This is perhaps the greatest deception that nobody really talks about. They pledged to maintain a high level of transparency and accountability to the community.

That's why Koinify was hired, the milestones were written, and the funds were locked up in multisig. They made such a big deal of it during the ICO.

It's all proven to be an absolute sham.
 
They were breaking commitments right from the very start, and to hide their actions they simply stopped communicating.

Now we get an official message once a month, and it no longer comes from Daniel.

Here's a fun read from the past:


Considering that the switch to Telegram would have significantly cut costs from this original budget.

Where did all the money go?

It's almost as if something is missing from the list...

Last December, Daniel cashed in a milestone secretly.

He announced his possession of the funds, 39 days after the fact, under direct questioning in chat, 2 AM (his time).

Not exactly what "respectable companies do."

Also, Daniel has never promised to develop the AE as described in his ICO pitch.

The final milestone is titled "advertising platform", and he is well on his way to completing it.









 

Gemz is the token for Getgems, not PayKey.

So why aren't you championing GG?

Because, like the rest of us, you've given up on it.

Instead, you're proposing a very large hypothetical:

That PK will be successful, and through means of charity, it will fund GG. And through GG's success, the value of Gemz will rise.


Before giving investment advice, for context, how about letting us know how well your investment is doing?

The Citi competition was held a mere 5 months after the ICO.

It is clear from the article that he had already developed some aspects of PayKey, at least to an extent to perform demonstrations on rival networks.

But he was still referring to everything as Getgems, his company's name, which is also conveniently the name of his first app.

It took another 5 months before he started shopping PayKey (in public) to VC's, and the secret had to come out.

I've always wanted to know, how far back does PK go?

Was it a stealth project/goal from the very, very beginning?

Citibank isn't "backing" PayKey. This is a pervasive myth.

Daniel attended an event hosted by Citi to demostrate their product, along with many other startups. Citi praised their product, and that was it.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/citi-names-getgems-app-the-most-visionary-social-solution-in-mobile-challenge

If Citi wanted PayKey, they would have funded it, and Daniel wouldn't still be pitching it to VC's a year later.

This is essentially the same demo and 30-day claim he's made since PayKey was laughed out of the room at 43North.

He's spent the last 6 months flying around the world pitching this product.

Nobody wants it.

The question is, will he unlock the last milestone to fund PK right through to its bitter end?

I hope not.

But then, what would the remaining funds be spent on?

It seems unlikely GG will ever get the AE. They'd likely have to move off of Telegram to make it work, but then, that's 95% of their product, isn't it?

As one of the largest ICO buyers, you of all people have something to be angry about. Sadly, you were one of the first people to suspect that the company had done something wrong.


Regardless of your apparent wealth (50 BTC!?), you've acted irresponsibly.


And now you voice your frustrations at those who are critical of the very people that misled you.

Daniel cleared up two big misunderstandings back in November:

The funds are unlocked by achieving the milestones, not delivering what was promised in the much more ambitious whitepaper.

For instance, the final milestone is called the Advertising platform, not the Attention Economy. This is why we have the disappointing ad channel instead of what everyone was expecting.

The funds are a reward for achieving the milestones, and this reward doesn't have to be spent on the GG project.

For example, if GG ends up costing $100k to develop, what happens to the remaining $700k is none of our business.

It's important to keep in mind that Daniel is a legal expert.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpeled

He knows exactly what he's on the hook for (nothing) and exactly what's needed to unlock any remaining funds: the agreement of 2 people that he hired for that purpose.

Even the milestones are purely symbolic. How else could he have abruptly switched to Telegram to get access to the funds even quicker?

The whitepaper, Koinify's involvement, Daniel's early interactions with the community... It's all beginning to look like a sham.

Or we can take a stand against scammers instead of giving in to feelings of apathy and shame that enable them to prey on the community without consequence.

I'll be sticking around.

Those stats speak nothing of user interest in the Getgems project. Only that these users found a telegram client to access the telegram network.

The stats Daniel should provide are:

How many users come from referrals?

