An Ethereum Startup Just Vanished After People Invested $374K (vice.com) 190
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A startup on the Ethereum platform vanished from the internet on Sunday after raising $374,000 USD from investors in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fundraiser. Confido is a startup that pitched itself as a blockchain-based app for making payments and tracking shipments. It sold digital tokens to investors over the Ethereum blockchain in an ICO that ran from November 6 to 8. During the token sale, Confido sold people bespoke digital tokens that represent their investment in exchange for ether, Ethereum's digital currency. But on Sunday, the company unceremoniously deleted its Twitter account and took down its website. A company representative posted a brief comment to the company's now-private subforum on Reddit, citing legal problems that prevent the Confido team from continuing their work. The same message was also posted to Medium but quickly deleted.
"Right now, we are in a tight spot, as we are having legal trouble caused by a contract we signed," the message stated (a cached version of the Medium post is viewable). "It is likely that we will be able to find a solution to rectify the situation. However, we cannot assure you with 100% certainty that we will get through this." The message was apparently written by Confido's founder, one Joost van Doorn, who seems to have no internet presence besides a now-removed LinkedIn profile. Even the Confido representative on Reddit doesn't seem to know what's going on, though, posting hours after the initial message, "Look I have absolutely no idea what has happened here. The removal of all of our social media platforms and website has come as a complete surprise to me." Confido tokens had a market cap of $10 million last week, before the company disappeared, but now the tokens are worthless. And investors are crying foul.
"Right now, we are in a tight spot, as we are having legal trouble caused by a contract we signed," the message stated (a cached version of the Medium post is viewable). "It is likely that we will be able to find a solution to rectify the situation. However, we cannot assure you with 100% certainty that we will get through this." The message was apparently written by Confido's founder, one Joost van Doorn, who seems to have no internet presence besides a now-removed LinkedIn profile. Even the Confido representative on Reddit doesn't seem to know what's going on, though, posting hours after the initial message, "Look I have absolutely no idea what has happened here. The removal of all of our social media platforms and website has come as a complete surprise to me." Confido tokens had a market cap of $10 million last week, before the company disappeared, but now the tokens are worthless. And investors are crying foul.
Another ICO, another SCAM. (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's a sucker born every minute.
It was true 150 years ago, it's true today.
Re:Another ICO, another SCAM. (Score:5, Insightful)
A fool and their money, were lucky to get together in the first place.
It is an immoral act to let a sucker keep his money.
Good for confido...Confido? They had 'confidence game' right in their name folks.
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^^^ Ditto. Van Douche was probably represented by Dewey, Cheatam, and Howe LLP.
Con fido (Score:2)
They had 'confidence game' right in their name folks.
Yes, but to be fair it does sound like they were aiming to con dogs rather than humans.
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It is an immoral act to let a sucker keep his money.
Then how come we have government assistance programs?
If it's an immoral act to let a sucker keep their money, then it's EVEN MORE IMMORTAL to have laws
that forcibly take money from non-suckers and then reward it to Able-Bodied people who are probably mostly
suckers Or are of the same mentality (couldn't even find/plan/execute on a way to earn a decent living.....)
Also, why don't we do the responsible thing and detect the suckers' and re-allocate
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A sucker will be separated from his/her money. It's just a question of who/when.
By definition: the highest utility is for me to get it.
Re:Another ICO, another SCAM. (Score:4, Funny)
I think "I've got a coinbase to sell you" will emerge as the new "I've got a bridge in brooklyn to sell you"
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I guess the money went in to ether :-)
I get a kick of millennials that invest in cryptocurrency.
I guess it's time to learn.
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I guess the money went in to ether :-)
I get a kick of millennials that invest in cryptocurrency.
I guess it's time to learn.
Because only millennials make poor money decisions? Because only block chain businesses fail? Or did you just block Enron from your mind? Bernie Madoff? Charles Ponzi?
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Every generation has its tulips. In the '80s, it was Cabbage Patch Kids. The 1990s brought Pogs and .com 1.0 companies (pets.com, flooz, beenz.)
What we are going to see is cryptocurrencies hyped up, a nasty collapse happen, then they will go back to a sane level and wind up a useful way of doing value exchanges once the "ooo, shiny" aspect is gone. Cryptocurrencies are a good concept, but because the shysters are back (a lot of them fled when Mt. Gox fell flat), it is something to stay away from for now.
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Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1929...
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Considering Crypto has exploded in return on investment, the suckers are those that show up too late to the game. Bitcoin has been up and running for 9 years with explosive price gains... when did you buy again? Oh you missed out? Bitter? That explains it.
