I am Francis Pouliot, the Director of Public Affairs at the Bitcoin Embassy, and in that respect I am the ultimate responsible for partnerships and agreements.
I confirm: there is no, have never been, and will never be any partnership or agreement between the Bitcoin Embassy and Potcoin leaders (nor any other "altcoin" representatives).
Thus, it should be clear that news article circulating that there is an agreement with the Bitcoin Embassy is entirely false. This is the definition of fake news
They have agreed to remove that mention from their press release, a clear admission of guilt.
Because I am horrified by the idea that the Bitcoin Embassy would be associated to Potcoin because of their press releases and media pumping, I'll share some thoughts.
How could they possibly think they could get away with this? Here is some context:
1. The Bitcoin Embassy is a non-profit organization founded in 2013. It is hosted on the third floor of a building which hosts numerous Bitcoin projects.
2. On the first floor of the building which hosts the Bitcoin Embassy, there is a physical Bitcoin Exchange called Satoshi Counter. Some traders there (myself included) often suggest our clients to use shapeshift to transform altcoins to bitcoins, after which we can buy the bitcoins off of them. In that case, the clients are transaction with Shapeshift, and not with us directly. One of the foudners of the Bitcoin Embassy is also a founder of Satoshi Counter.
3. Potcoin representatives were told by a trader at Satoshi Counter how they could use shapeshift to exchange their Potcoins, like any other altcoin, for Bitcoin, after which they could buy/sell bitcoins at Satoshi Counter, like any client does.
4. The Bitcoin Embassy was never consulted in anyway by Potcoin. I was notified of this news by a Google alert. There is no agreement, either verbal or in writing. There is certainly no partnership, nor contract of any kind. Myself and transisto are the only two people involved in both organizations, but there are many more different people involved with Satoshi Counter and many other involved with the Bitcoin Embassy, and both organizations are effectively completely separate.
5. There is no agreement, partnership of any kind between Potcoin and Satoshi Counter either. It's not a question of semantics here. As people, none of use would EVER engage in any partnership with the leaders of Potcoin.
Let's be 100% clear: this was an extremely unethical and deceptive use the Bitcoin Embassy logo, name and reputation without our consent.
It could have passed off as an honest mistake, but not only did they not comply to my requests to have them take down reddit post and tweets, they actually started negotiating and asking me to remove tweets and reddit posts criticizing them.
If it wasn't clear enough, and with all respect to this community, I personally am offended by the very idea that the Bitcoin Embassy could be associated to Potcoin. A more cynical person than myself would call Potcoin an obvious ponzi scheme which has no other purpose than speculation, and which is specifically crafted to create a sense of community to attract what traders will call "bagholders" which allow earlier investors to cash out.
Why would anybody merchant accept Potcoin instead of Bitcoin? What is the value proposition? It's like litecoin, but it's has a more limited market potential? And it's not even like litecoin, because the development team is inactive.
Potcoin is basically a gift card that only lets buy at VERY LIMITED number of stores. Who in his right mind would trade a liquid currency for that, unless you do it right away before a purchase because there is a discount?
It's a vastly inferior clone that is dramatically less secure, liquid or useful. I can probably do a Potcoin clone equivalent in a few minutes. Even the copyright information of Potcoin shows that it is a clone of Bitocin and Litecoin, just worse.
The Bitcoin Embassy has almost never endorsed any product or service. We would NEVER endorse any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Nobody in their right mind would endorse Potcoin, unless it was out of ignorance or naivety at best, and greed and in the pursuit of personal profit at worse.
Anybody caught promoting Potcoin on the Bitcoin Embassy premises will be immediately expelled with a permanent ban.
I have to admint I am biased, since I was very angry when we caught one of the Core members of the Potcoin team puting a sticker on one of our windows, which was a pain in the ass to take off. You know who you are, you had a baseball cap and were walking your dog and got caught by our cameras.
I continue to encourage cyrptocurrency innovation, but using deceptive marketing to enrich earlier investors is not innovation.
Hey Francis,
We are still waiting on Mathieu to post your official update from the Bitcoin Embassy as promised.
It is important for our community to know as well there was a misunderstanding and that Potcoin does NOT release any fake news.
Our team was at your location, and it seems like after the official release, there was a misunderstanding between the partners at Bitcoin Embassy.
We have edited our official release and ask that you do your part as well.
Thank You