oh wait, I guess I just need a "Send cash here for coinzzzz" static page with a cayman address.
Fuckin chuckleheads. They deserve to be bilked.
Put your money into something safe, like manned steam rocketry.
They're not "languages of love", they're Roman-ce languages because the language family grew from ancient Roman language.
(By coincidence, French is both a Romance language and called "the language of love" by some.)
We know a startup management technique is "take the money and run", but all that mess for just 374,000 USD? Real business leaders do not risk jail for so little money.
Oh no in a $230 BILLION dollar market we find $374K of fraud... let me do the math on that... oh right... 0.00016%. In other words one thousand of one percent of Crypto is a scam. Ok let's multiply that by 10 just cuz there have been a few other scams. One one hundred of 1% is a scam. Hmmm... sounds a bit better than WallStreet no?
I'll take my chances with Crypto than JP Morgan, Goldman and other FlashBoys scaming all your manipulated stock market. See you when Crypto hits $5 Trillion.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Does Joost have a PhD? I would think twice before giving money to a shady character named Doom, but that's just me.
POOF
Compared to the millions of fuckers who use their PS4 and XBox One to stream Netflix, crypto-mining is nothing but a little blip on the radar.
#DeleteFacebook
Are we sure it's his name? Could be a typo, maybe his name is Joost van Doom .
#DeleteFacebook
They had 'confidence game' right in their name folks.
Yes, but to be fair it does sound like they were aiming to con dogs rather than humans.
Creimer affiliate spam.
I can't believe Worf would scam people like this. Such an honerable Klingon.
Oh we aren't talking about Michael Dorn? My bad
There's actually a first regulator approved ICO underway in North America right now, in Ontario.
I.e. the same regulatory body that oversees the largest Canadian stock exchange approved this ICO.
The goal is to create a platform that allows further ICOs with oversight and investor protection.
This means on this kind of platform a company couldn't just vanish and run away with the funds. (At least not any more than any publicly traded company can).
DISCLAIMER: I don't work for TokenFunder.com, but contemplate to invest.
Gentlemen of Slashdot, I present to you now the opportunity of investment in a truly unique ICO.
It is for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is.
I assure any investors that their residue will be returned with a 200% per cent bounty within the year!
Because of incredible demand, a 10% deposit to reserve this opportunity is required.
Just watch the blockchain, it's all in the public domain. ::-)
Hey you didn't want the gov medling with the flow of money, so now don't come crying to mommy. There is no such thing as fraud in crypto currency world, there is only free flow of money, that's what you wanted, that's what you got. Stop whining.
Thank goodness that it was only a bespoke digital token and not an artisinal token.
...from regulation and accountability. Yes, that's how cryptocurrencies are supposed to work and why they're so popular with drug dealers, human traffickers, and the like. This is just the beginning; wait until Goldman Sachs comes up with its version of a cryptocurrency ponzi scheme. The tax payer will have to foot the bill for that one.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Going to call bullshit... a 230 billion dollar market is one that has that value in a single year.
In the BTC community, we regard anyone who buys into ICOs as complete and utter morons.
Risk/Reward...lol...what do people expect...there's like 600 cryptocurrencies.
While you were typing that, it jumped to $239 Billion...
https://coinmarketcap.com/
By the time we're done with the 2017 year, it will probably be over $250 Billion.
This is good for Ethereum.
It's Money!
There's a sucker burn every minute.
How to make $374,000 without really trying!
1. Set up imaginary thing with alleged value. ...
2. Find greedy dolts with more money than sense.
3.
4. Profit!
I guess 3 was "Shut down all your social media stuff, go dark, disappear with money citing legal problems with a contract," the modern equivalent of 'the dog ate my homework' in today's phony world.
I'm sure glad I had no money invested in this crypto-pyramid-scheme.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
sounds a bit better than WallStreet no?
You know who else had a better ROI than Wall Street? Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Crime has so many ways of costing us all money that it is vital that these people are caught and serve life ruining sentences. As a simple example riding bicycles produces all kinds of benefits for all of us. It frees up parking spaces. It reduces pollution. It improves the health of the riders and thus keeps medical expenses down for the community. So maybe you've got a cheap bike that gets swiped. How harsh should the sentencing be? Keep in mind that you are forced to carry keys, purchase cables and locks and that many people do not use bicycles due to the locking and unlocking rituals that get so very frustrating. And by the way more murders occur during bicycle thefts than in bank robberies. So would it be unreasonable to put a first offender in prison for 15 or 20 years? Isn't that just a simple message that if you do wrong society may really crush you? When I was a youth any arrest for use or possession of any illegal drug was pretty much a life ender. The consequence was that in the suburbs there was almost no drug use at all among school kids. The state stepped away from radical punishments and a flood of drug related issues among kids quickly appeared. In Florida we had a reform school in Marianna Florida that tortured, sexually violated and often murdered teen inmates. They are still digging up the bodies of these missing youth who the authorities simply claimed that they escaped and vanished. Teens would actually say they didn't want to go to Marianna when others asked them to get involved in some sort of crimes. I am aware that rabid justice is sort of a sick idea but the catch is that it worked.
Market cap and market are two different things, market cap is the value of all outstanding shares, a market of $X needs to turn over $X a year. Further, since bitcoin is supposedly a currency market cap is not the correct term either,
Looks like the money some greedy people put into this CON vanished "in the ether"... LOL
Does the energy bill compare against running a heater to warm your house, as opposed to using the mining rig as the heater?
Resistive heating (e.g. a bitcoin miner) gives ~1W of heat per 1W of electricity. A heat pump gives ~3W of heat per 1W of electricity.
Burning fuel locally for heat is much more efficient than burning it in a remote power plant, converting the heat to electricity, then transporting the electricity and converting it back to heat.
Maybe. It depends on the transport costs: What does it cost to transport the fuel to the remote power plant vs. transporting it to your home (and the homes of 1000 others)?
One large shipment to one location is a lot more efficient than 1000 small shipments to 1000 different locations. You'd have to do some calculations to figure out the tipping point where electricity transmission costs are less than the difference between fuel shipment costs, though.
FWIW, my intuition suggests that transmission costs still make the electric route less efficient overall - but that kind of depends on the tanker trucks/pipelines/power lines.
Who would have guessed? I'm shocked - shocked I tell you! - that's put me right off my Weetabix, what ever will I do...all those poor investors, who would ever have thought an innocent cryptocurrency could do something like this? That it might be...*shock*...a f.f.f...fraud? *puts arm to head and feints like a girl*
:( :/ (god it's pointless, there isn't even a sad smiley that's sad enough for things like this...)
Oh the humanity! I hear Bob Geldof will do a concert for the victims
First world problems