I never give any money to panhandlers directly, because I don't have time for DD, and money can cause as much harm as it can cause good. Once had bought a 10$ MetroCard to a guy in distress, who was clearly intoxicated during the night, robbed and left on the steps of Lorimer St. station.

There are many articles on this topic, one quite popular and easily comprehensible English article is from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37492659
Very generally speaking, it is extremely important to help those people to be better integrated in the society, instead of enabling them to continue antisocial behavior. Talking to them, assisting them to open about their real problems, motivating to ask for help with employment, education, healthcare, housing etc. is more important, than just giving money (the heck would it help with?!).

Much better approach is to give regular donations to charities and non-profits representing your causes (like Wikipedia, RSF, a local foodbank, Khanacademy and and others in my case).

0. Re-check everything and make sure, that your position and proofs are solid and. Make sure you have tried to work out the situation between you, and that there is no good explanation for the delay. You do not want to look stupid or unreasonable, because that may make your claim invalid, even if they are valid follow your agreements.

1. Write a text to tell the story and to explain the proofs.

2. Ask someone to proofread it, so that it will express your opinion precisely, there won't be typos and any bad English.

3. Post the proofs and the text to the scam accusations board, the proper format is explained here and ask BCT community for a help again.

Hope that helps.

I've recently came accros an article, that is showing extreme similarities between CrypTollBooth.com project's website and the MorseGame.net website.

https://steemit.com/ico/@evp/review-of-morsegame-ico-ico-scam-alert-morsegame-and-cryptollbooth-cbt-similarities

Long story short: CTB and MorseGame:

1. Shares the team 100%.

2. The team has no real person or no way to contact such person.

3. They use the same shitty website template with very little changes.

4. They are using images of other people, including some recognizable persons.

5. They have little to none information about the legal aspect of the projects, their financials, their plans. All milestones look random.

6. No githubs, no real social network accounts, simple nothing trustworthy.

I would recommend not to deal with these project at all or deal with an extreme cautiosness.

MorseGame (MorseGame.net) and CrypTollBooth (CTB, CrypTollBooth.com) are likely scams.

I've recently came acros an article, that is showing extreme similarities between your project's website and the MorseGame.net website.

https://steemit.com/ico/@evp/review-of-morsegame-ico-ico-scam-alert-morsegame-and-cryptollbooth-cbt-similarities

You even have exactly the same team, as the MorseGame project. What is going on? It actually looks like a scam to me. Can any official rep of CBT address those issues and answer a couple of simple and easy questions:

0. It is said  100% Transparency right in the header of your website. What does that even mean, when you have 0 transparency?

1. Can you show, that your team has real people? Social network profiles, any public government records, publications. I mean anything would be better than now.

2. If Krasimir elvy is such a prominent advisor of 50+ ICOs, why there is no information on him anywhere?

3. Why there is no KYC for your team anywhere?

4. Why don't you have any project page with ICOBench or any other public reviews platform, which could check your KYC privately?

5. There is a github listed at CTB page at CoinHills. Any it is empty. The same is with the Medium blog.

6. You claim, that CTB is a security token, but there is no (0, none) legal details on the security registration and actual incorporation details. There are laws about securities and regulations and they are broken here.

Until/unless such proofs are provided, you shall consider that almost certainly, CrypTollBooth is a scam.

Hi. Electricity price is OK, yet better can be found in the Eastern Europe.

That is why I have to ask you: what other benefits are planned to provide with that hosting?

I mean extra security, equipment insurance, video surveillance accessible by the owner, air conditioning and filtration, internet channel reservation, 24/7 tech support etc. There are some places with virtually free electricity, but you won't risk placing even a cheapest rig there. That is why your question needs clarification and extra details.

Theoretically, if you offer me move my equipment (~50kW) to some place with the top notch security so I can sleep better, then I will likely agree.

The problem with Helbiz is not only in their strategy or the bad timing, sicne they got some late January and February investors selling their token short in March at  very low market.

Their real problem is coming from a very wrong set tokenomics (and I do not mean tokens volume, caps or other basics, I mean a broken token supply/demand model and a weak support for tokens value coming from their business model and the token integration in this model). If only they'd calculated the free float and the sustainable token supply/demand ratio, they would've probably avoid that drastic devaluation of token.

Their extremely high free float came from an awful airdrop and bounty campaigns. If I were one of the Helbiz executives or investors, I would kick their ICO manager, advisor or whoever else offered that ICO strategy, right in the balls, because he made it to them and to their token buyers.

Now, there are 2 choices:

1. Hodling for a couple years and hoping, that the team will figure out how to build the business, create a real token liquidity and hence bring the value and price back. That's a gamble. And buying more now when it looks so low is even more gamble, since the company got punched in the face and it is not clear if they can hold that punch.

2. Sell now and fix the loss. I would only go for it, if you need money right now, since you've already lost most value, if you invested during the ICO. Further losses can't hurt much more in the absolute value. But there is a chance to get your money back later.

