Mycelium's "crowdsale": basically a donation, not an investment by any means

[Rassah]

Sure you are selling unregistered securities. If calling them "tokens" is the extent of your cunning, I'm afraid you're in for a rude awakening.

I am not a lawyer. You are not a lawyer either. I'm sure in some jurisdictions, like NYC, anything you sell is illegal. Our legal team said this is ok. I can only trust their word on this.

You do understand that being "just a contractor" absolves you no more than "being just a runner," correct? Otherwise everyone would rent a desk in Latvia, push unregistered securities, and claim to be working for Keyser Söze when they got popped.

I am not the one selling these tokens. I am not the one receiving the money from the sale either. I'm just answering questions on what these are, how they work, and what the company expects. I'm not promising profits, I'm not saying this is legal (consult your own lawyer before you buy this) and I'm not claiming this is a good idea. I am also not participating in this sale myself. None of the managers and owners are.

Nah, you do not know what SARs are. For starters, SARs are not sold but issued to employees.

Yes, we know. There's no rule against selling them either. So we're trying something new.


Regarding detective work, I'm not sure why it's needed. I'm not hiding anything. Everything about the company and the sale is public. All the addresses, along with all our names and faces are right here https://wallet.mycelium.com/about.html Regarding the mailing address, please use e-mail. We all live all around the world, and our CEO travels a lot. Also, don't forget that our customers are typically the grey market types, not the everything-by-the-book types, and we have built our reputation within that space (where reputation is everything), so that's probably why there's such a disconnect between Mycelium "shills" and the "detectives." Some trust us based on our philosophy, others think it's sketchy to not have absolutely everything covered by legal. For me, personally, I have been in this space for years (since early 2011), have practically dedicated my life to it, and don't have any plans to disappear with the money. I may quit the company in a very public way if I believe that it is doing something I believe is unethical (like spying on our users, or using money inappropriately), since I don't exactly need the money myself (technically retired over two years ago). But I hope to be in this space and this business community for as long as I can.

Seriously, though, what would you like to know?

[Rassah]

I don't need to be a lawyer to know selling unregistered securities is illegal.

But you need to be a lawyer to know if what we're selling is securities, and what jurisdictions they should be registered in, and which they're already legal in. I've heard all of this already since the start of this sale. As I said, consult your lawyer. If you think this is illegal where you live, please don't break laws and don't participate.

Have no idea who your "legal team" is, but if they, like you, feel that "anything you sell [in NYC] is illegal," they're lunatics, not lawyers.  NYC is full of stores. Stores sell things.

I meant anything investment wise. There's a reason NYC is on the same list as North Korea and Iran with a lot of bitcoin companies. Worse yet, these guys can make things illegal retroactively, so fuckem.

"Sale of unregistered securities" includes promotion, and promotion is, loosely speaking, doing anything instrumental to such sales.

Pretty sure whoever draws up brochures for companies that does IPOs isn't help liable should that IPO go south. But, again, I am not a lawyer. If you are not a lawyer either, then your advice is not valid either (and probably illegal in the state of NY

Lol no, you simply don't understand that the quality of not being sold is what's called SAR's defining quality.

It is. You are getting a right to appreciation of company value, with the right to have it be converted into stock should the company go through an IPO. We're just not giving this away for free.

Stop giving away worthless legal advice, unless you are a lawyer. If you have some questions or concerns about the company or the project, feel free to ask/address them. If you are confused as to what kind of philosophy our owners and developers have, I can explain that too.

[DarkStar_]

Pure money grab on the heels of all these icos. Reminds me of the dot com bubble.

Says the guy wearing a signature, advertising an ICO xD .
Thanks for the heads up about this. Now I can go warn people about it since I was never planning (luckily) to get involved with Mycelium's crowdsale. I thought it looked legit at first glance and I actually considered buying a small share, but there isn't a chance I will purchase a share anymore after reading this..

[Rassah]

One of the guys who wanted to buy a lot seems to be a bit flakey, so may not invest after all (we don't know either way). But the crowdsale ends in 12 hours, so I guess that won't matter. We just added Glidera support, and will be demonstrating Mycelium Swish at the National Restaurant Association in Chicago, and long term plan to incorporate Swish into our new wallet as well, so even more revenues should that succeed (that system is super easy to use!). All the people talking about "Randian heroes" or whatever said whatever they wanted to say, and I've answered whatever questions people had, so now it's just my job to work and try to make this happen, and their job to sit on their asses and watch.


https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/mycelium-bitcoin-wallet-crowdsale-closes-in-on-million-fundraise-integrates-glidera-1463584565

[Rassah]

Would suggesting you start by proofing your press release be too forward?

