Factom has been as open and transparent as we can make it.  The Bitcoin we are raising is paid out only after making milestones that require full delivery of the project. 

I would study up on Factom and many of the other projects before making such blanket statements.

Proof of Existence is the proof of the positive, which can certainly be done in this fashion.  The problem is that it doesn't prove the negative.  Factom allows you to create a Factom Chain where you can not only prove the existence of everything in that chain, but prove no other entries are in the chain.

Peter Todd is working on  a project called Proof Chains (https://github.com/proofchains) that allows you to create a chain of entries in Bitcoin that duplicates Factom's features.  The downside is that your data 1) is directly in the Bitcoin blockchain, 2) requires Bitcoin's transaction fees (more expensive),  3) is subject to censorship (by those that don't like this stuff in Bitcoin), 4) requires users to hold the whole Blockchain for their proofs, 5) is subject to Bitcoin confirmation times, 6) requires users to manage and hold Bitcoin wallets to write their data, and 7) has no means to incentivize the development and support of the code.

Factom seeks to address these and other issues.  It turns out that building a censorship resistant layer over bitcoin to write arbitrary data is just harder than it looks.

We are raising funds for a project.  From the beginning we disclosed the fact that we would not be holding Bitcoin.  This is because our expenses are nearly all paid in dollars (with the exception of most of our employees, whose salaries are none the less denominated in dollars, because they have the same issues with their expenses).  That said, we don't have access to ANY of this money.  Koinify holds the money until we meet predetermined and documented milestones.  But the money is managed none the less.

The timing of the first sale was just a function of getting the banking in place.  The fact that the first sale coincided with a drop in Bitcoin is just coincidence (but it really worked out poorly for us).  The amount sold ~400K was done off market, and not enough to move the price on April 15 where 56 Million in bitcoin was bought and sold.

Factom is one of the most transparent projects in the space.  At the same time, it is one with the most interest outside the cryptocurrency space.  It is a mechanism to bring the honesty and immutability of blockchain transactions to create immutable audits in business processes.... WITHOUT having business change the way they do those practices, and without requiring them to hold our tokens (or any tokens).

Every single project has many detractors.  And every project comes with enormous risk.  That is why most startups fail.  It isn't always or even common that the fault of failure is fraud.  But this idea that all Bitcoin 2.0 projects are fraudulent because they found the problem they are working on to be harder than expected.... It gets old, and eventually it will be proven wrong by some of the companies as they make a new market that isn't dominated by corporate boardrooms. 

Checkout http://Factom.org.  Checkout http://github.com/factomproject  Watch the videos. Read the whitepaper (can be found at the aforementioned links).  Read the consensus algorithm (ditto about the links).  Read the code.  Read the issues.  Connect with us on nearly all social media.

Basically spend the time to Audit what we do.

The Math doesn't work, and we didn't sell the coin on the exchanges.  The volume of trade on the 4/15 was 56 Million USD.  We sold ~400K.  I don't think there is any way Factom's sale of tokens did anything to the market.

Crowd Sale is now active!