Great news, I'm happy to see that needed developments to ICOBench. I hope, that they are not going to stop there, since the regulatory background and the market will keep challenging the ICO industry itself and the ICOBench as it's most renowned proxy.

Currently, the changes mentioned do not look like a final solution for the rates quality problem and the experts' corruption risks, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Absolutely not. You can smell scam and see huge red flags from a mile there. But I do not need to tell you anything else, just talk to this screenshot:



What do we see here?

1. A promise of DAILY gains of 1% isthe first red flag. Simple logic test: if they could make that much, why would they need your money? If this product would work, why can't they get millions of dollars just this working product to some financial corporation to raise millions or simply sell the tech?

2. A progressive scale of return based on the investments amount. That is not necessarily a red flag, but it becomes one, when you check numbers (they are almost doubling from tier to tier). It is very likely a Ponzi scheme.

Also, there are unsupported claims of some Patents (can find any patent issued for their UK company),

And, even though they claim some UK founders, this project is likely from southern Asia. Just check their marketing thread with fake "reviews" on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-experiences-with-profitcoins-io

Also, take a look here. Profitcoins.io is totally a scam: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3302193.0

I've recently came across that post on medium, and it triggered me to start this topic.

https://medium.com/@douglaslyons/ldj-capital-all-that-glitters-is-not-gold-ccbfc21ffd71

I do not want to take any emotions or allegations from there ,but I rather want to discuss facts and find the truth.

Long story short:

1. Douglas Lyons did some digging in the public sources and found out, that none of LDG Capital's offices (listed at the LDJ Capital website) has any noticeable presence of LDG and has are all in co-workings or residential areas. Which is more than strange and simply inadequate for a company, which claims to work with 1.5 trillion dollars worth of capital sources.

2. He learned, that some team members of LDJ look fake and even sometimes simply are very likely "ghosts" or fake accounts.

3. Initially one startup, and later on several 10s more told Douglas, that LDJ Capital and David Drake in particular set up meetings with them at their expense and brought random people (someone from the street for $50/hour, as it is claimed there) just to charge ICOs for their time. Most of such meeting had no result other than somewhat $30k of startup funds spent. There are more ICO advisors in the LinkedIn discussion coming out and telling the same stories about allegedly con actions or attempts for such actions of LDJ team in regard of their ICOs. Link to that thread: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6397806831632154624/

4. He also found out, that personal assets of David Drake (the Chairman of LDJ) are very modest at best, and the lavish lifestyle, which he claims to have, is more likely a glitter, rather than a product or confirmation of the high status.

5. There are also a suggestion, that David Drake is onboarding with each and every ICO, which is willing to pay him anything in tokens, and that he is promoting himself, as the #1 top adviser at the ICOBench. Which he technically is, since he has a lot of mostly low quality project, which he couldn't really advise even being the smartest person on the earth: just counting projects listed at ICOBench, there 75 running. Taking David spends no time on anything other than ICO advisory, it would left him with 32 minutes per project per 1 normal week of working, which is not enough even to properly read and analyse an average White Paper of 45 pages (my rough estimation). What kind of Advisor is that?!

I want to find a logical explanation for what is happening and determine, if it is actually a fraud, or a super aggressive hustling and a rapidly growing business with all the corresponding deficiencies and flaws (I want to leave it a chance, since LDJ going down would hurt a lot of relatively innocent ICOs and the industry as a whole in a short span of time [yet it will clear it and make stronger, if LDJ actually is a fraud]). What do you think?

I want tot ask everyone to stick to a professional manner of speaking and try to be reasonable and to do justice to the company in question. This is actually a very serious matter and we have to be careful discussing it.

Also, I want to discuss consequences of both scenarios. Since, as a community, our goal is to build a stronger and more valuable ecosystem, we all may benefit from discussion of a strategy on how to hold this particular issue and issues of the close kind in the future.

This ICO is an registered HK business, and they may press charges, since that's their promised prizes or other benefits for participants of promotional campaign were obtained by a fraudster with the use of deceit. Technically it shall count as theft and/or fraud in HK. I would recommend contacting their ICO CEO and their Legal Advisor to report that incident. Also, their reaction will tell a lot about the status and position of that person in their ranks.

Wonderful catch.

They are probably employing the same super cheap and awful ICO marketing agency somewhere from Eastern Europe (the broken English of those accounts shows typical mistakes for Slavic native speakers). I have some suggestions, but would build a social graph to prove them first. Currently there are some leads to the ADDIVINE agency or their subcontractors, yet that may be a coincidence.


They are by far not the only "team" to blame, but I totally agree to you, that all that "activity" is pointless, harmful to the bitcointalk forum and a total waste of time. What can we do about it systematically?

That's the whole point of off topic - to be irrelevant to this forum and not to have have any certain point. It is just always there, like trash. You can't eliminate a trash bin, because despite all your efforts, trash will appear one day, and you want to put it somewhere to keep other places clean.