Re:Another ICO, another SCAM. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin is in for a hell of a ride. Big money vulture capitalist have statistically analysed there is sufficient real money around bitcoin to harvest by purposefully hugely fluctuating the price of bit coin. UP, down, UP, down, UP, down, always milking cash out of the fools in the cycle, it is going to be really cruel. They will keep riding bitcoin until the kill it, little money does not stand a chance against big money, in a ponzi play like bitcoin, it's price as has been demonstrated can be all too readily pumped or dumped.
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Where are my mod points when I need them :D
Save 'em. You have just witnessed roman_mir karma whoring with his sock puppet. Use mod points on comments that actually deserve to be moderated up instead.
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Considering Crypto has exploded in return on investment, the suckers are those that show up too late to the game. Bitcoin has been up and running for 9 years with explosive price gains... when did you buy again? Oh you missed out? Bitter? That explains it.
I'd be curious to know how many people have actually cached out their bitcoin to realize their gain. It's one thing to have $100,000 worth of bitcoin, and another to have that $100,000 in your bank account.
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Not so - the sucker birth-rate has been increasing roughly exponentially.
Re:Another ICO, another SCAM. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the track record of the Initial Coin Offering. And people keep putting money into them.
Based on historical precedent, the third and largest collapse of a scammy ICO will be the pin that pops the cryptocurrency bubble.
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What "stopped" VC is simply that there is nothing worthwhile left to invest in.
You see, investors want to see a ROI. That can only happen, of course, if the business you invest in can actually, well, do business. And for this you need customers. And customers are rare, considering that all the money is neatly tucked away on the supply side. There is simply no demand, at least by no means enough to warrant VCing in some new businesses.
So those VCs and their load of surplus money were looking for something to
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That might pop the ethereum bubble, but I think bitcoin is here to stay.
The blockchain basically has one use: cryptocurrency. Any other use and you're probably just getting sucked into a scam.
Except that the blockchain as implemented in BTC is not scaling. Transaction times are stretching into days and open-market transaction fees are now greater than many small transactions, all besides the basic problem of limited money supply. It has already failed as a currency.
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Isn't the limited money supply one of the features? posting AC because I modded people.
Mathematically limited money supply was intended to make Bitcoin immune to inflation. This worked; since BTC was invented, the algorithm has never been cracked and the money supply has been asymptotically edging toward the limit of 21 million coins as new coin is mined.
What the Bitcoiners failed to realize is that if you hold the supply of a money constant, it loses its value as a neutral medium of exchange because people perceive it as becoming more valuable with time. It gets hoarded, and this is what is
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BitCoin is becoming pretty unwieldy with the time to process transactions. Even with taking shortcuts, the time it takes is taking steadily longer to process (days in some instances), the blockchain is getting a lot larger, around 145 gigs, and the concern about existing issues like the 51%+ mining bloc.
BitCoin is a great "version 2.0" cryptocurrency, with "version 1.0" being Chaum's DigiCash. What is needed is a "version 3.0" currency that has some way to keep one group from getting to the 51% mark, some
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It's like 1980 in Los Angeles and Pyramid Parties all over again.
At least in 1980 you could see if there was anyone behind you in line to get in.
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But this isn't a pyramid scheme. It's more a trapezoid [youtube.com].
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Pyramid Parties
I also wrote like, which means similar, but not the same.
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*bad thing happens* "THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE TRUMP!!"
I'm confused. Over a hundred responses and this is the ONLY mention of whatzis name. At least there's a helpful reference to obsessive thought patterns. That helps indicate one AC with OCPD.
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*bad thing happens* "THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE TRUMP!!"
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/two-minute-shrink/201006/taming-obsessive-thoughts
Well, to be fair, he does bear a striking resemblance to many bad things.
Scammed (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry.... you weren't acting like investors if you bought ICO tokens that don't even represent legal shares of a business with so little information and so little in the way of business documentation and personal guarantees OR audited financials, and you should have been more careful.
That's just a good ol' fashioned scam; let the ICO buyer beware.
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There were as much investors as kickstarter backers are VCs.
But people like being called something that's associated with being rich and knowing how to invest, so...
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There were as much investors as kickstarter backers are VCs.
At least the kickstarter listings aren't the sale of Unregistered Securities like most ICOs are,
and with kickstarter there's a certain level of disclosure and professionallism required to get a listing approved,
and finally the expected "return" is for a small token prize, Not an implication that buyers will profit in some manner
proportionately related to what the management's business results are.
I got burned (Score:5, Funny)
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What research did you do into Confido before you "invested"? The main people involved, what successful businesses have they run in the past? What in their background led you to believe they would provide a return in this case?
And ICOs in general, I've heard plenty about how much the folks running these ICOs are pulling in. What's the history on the people on the other end? What sort of return have "investors" had in the past?
