I read a post in this site, but the IOTA OP doesn't bother to answer. The post is:
During the crowdsale in Nov/Dec 2015, about 0.5M USD were raised (or 3M, doesnt make a big difference)
* Until listing on Bitfinex in June 2017, IOTA was traded OTC
* The initial market cap on June 13 was roughly 1.7B USD (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/historical-data/?start=20130428&end=20171117)
* The week before, there were roughly 5000 addresses with a positive balance (https://medium.com/@IngoFiedler_96862/iota-an-update-on-token-distribution-and-exchange-launch-ee3e56bd0d32)
Hence, each of the addresses owners invested on average 340K USD. How can that be even if some of them invested lets say 1M USD or more?
(Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1262688.1660)
Also, I found this interesting comment in reddit:
IOTA was listing on CMC at #7 with over billion in market cap despite an ICO that raised only $10m. ICO price was $0.002, listing price was $0.67. This return of 250,000% is the highest for any crypto coin.
Apparently IOTA shills will tell you it was "traded on slack channel" and thus no records exist of the trades during this period - well that doesnt explain the 250,000% gain does it? It could be atleast explained if there was a product, but IOTA did not even have a product from ICO till listing. (Dec 2017 till listing on finex). Who will trade shitcoins at a 250,000% premium when the coin does not even have a product?
Ever since IOTA listed on finex, it has been going down (apart from a fake microsoft partnership pump) and today is much lower than its listing price. And it will continue to go down, as its value has been marked up fraudulently by its promoters by listing it at a huge market cap despite collecting only a tiny fraction in the ICO.
Anyone has the answer for this one? Is it a scam?