I don't work for that, or any of the dozen other bitcoin news companies that interviewed me. I usually catch and email them about issues (Core nose?), but I can only do so much.

[yayayo]

I think it's a free market after all. People should just do their homework and then decide if a investment makes sense ore not. Provided that there are no hidden terms, it's not a crime to have simply bad terms in an offering, because nobody is forced to buy it. You can't save people from bad decisions.

That said, I think Mycelium's crowdsale is not attractive at all and I will certainly not "invest". However Bitcoiners are used to invest in almost anything that is offered to them. If you look at the terms (if there are any) of most "Bitcoin stocks", you will discover that the holders of these financial entities have no rights at all. So compared to the peer group Mycelium's offer might actually seem superior...

ya.ya.yo!

[Omega.SportSciencie]

I can't create new account on the crowdsale...

The notification email never arrives..

[Rassah]

I think it's a free market after all. People should just do their homework and then decide if a investment makes sense ore not.

Helping your fellow humans "do their homework," that's part of the free market too

Let us know when you start 

[Omega.SportSciencie]

I think it's a free market after all. People should just do their homework and then decide if a investment makes sense ore not.

Helping your fellow humans "do their homework," that's part of the free market too

Let us know when you start 

What I dont understand is on which platform the mycelium tokens are created? counter party, ethereum, or what.. are they even decentralized? or those tokens only exist in your server.

[target]

But as mycelium has stated, they are aiming to become a full blown finance company. Their fees should be able to fund their dividends.

They've gathered 4,772.686 BTC! imagine that. They sure are serious and knowns what they are doing.
Crowdsale is almost over and i've read somewhere that they can get their tokens right after it. If I only have the funds, I may have bought shares.

[Rassah]

What I dont understand is on which platform the mycelium tokens are created? counter party, ethereum, or what.. are they even decentralized? or those tokens only exist in your server.

They're ColoredCoin tokens. Decentralized, for now on Colu wallet, but will be supported in our own Mycelium Wallet soon.

[gravitate]

What I dont understand is on which platform the mycelium tokens are created? counter party, ethereum, or what.. are they even decentralized? or those tokens only exist in your server.

They're ColoredCoin tokens. Decentralized, for now on Colu wallet, but will be supported in our own Mycelium Wallet soon.

Wow cool! when is the new wallet gonna be out then?

so glad I invested

[Rassah]

when is the new wallet gonna be out then?

We're aiming for Fall or by end of the year. The current wallet will be updated with ColoredCoin support too, probably in June.

[gravitate]

when is the new wallet gonna be out then?

We're aiming for Fall or by end of the year. The current wallet will be updated with ColoredCoin support too, probably in June.

cool man! So 6000 MT in circulation that give you dividends and a stake in the company.

They are going x 100 the crowdsale price. This is gonna be so sweet

[alani123]

The crowdsale seems to be over but there's been a lot of discussion in this thread. I'm probably not locking it as the closing of the crowdsale doesn't mark the end of this adventure, whether you perceive this in a negative or positive light.

[4emily]

What I dont understand is on which platform the mycelium tokens are created? counter party, ethereum, or what.. are they even decentralized? or those tokens only exist in your server.

They're ColoredCoin tokens. Decentralized, for now on Colu wallet, but will be supported in our own Mycelium Wallet soon.

@Rassah

I followed the instructions:

Receiving your Mycelium Tokens

In order to receive Mycelium Tokens, you have to make sure that:

    You have signed Mycelium Token Sales Agreement (if you have not signed it, please sign it here.)
    Then, go to https://dashboard.colu.co and create an account (thanks to our partner - Colu.co!). Write down the password and keep it in a safe place - it is not possible to restore your password if you lose it!
    Go to Manage Assets, then select Receive Assets
    Copy the receiving address
    Paste this address in the field below - this is where your Mycelium Tokens are stored.

Colu Address

Your Colu Address has been updated successfully.

