Yes, the implementation of Mintpal was extremely poor.
When you already have a launched product that is servicing customers, it may have made more sense for them to use an agile implementation for their Information System. The main advantage I see is that they would have had a launchable product at the end of each tested stage. This ensures bugs are caught and eliminated in the development cycle, and the product is double tested again after the first bug elimination.
The v2 was plagued with problems. I'm glad to see that Dnotes is clearly aware of such shortcomings of many other entities that have tried to grow too fast and made key errors in the process. The new UI was rubbish, and nobody was happy being unable to trade and withdraw for several days while the Moopay people sorted out all the bugs.
That said, It is sad to see them go. I liked the look of their payment API and store fronts on their website through which you could run an online shop.
At this point it is hard to speculate what is going to happen with Mintpal and their customers' deposits. There are too many conflicting representations, making it is impossible to determine who is correct. This is another highly unfortunate case and yet another setback for the industry. We just have to wait and see.
The investment environment in the cryptocurrency space remains very risky, perhaps even more risky than just the beginning of this year. A lot of the new tricks offered in the forms of crowdfunding, IPO, assets backed securities, and crypto share company, that I have personally reviewed, are questionable, at best. Unfortunately, there are still enough suckers born every day to support them.
We are all still learning and adjusting. At DNotes, we are even more convinced that it is most prudent take our time and build a solid foundation worthy of the trust and participation of those outside of our industry, than just to impress the converted. Making outlandish claims is easy. Building a solid and consistent trustworthy track record takes time and a lot of hard work. It may even be boring and lacking in drama as reflected in the lack of participation in this forum.
As you know, the DNotes team and many of our supporters helped to launch CryptoMoms.com:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bringing-cryptocurrency-women-worldwide-cryptomoms-011500357.html in April this year. CryptoMoms core mission is to encourage and assist women to participate in the cryptocurrency world currently overwhelmingly dominated by men. Although CryptoMoms is still in its infancy and has a long way, it has done very well so far. We have populated the site with rich contents, helpful to anyone interested to learn more about cryptocurrency. The forum has been actively participated with many helpful discussions. It has also been a good platform for many of our industry peers to introduce and promote their products and services.
Our second piece of property, DNotesVault, has been in the works for sometime and beginning to take shape. This is a joint project of DNotes and CryptoMoms in support of our family of CR.I.S.Ps. (Cryptocurrency Investment Savings Plans.) We believe that this will be a cornerstone project for CryptoMoms to excel in getting womens participation, once the CR.I.S.P for Kids is launched. CR.I.S.P. for employees will be the pathway for our payment processing/merchant account recruitment. We will take our time to work with local businesses and their employees and may not push for merchant account payment processing until we have built a fairly solid base. In addition, we will be launching CR.I.S. P. for students, for Charities, and for Retirement, at the appropriate time. This is a very exciting program with huge potential.