Complaining about how the team were allowed to buy at a low price is very funny when in contrast most projects just allocates a good portion of the supply to give out to the team for "free". Not to mention various advisors, partners, exchanges, etc that most of the times also get free coins. Yet, here they paid for it.(Also 50% of the tokens bought by the team is vested for a year.)
Did SALT ICO not reserved any supply to the team?
If so, maybe that's a good justification that insiders are getting it for 0.25.
But if the ICO already reserved a portion to the team, and yet another portion (who knows if the insiders never even need to pay for it) was made available for them as well at 0.25, then I say such deal is just way too sweet in comparison to many other ICOs.
I don't think so. At least it wasn't in their abstract or in any of their statements, it's always only two items. The amount(s) sold and the amounts left in reserved to be available for sale the public after the platform launched. From what I seen so far they are super paranoid about keeping it legal and above board, I would be shocked to learn that they omited this.
A lot of the delays, feet dragging, overly cautious approach been obviously been because they are constantly consulting with lawyers about things, looks like they are very aware that sooner or later they will need to be accountable for SEC and who knows that else as an US company.
One of those things that they were very adamant about it from the beginning that it's not an ICO but a discounted membership sale and how the token is for to be used for paying for membership and other services and not for speculation or trading. It's bullshit of course as I don't think they allowed people to buy hundreds of thousands of tokens and when like "Oh, that guy must want to make sure that he has yearly fees covered until the year 202,017, smart!", but they still went through this and several other dances.
I'm not saying this whole sale were flawless, (as a matter of fact I caught them winging it more than a few times, although it were probably not that obvious for someone who haven't themselves been part of a crowdsale before and know what to look for) they made several mistakes and I agree that the too great difference between tiers were one of them.
It's just that I don't expect it to matter much in the long run. There were a good amount of ICOs that made greater return than it would be from $0.25 to even $20 (not to mention in reallity it's more like $0.4, as the bitcoin price at the time of the 0.25-0.75-1.5 tiers were around $2500) and nobody cares a few months after the fact.
Most of those tokens seem to be in more steady hands than the avarage ICO flippers and on the long run for a token that has actually utility, expecially for a platform this close of being launched, the price will be determined by demand (and hype as this is still crypto).
We'll see this is pure speculation on my part, you never know with these projects.
This need to be accountable to SEC is keeping this coin from exchanges like Bittrex and Poloniex. No exchange will take the risk of listing a coin, which gives out fiat loan and disrupts traditional industry.
The other thing is, as of now this coin will only benefit US customers. What about rest of the world, who invested in this, for the purpose of using this coin and not just for quick flip. They say they are planning to introduce it, outside US in near future. But they do not have any time frame.
My point being, you take money from all over the world, and giving services to only US customers. What incentive do we have to hold the tokens, if we are not going to use it?