Thank you, that's a good catch.

There is also an active  thread for reporting a merit abuse, some DT members actually follow that thread. Technically, sale is also an abuse of merit system.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2896910.0


I support that. You can't buy an ability to write texts and produce valuable ideas. And It won't be a problem to catch and ban someone, who's merit will be in question due to some indecent behavior.

OK, I won't make obvious jokes about that awful prediction.

But I can't resist to notice, how that TA by dinhbiplus simply makes no sense, even if you didn't learn TA. You simply cant draw that line and tell a future price from it, because the statistical reliablitz for such prediction will be close to 0 even for a 1 week interval, not to say months.

And from a fundamental analysis standpoint (which would be more applicable for that case), you can;t find any strong support for a future decline, since the growth potential has been accumulating for far too long, and no major negative factors appeared against expectations.


This is a post to make people laugh. Be positive.

You are welcome.

Also, this guys look very suspicious:

https://icobench.com/u/ny

He recently rated a lot of projects, many of which have ended months ago (like Binance, Friendz and many others, which he rated today or yesterday). None of his ratings contain any valuable information.

Probably, he is just boosting his rating to get more weight. It is certainly an abuse of your system and is bad both for the platform and the trust. You shall change that system to avoid this kind of cheaters.

About the email: I can copy all that to your email, but that is crucial to keep such information public, not just between us. It is better for everyone, if development and changes on your platform would by transparent.

Great catch!

Also, I can see problems with the following "advisors" at ICOBench, who are not picky at all and sell their faces for tokens from every project, that offers to buy:

https://icobench.com/u/david-drake

He has a crazy mix of the all different types of ICOs, simultaneously "advising" 70 (!) projects with an average rating of 3.60. It appears that he just take projects to boost his rating, that just looks ridiculous and pathetic. And several project under his "advisory" look extremely suspicious and have know allegation of scam. Not picky at all to say the least. And none of his reviews contain any analysis whatsoever.

https://icobench.com/u/michael-terpin

This guy was an advisor for projects like Lydian (100x flop from $5 price during the ICO to $0.05 now) and Worldwide Asset eXchange (6x flop from $2.05 to $0.34). His average ICO under advisory score is even worse, than David Drake's - 3.57. 23 ICOs, 11 running.

https://icobench.com/u/kteare

His average score of ICO under advisory is 3.40 (15 ICOs). And his only given rate was to a project, which he is a part of, what brakes the ICOBench rules.

https://icobench.com/u/borisotonicar

This one I'm not so sure about. Yet he was involved in a scam ICO and is currently listed as an advisor for Bitxoxo, which has a lot of scam red flags. 6 simultaneous ICOs (and he has another full-time job, according to LinkedIn), average rating 4.04.

https://icobench.com/u/jaredpolites

3.36 average score, 13 ICOs.

https://icobench.com/u/marckenigsberg

3.32 average score, 13 ICOs.

https://icobench.com/u/moe

3.21 average score, 12 ICOs

https://icobench.com/u/bitkay

3.2 average score, 13 ICOs.

Answering the initial question of this thread: yes, ICO is still legit.

It is now even more legit, than was before. Why?

1. There are official recognition of ICO as a crowd-funding approach coming in several countries. It is yet to come in many others, but the process has started and has no reason to stop. ICOs are being recognized in one way or another, and even countries, which banned ICOs before, will most likely allow it, when the guideline and the industry regulations will be up to their standards. That means, that ICOs are getting legitimate.

2. ICOs is now coming through a way more thorough due diligence and review, comparing the the state of 6 months before and even comparing to this February. It is visible, how sky rocketed during the past 3 months the requirements for information disclosure, the team experience, the projections, the quality of smart contracts and IT solutions etc.

3. We can now see less fraud in ICOs, and almost no shitty project has a chance to get funded.

4. Combined gains from ICOs are also in a green area. It is not a money pit.

I can go on with that list, but the main idea doesn't need it: ICO industry is growing up, it matures, it becomes a legit part of the modern economy.

You stole that question from the tip of my tongue.

So, as far as I concerned, Russia (you mean Russian government, right? Since Russia as its people is accepting crypto since the very inception of Bitcoin) may start accepting crypto... but it will be their very own crypto, centralized, emitted by the Central Bank and controlled by the oligarchs.

It is extremely unlikely, that the existing regime in Russiaa will allow any substantial use for any other monetary tool, other than the official RUB. It's simple heir way of management - total control.

It is not a serious discussion, shall be moved to politics section.

In regard of the question "Who do you think Khodorkovsky voted for at the last Russian election":

Just check his own website. He promoted for not voting at all. So, if he is a man of his word, he didn't vote for anyone. He was promoting the #Enough hashtag:


Source:
https://www.khodorkovsky.com/mikhail-khodorkovsky-russias-presidential-election/