Use this Colu Address to receive Mycelium Tokens

Do I need to do anything else for the tokens to be transferred to my Colu address or does that happen automatically at some stage?

Thanks.

[M28MmickT]

when is the new wallet gonna be out then?

We're aiming for Fall or by end of the year. The current wallet will be updated with ColoredCoin support too, probably in June.

So this dude only waited for the crowdsale to end and then go afk. nice

[alani123]

when is the new wallet gonna be out then?

We're aiming for Fall or by end of the year. The current wallet will be updated with ColoredCoin support too, probably in June.

So this dude only waited for the crowdsale to end and then go afk. nice

You mean the developers? June isn't that far away. Technology for color coins is already out there. Given that Mycelium is going to be implementing an already existing solution I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to keep true to their word by releasing the feature on time.

[Bitcoinpro]

So Mycelium is organising a "crowdsale". If you've been in their website you've most definitely heard about it because they're doing their best to get the word out. I'm here to give you the hard truth though, this is quite possibly the worst place to put your money in and most certainly a guaranteed loss of principal. Don't give them money unless you consider it a donation. Here's why:

Part 1
Unacceptable practices:
Giving a 10% discount to people expressing interest prior to the sale.
You don't have to be a genius to see how bad of a practice this is for securities (note: this crowdsale isn't even a security) that are supposedly representing a stake in a company.

Promising investors part of the money received from future crowdsales
In their own words:

You get the share of Mycelium and the right to receive money whenever Mycelium gets more expensive. Let's suppose that this time, with this crowdsale, it will be valued at 100 million USD. Imagine that when we sell another portion one year later it will be valued at 1 billion USD. So you will get 900 million USD multiplied by your portion (if you are the owner of 5% you will get 5% of 900 million = 45 million). Your initial investment stays with you: you keep owning this right and it is non-dilutable. The next 20% we sell will be dilutable.

Remember that a Cyprus-based holding company is involved, and Mycelium operations are supposedly Latvian-based. This is a borderline pyramid scheme setup and illegal for securities in most of the world.

Absolutely zero legal fallback

There will be no refunds. Token is not a security, is not listed, authorized, issued or traded on any regulated market.

No ETA on project rollout
and the creators have no clear idea how it's going to be built or even what it's going to be. You're you would literally be buying a stake in vapourware.

Mycelium's supposed address is a rent-a-desk service's address.
part 2
Why this has a high chance of being a loss:
First things first, up to this point, could you name anything that Mycelium did that was a commercial success? Their wallet software was free and not monetized, which is nice for users but not for potential investors. A supposed advantage of this crowdsale is dividends but there's no talk about how they're going to turn in profit.

They are granting themselvs the right to repurchase shares at the initial price.
There's no clear plan on how this project is potentially going to turn in profit, but even in the unlikely event that the project becomes profitable, they could buy back the shares at the initial price and end their obligation to investors.

Can only invest in the wallet but there's no guarantee that the money will be spent on it instead of other projects (that Mycelium won't pay investors dividends for)

And do I have a guarantee that the collected funds will only be used for the wallet project and not for the rest of the company?

Not entirely, but that's mainly because eventually all of the rest of our company will be rolled into this wallet. Most of the expense will be used to pay Wallet developer salaries, but some of our resources (like office and general brand marketing) are shared, so it would be difficult to keep completely separate. Sorry I can't give a more satisfactory answer.

Tokens are released in their own platform.
So fair distribution is entirely based on trust, as well as trading. Yet they claim that Token owners can either sell them on the open market at any moment or redeem to us if conditions are met, which is misleading at best.

Especially risky when you look at this from a legal perspective:

You're a US citizen, right? Where's your company based/registered at?

For now yes. It's not my company, I am technically just a contractor. It's registered in Cyprus, with the Wallet division registered in Latvia.

My advice on this would be to stay away. It looks bad in every way possible, there's no guarantee that Mycelium have the supposed platform ready or even that they're working on it. Don't fall for their misleading advertising, this looks bad no matter how you look at it. Only send money if you consider it a donation.

Wats ur take on Ethereum?

[bitbitch]

when is the new wallet gonna be out then?

We're aiming for Fall or by end of the year. The current wallet will be updated with ColoredCoin support too, probably in June.

So this dude only waited for the crowdsale to end and then go afk. nice

he's probably switched back to retired mode. that was the one thing he said during the sale that put me right off.