Bitcoin Forum

Securities commissioners and trade experts have refused Australian blockchain startup Power Ledger a clean bill of ethical health after it emerged that the company paid rogue “bounty hunters” to shore up interest in its cryptocurrency. The project’s “powr” crypto has fallen 90 percent in value over the past year amidst bearish market conditions.

Spruikers, sponsored creators of glowing reviews, falsely claimed that Power Ledger, a peer-to-peer electricity-trading startup, had attracted the interest of Tesla founder Elon Musk, and was on a path to revolutionize the industry, in addition to other exaggerations.

According to local newspaper Financial Review, the Australian company rewarded spruikers with free allocations of its powr token, but denies responsibility for their embellishments. Power Ledger chairman Jemma Green maintains that spruikers posted the misleading reviews while operating outside of its control.

“Rewards were offered to community members to share our project with their own networks. The means by which they did so were outside of our control, and we made it clear that our core supporters who believed in the project and the future of renewable energy were the main audience for this program,”‘ Green was quoted as saying.

However, Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) head John Price said spruikers, which the company intends to maintain, should disclose that they are being rewarded by the entity. The commission this year set up a unit to monitor cryptocurrency investments.

Trade experts also commented disapprovingly on the ethical dimensions of spruiking to boost initial coin offerings (ICOs), a practice that surged in popularity during 2017’s crowdfunding mania. Questions have since been asked over the failure of the majority of ICOs to evolve into successful projects with real adoption.
https://news.bitcoin.com/australian-crypto-company-rapped-for-paying-bounty-hunters-for-glowing-reviews/
( Link )
A partner at Deloitte Consulting specializing in technology, Peter Williams, raised ethical concerns over the provision of financial incentives, or bounties, for individuals to promote initial coin offerings, describing these as “classic market manipulation techniques.”

‘A Quarter of ICOs Are Scams’
ASIC Commissioner Price cautioned that his agency is focused on disclosure in initial coin offerings, estimating that a quarter of them may be scams. “Just because you call something an ICO, doesn’t mean you are unregulated,” he said.

Power Ledger maintains that it deployed spruikers, which it calls community advocates, not only to promote its virtual currency, but also to improve the reputation of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.

“Some of our bounty group were professional bounty hunters chasing tokens because it’s what they do,” Power Ledger posted a few weeks after the token sale. “Some were bots reporting an astounding 5,000 likes of our social media output in a single 24-hour period.”

Power Ledger will continue to pay spruikers to promote its currency, which peaked at $2.4 billion during the crypto boom. The company’s token is now trading about 20 percent below its issue price.

Aside from the controversy, Power Ledger successfully tested a blockchain-based solar power-trading project in the Australian coastal city of Fremantle earlier this month, enabling around 40 households to determine both the buying and selling price of renewable electricity generated on their rooftops. The trial has been described by Western Australia’s Minister for Finance, Energy and Aboriginal Affairs, Ben Wyatt, as a “world first.”What do you think of the accusations laid against Power Ledger?

https://i.imgur.com/xzdnbju.png
Well done!

Instead of copy-paste you could have posted source link and say something about it.

there is is link if take your time

These kind of actions are the thing that triggers over protective regulations from the government regulators. I am glad the authorities are taking counter action against these scrupulous projects and this must send a strong message to the other projects that are trying to use these underhanded marketing tactics.

We will see a lot more than this in 2019, because the regulators are catching up now.  ;)

These reviews and finding will definitely lead to more and more scrutiny into the activities of ICOs. It means that the market dip is not yet over.

I really do hope that this action will set the precedence this 2019.  Australia already welcome crypto July of last year so they are really moving forward  and there are reports that they are slowly following Japan's path. So let's see how other crypto nations will react with this news.


I do hope so. If ICO really wanted to succeed then they either have to offer projects with real life usage or offer nothing and die. And as regulators are raising standards, those projects will have to think twice before going live. Investors are getting smarter now and I'm sure those projects that has no value won't get the needed support from the community.

This is not news anymore as I'm pretty sure other companies and services are doing exactly the same as these lads are. Paying someone to create a positive review for one's company is happening on a daily basis, though only a few are caught red-handed. The government of Australia should have a keen sense on these practices since the consumers are at risk of getting scammed ultimately in the end. This also puts a bad shade on crypto services knowing the lengths a company can go just to look legitimate in the eyes of their peers--even if it means fooling people.

I didn't find any information. Do you have whitepaper?

Sorry if this is really obvious, but what's the difference with all the other ICOs who give out bounties?
I've never actually looked into earning bounties, but I thought that this was pretty much standard practice.

Aren't there many projects that give out bounties for writing positive articles etc?

we need to give the merit for this:


About the accusations, well all ICOs do this, of course it is wrong to spread false information to promote a project because this project will pay you

This is a proactive one from government regulators that needs to be encouraged. I have seen projects that cannot moving anything claiming to have partnership with giant and reputable businesses across the globe which is obviously some exaggeration. Another is seeing them claiming to be in various reputable magazines across the world in which if the link is followed, its merely a sham. But because they have been blinded with the steam its going to gather, they don't care and this is what should await such enterprises.

I don't see any special violations by the "powr" team here because that's just a marketing tactics unless and until they provide incorrect information. If that is unethical, then the entire bounty scene is unethical per say where people are being paid for doing some pre-defined task with a goal to create awareness about an ICO! Otherwise how the world will come to know about an emerging technology?

On the other hand, the bounty hunters also need to be ethical to some extent and should not promote scam ICOs. So the matter actually depends on these two pillars of trust. Here I want to take an example of John McAfee who was seen to promote a lot of ICOs through his own twitter channel. However, I have not seen him promoting scam ICOs. At least he does his homework well. That kind of understanding is needed by the bounty hunters. Otherwise the scenario is not going to change. 

Power Ledger is one of very few legitimate ICO
There was and there is  a lot of hype created by company and or hired trolls
If you look some ICO advisers than you see some big names what are giving his names in exchange for money
Sometimes some big names are posting that they have bought some large amounts of token
In a case of Power Ledger i think it activity done by big energy companies as Power Ledger is paving the way to disrupt his domination
One of Power Ledger partner is Silicon Valley city and automotive cars project
On other hands big companies are hiring trolls to post comments under some press articles
Big Pharma Input companies Banks are doing that very often
Some reputable people from US are posting negative and ignorant posts about crypto and so positive about stocks and just after few days we have crash on stocks unseen from time of Great Depression

And paying for positive reviews is meant to be something new that doesn't happen in every industry around the world? Pfft. This goes on all over the place, it's maybe not explicit but it is implied and it does happen.

A lot of reviews are paid for otherwise they won't be done. Who will waste their time writing about xyz for nothing when someone else is willing to pay you for it. Amazon has paid reviewers as well

There are too many scams in the current ICO. The bounty hunter can't predict that any bounty will be paid before I get paid. I think this situation will get some improvement in the future. We can see that the market is playing its role, a lot of shittokens will be eliminated by the market.

We would love to read your opinion about the news you copied as a post - forum acts like that.