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Yeah, the tipoff was the "I make 50,000 in IT in Silicon valley" which is a bit of a meme around here...
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I invested in it and got burned. That hurts since i only make $50,000 in IT in Silicon Valley. I guess lesson learned - don't invest in startups that you don't know.
You learned the wrong lesson then...
Clearly, you should have learned that the way to get rich in Silicon Valley is to start your own company and have others that you don't know invest in your startup...
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No. If you can't afford to lose the money, do not invest in start ups at all. Start ups are inherently very risky - even when they are not scams. Most of the time, you will lose your money.
Not learning? (Score:4, Insightful)
People not learning that crypto currency is a frickin' scam. No sympathy.
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Shocked, shocked I am!
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People not learning that crypto currency is a frickin' scam. No sympathy.
Email is also a scam, as are telephones.. and people! All scams, every one of them. If anyone ever scammed someone using something then that thing is a scam. No doubt.
But... (Score:1)
This is how it's *SUPPOSED* to work, no?
It's in the name! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, Confido was a Confidence Game? The name even means "I trust" in several Romance languages...
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Romance languages...
Also known as languages of love.
No wonder people got fucked.
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Dude. I know. I'm Romanian :)
It was a joke.
Oh no! (Score:2)
Ponzi scheme makes some people rich by taking money from "investors"
More news at 11.
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To qualify as a Ponzi scheme they would need to pay off at least one round of investors with capital from a second round.
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Fine... Scam makes some people rich by taking money from "investors"
Ha ha ha. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The message was apparently written by Confido's founder, one Joost van Doorn, who seems to have no internet presence besides a now-removed LinkedIn profile."
Founder of internet-based currency, has no internet presence to speak of. Yeah, "Joost van Doorn" doesn't exist.
When people do so little due diligence or research, we can't really call it investing. People gave their money away. People can cry foul or whatever all they want. That money is gone.
We're really getting into the territory where it is legitimate to ask, how did people so gullible acquire anything of value in the first place?
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Make no mistake, Mr. fake van Doorn is going to get caught. People that steal real money like this without connections and money behind them are doomed to get caught and go to jail. The SEC started the initial paperwork to start going after these ICO scammers and they don't' screw around, they ruin your life, send you to jail and then let the IRS have their way with you.
In the end you've got nothing but a sore ass for thinking you can outwit the people with unlimited resources to find you and the money is a
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Well, if you are a capable individual nothing is setup in your name to begin with, and the money goes off-shore and becomes untraceable through other means. The person they "catch" is the person whose name everything was setup under, the fall guy, and not you. I mean after all if you are so capable of conning people into shit then why not start with conning some dumb fuck to be the CEO of your little scam?
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He would go to jail based on what?
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Asking people to invest money for a new business and then pocketing it is fraud. Specifically, it is embezzlement.
No question about it.
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Nobody is getting the money, sure, but this is still a crime that the government can prosecute and send the guy to jail.
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Nobody is getting the money, sure, but this is still a crime that the government can prosecute and send the guy to jail.
How 'bout: the contract that is causing issues is the one where the now-missing founder was paid a salary of $375,000+ per quarter and the company has ran out of money and is being sued by him as it owes him backpay.
No crimes there.
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Taking investors' money and squandering it by trying to do what you promised but failing badly is one thing (although even that can rise to the level of criminal liability in some instances e.g. trading whilst insolvent, insider trading or Securities Act/Sarbanes-Oxley type stuff).
But deliberately pocketing the money and running (which is what GP suggested)? That's plain old fraud, been going on for centuries and it gets prosecuted successfully every week.
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Only relatively small potatoes get busted. You gotta get billions at least to buy continued freedom.
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make no mistake, less than 15 percent of fraudsters get caught.
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Make no mistake, Mr. fake van Doorn is going to get caught. People that steal real money like this without connections and money behind them are doomed to get caught and go to jail. The SEC started the initial paperwork to start going after these ICO scammers and they don't' screw around, they ruin your life, send you to jail and then let the IRS have their way with you.
That is assuming he is in the USA. If he isn't then the SEC and IRS can stamp their feet all they want and they can't do a damned thing about it.
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We're really getting into the territory where it is legitimate to ask, how did people so gullible acquire anything of value in the first place?
They sucker in a few that are always looking to make lots of fast money through professional appearances and fancy business plans. Then you make those people pimp the system to their friends, that's what sells most people. A bunch of my friends got ripped off in some MLM scam some years back, it'd entered my clique of friends through one person who then became two, those two convinced a third and... the more friends are in on it, the harder it gets to say you're all wrong. Hell, even afterwards some simply
Joost van Doorn (Score:2)
Are we sure it's his name? Could be a typo, maybe his name is Joost van Doom .