How many users have unlocked the airdrop?

How many users are collecting the daily bonus and airdrops?

If users are not interested in the Gemz token, we can conclude that the app is failing. It's a simple test, and Daniel has the stats to answer it right now.

This project's biggest accomplishment was switching to Telegram and rebranding under that banner. But is that really something to celebrate?

The growth in downloads is real. But it's not what it seems.

Almost none of these downloaders have heard of Getgems.

They found the app because they searched for "telegram".

Getgems was renamed "Telegram with Getgems" so that the app would be listed near the official Telegram app in the app stores.

This is why there are so many more iOS users. The GG app appears closer to the top of the search results in the Apple App Store.

These downloaders are not interested in the Getgems project, they just want a Telegram client.

Daniel could prove me wrong by releasing referral stats, or even engagement stats (how many users are collecting airdrops).

Shouldn't investors have this information?

Because you have secret information like you claimed in the past?


Would love to get your source for that.

You are waiting for a scammer to tell you that he's scammed you.

This is why you'll lose all your money.

Daniel owes you nothing. He exchanged BTC for Gemz at the ICO. That was his only obligation.

The crowdfunders agreed to milestones with zero deadlines, and the milestones aren't even in a specific order.

But blame also falls on the many enablers. The ones, including myself, who gave Daniel the benefit of the doubt as the year flew by and so little was delivered.

The worst, however, are the ones who have silently cashed out after loudly defending this project. I have little sympathy for their losses.

It is only through collective action that we might be able to get control of the $200k that's still locked up. The ad channel is Daniel's sneaky attempt to access this money.

Paykey is already a flop. It was announced almost 6 months ago and still no one is interested in it.

It won't get funded because it's a bad idea.

Imagine Flickr releasing keyboard so that you can send somebody a photograph.
Or Dropbox with a file sharing keyboard. Or Firefox with a link sharing keyboard.

Ain't nobody swapping keyboards to do these things.

Mobile payments should be handled by the OS and/or inside of social networking apps.
And that's exactly how it's being implemented already.

How soon will Daniel abandon PK? He already has a date in mind. I'm sure of it.

He can't bleed money forever.

Each month we get a useless update about how well the app is doing.

They dont even pretend that major features are being worked on anymore.

The company Getgems, the creator of Getgems, also developed PayKey. When they present PayKey, the company is called PayKey. Thus, they don't mention Getgems while pitching PayKey.

They do mention every other social network though.

It was easier last year to blame the company’s lack of execution on inexperience or incompetence. But when you consider all the “surprise” announcements and events, I wouldn’t fault someone for concluding that we’ve participated in an outright scam.

Off the top of my head:

They sold a stake in the company to VC’s while they were simultaneously crowdfunding.

The co-founder quit immediately after the ICO.

They suddenly scrapped all prior work in favor of Telegram.

They revealed the stealth development of PayKey, and made it the company’s priority.

They secretly cashed out 50% of the ICO money.

They stated that GG’s development depends not on the remaining funds, but on PK’s future success.

Here’s the scenario I think is most likely coming:

PK won't get funded because of exactly what the panel criticized at 43North. The app hasn’t interested VC’s yet, and the market is only getting more crowded.

GG will continue to acquire users based solely on their app store rankings for the search term “Telegram”.

The app will function as a standard messenger client with a few beta (and soon, unoriginal) crypto features.

The attention economy will never be developed and the coin’s value will reflect this.

The app will obtain traditional revenue sources, like banner ads, to keep it alive.

Or it will simply be open-sourced and abandoned.

Read the GG white paper. It's a very cool idea they pitched (the attention economy). That's how Daniel raised $1.2m basically from word of mouth.

Now imagine 15 months have passed after getting all that money. How complete would you expect the app to be, considering it uses the existing Telegram client code and network?

What upsets true supporters of this project is that it appears like the company didn't even try. When paykey was announced, it all but confirmed the suspicion.

The development update is a joke.

What feature from the GG whitepaper is to be released next, and when?

Any concrete goals for 2016?