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Yeah, "Joost van Doorn" doesn't exist.
I agree. It's probably a made-up name.
But if anyone wants to investigate, that name sounds Dutch or white South African. And if you're going to make up a name, you might as well pick one that would already fit your family history.
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But the good news is... (Score:1)
The founders of the PerpetualMotionem and FasterThanLighteum coin projects, both based on highly sophisticated mathematics, are still taking investments.
Well, they were buying "ether"... (Score:1)
"Confido sold people bespoke digital tokens that represent their investment in exchange for ether..."
It sounds like the investors got exactly what they paid for.
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Re:What did you expect with a name like that? (Score:5, Funny)
They bought ether and then complain when it disappeared into thin air!
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Doorn, not Doom.
DOORN.
Madoff, anyone? (Score:2)
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He got away with it because investors thought he was 'their criminal'. They all assumed he was trading on insider information. They all knew he was crooked, just not in what way.
The lessons... (Score:2)
This is beyond gambling, beyond speculation. This is into "wishing well" territory.
For some it may be a good lesson cheaply purchased. Some... not so cheaply.
Maybe they should take a look at something like this [amazon.com].
And so was born the new phrase... (Score:1)
NSFYL... Not Sorry For Your Loss.
"Invested"? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yeah, "invested". In quotes.
That's a nice word for it.
Play stupid games; win stupid prizes. (Score:2)
There's inherent risk in everything. Investing means you are banking your money on making money off the back of someone else. Can't bitch too hard when it goes wrong since "that's just business". I still don't condone it, though.
"ICO"s explained in one picture (Score:2)
Put your money into something safe. (Score:2)
Take the money and run (Score:2)
Doom (Score:2)
Does Joost have a PhD? I would think twice before giving money to a shady character named Doom, but that's just me.
Regulated ICOs to the rescue (Score:2)
There's actually a first regulator approved ICO underway in North America right now, in Ontario. [theglobeandmail.com]
I.e. the same regulatory body that oversees the largest Canadian stock exchange approved this ICO.
The goal is to create a platform that allows further ICOs with oversight and investor protection.
This means on this kind of platform a company couldn't just vanish and run away with the funds. (At least not any more than any publicly traded company can).
DISCLAIMER: I don't work for TokenFunder.com [tokenfunder.com], but contemplate to
Freedom... (Score:2)
ICOs are scams (Score:3)
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In the internet community, we regard anyone who buys into BTC complete and utter morons. But hey, it's your money. You can buy all the tulip bulbs you want.
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Ah, you got out of tulip bulbs before the bubble burst. Assuming, of course, that you have cashed out and have an actual $90K rather than BTC that might possibly be worth $90K that you're going to hold on to.
Ponzi schemes can be rewarding investments if you get in on the ground floor.
P. T. Barnum (Score:2)
Hang Them High (Score:2)
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To heck with bitcoins; that rig will get me some serious SETI@Home points!
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Climate change is real, the earth is heating up and dumbfucks sending a nuclear reactor worth of power for e-Monopoly money are the cause.
I seriously lol'd at this. Just imagine a BTC farm being powered by a coal fired power plant ..... hah! They are the problem!
Seriously though, if you spend $15000 on a mining rig, how much time / energy to mine 3 btc? Does the energy bill compare against running a heater to warm your house, as opposed to using the mining rig as the heater? Lastly, can I get one or two of your 1080ti cards you're wasting on monopoly money to run my games?
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Does the energy bill compare against running a heater to warm your house, as opposed to using the mining rig as the heater?
Resistive heating (e.g. a bitcoin miner) gives ~1W of heat per 1W of electricity. A heat pump gives ~3W of heat per 1W of electricity.
Burning fuel locally for heat is much more efficient than burning it in a remote power plant, converting the heat to electricity, then transporting the electricity and converting it back to heat.
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Compared to the millions of fuckers who use their PS4 and XBox One to stream Netflix, crypto-mining is nothing but a little blip on the radar.
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Except this "fad" has been up and running for 9 years and has hundreds of bluechip companies (IBM, Intel, HP, Microsoft, Cisco, and top 100 banks globally) hiring and training entire departments on the technology. Ya you will be the late majority at best. Enjoy buying Bitcoin at $100,000 per unit.
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Oh no in a $230 BILLION dollar market we find $374K of fraud... let me do the math on that... oh right... 0.00016%. In other words one thousand of one percent of Crypto is a scam. Ok let's multiply that by 10 just cuz there have been a few other scams. One one hundred of 1% is a scam. Hmmm... sounds a bit better than WallStreet no?
I'll take my chances with Crypto than JP Morgan, Goldman and other FlashBoys scaming all your manipulated stock market. See you when Crypto hits $5 Trillion.
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