Monaco Visa ICO - tomorrow - latest scam?

[rkat55]

If it's legitimate and not a scam, I can't understand why they would try to do it with such short notice.

I'm thinking possibly they were worried about being overshadowed by tokencard maybe?

[1714640188]

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[1714640188]

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[nviere]

The visa reference has been removed.. iam unsure about the validity of this project.

[SwagGirl]

The visa reference has been removed.. iam unsure about the validity of this project.

Nice catch. Im going to wait and see without prejudging.

[RzeroD]

14k ether right now

https://etherscan.io/address/0xf9a5e0436c01cc15708449e480fa5f2d6a5b55ca#internaltx

[Kris-Monaco]

14k ether right now

https://etherscan.io/address/0xf9a5e0436c01cc15708449e480fa5f2d6a5b55ca#internaltx

Hi Everyone,

I'm Kris - the founder of Monaco. Just opened an account on Bitcointalk to answer all the questions you may have regarding our company and the token sale.
We'll be posting a thread shortly...

I think we have to start by acknowledge, that:
- in hindsight, we should have had done a few weeks of pre-marketing to make a good first impression on the community
- we are late with even the basic stuff - like posting ANN on bitcointalk
- but at the same time, we are very happy with the results so far with our minimum being hit in under 2 hours and that we hit 10,000ETH milestone during the first 24 hours.
- we think since we had zero pre marketing ahead of ICO launch, the results are amazing and the only reason behind it is simply our product: people love the Monaco Card & App
 
In terms of addressing the single most common question: why only 1 day notice. It's actually pretty simple. The single thing that pushed us to launch ahead of our original July schedule was a competitor running towards an ICO with a 90% same value proposition (FX+crypto). Our CFO was at an event at VISA Innovation Centre in Singapore on 11th of May, where he ran into another founder, who basically told him what they're working on and that their ICO is going to launch in June. We made a judgement call to finish working on our ICO within a week and launch, then spend the next 30 days to gradually build exposure and increase our brand awareness, so everyone has plenty of time to get to know us and do their due diligence.

Naturally, we had no idea people would think this is a scam.
- we've been working on the product for almost 1 year
- we have very experienced team of entrepreneurs (I sold my previous business for US$21m in 2013, our CFO is ex-Mastercard)
- we have serious heavy-hitters on our Advisory Board from companies like AWS, VISA, Adyen, Emarsys

I guess to a certain extent it's a function of us not understanding how does this community think and operate. We're learning fast and we're committed to being open and transparent, so that everyone can have their questions answered. I will be here and on our ANN thread answering all the questions you may have. I also encourage those who find our project intriguing to join our slack channel: https://monaco-card.slack.com/ - it's growing steadily and is probably the most convenient way to get to know us personally.

Kris

 

[mescalito]

14k ether right now

https://etherscan.io/address/0xf9a5e0436c01cc15708449e480fa5f2d6a5b55ca#internaltx

- we've been working on the product for almost 1 year

Do you have any app/ code to show?

[bassmaster]

Could not find a listing for Monaco Technology GmbH
https://www.moneyhouse.ch/de/search?q=Monaco%20Technology&status=1&tab=companies

The news article claims they are in Zug, Switzerland, so they should be listed above AFAIK.

I'd avoid until you have concrete evidence this is not a scam.

[vquest]

29 days gives a lot of time to discover whether or not it is a scam.

[Jayjay04]

What is the status of this ICO ?!

[miramare]

What is the status of this ICO ?!

Contribution status

Raised: 18227.21 ETH

Issued: 2660533.07366406 MCO

Participants: 1421

There are a lot of warning about this ICO:

From their webpage we can see the links to the team members's linkedin profiles. Only CEO Kris Marszalek even mentions Monaco on his Linkedin profile, no-one else from the team! And even on Kris Marszalek's Linkedin profile it only mentions "Monaco" at the top, nothing under experience and no link to the Moncao website. Scam!!!

[ramend]

They are going to need to do more if me and most of the community will be convinced its not a scam because even if it isn't there are still loads of red flags there.

[smike]

* There's no company by the name of "Monaco" registered in the official Swiss company register https://www.uid.admin.ch/search.aspx?lang=en
"Each enterprise active in Switzerland receives a unique enterprise identification number (UID)."

* No VISA logo on the card. This would substantially limit the acceptance of the card, wouldn't it.

* No press release from VISA, which seems pretty weird given the current hype about blockchains.

[2bfree]

14k ether right now

https://etherscan.io/address/0xf9a5e0436c01cc15708449e480fa5f2d6a5b55ca#internaltx

Hi Everyone,

I'm Kris - the founder of Monaco. Just opened an account on Bitcointalk to answer all the questions you may have regarding our company and the token sale.
We'll be posting a thread shortly...

I think we have to start by acknowledge, that:
- in hindsight, we should have had done a few weeks of pre-marketing to make a good first impression on the community
- we are late with even the basic stuff - like posting ANN on bitcointalk
- but at the same time, we are very happy with the results so far with our minimum being hit in under 2 hours and that we hit 10,000ETH milestone during the first 24 hours.
- we think since we had zero pre marketing ahead of ICO launch, the results are amazing and the only reason behind it is simply our product: people love the Monaco Card & App
 
In terms of addressing the single most common question: why only 1 day notice. It's actually pretty simple. The single thing that pushed us to launch ahead of our original July schedule was a competitor running towards an ICO with a 90% same value proposition (FX+crypto). Our CFO was at an event at VISA Innovation Centre in Singapore on 11th of May, where he ran into another founder, who basically told him what they're working on and that their ICO is going to launch in June. We made a judgement call to finish working on our ICO within a week and launch, then spend the next 30 days to gradually build exposure and increase our brand awareness, so everyone has plenty of time to get to know us and do their due diligence.

Naturally, we had no idea people would think this is a scam.
- we've been working on the product for almost 1 year
- we have very experienced team of entrepreneurs (I sold my previous business for US$21m in 2013, our CFO is ex-Mastercard)
- we have serious heavy-hitters on our Advisory Board from companies like AWS, VISA, Adyen, Emarsys

I guess to a certain extent it's a function of us not understanding how does this community think and operate. We're learning fast and we're committed to being open and transparent, so that everyone can have their questions answered. I will be here and on our ANN thread answering all the questions you may have. I also encourage those who find our project intriguing to join our slack channel: https://monaco-card.slack.com/ - it's growing steadily and is probably the most convenient way to get to know us personally.

Kris

 

Hey Kris,

thank you for your reply that is great of you! Can you do some behind the scenes video or something to show us it's not a scam. You can imagine you are up against 1000+ past scams people where ripped off here not 1 times but ....  you get the idea.

Good luck!

[JohnUser]

What is the status of this ICO ?!

Contribution status

Raised: 18227.21 ETH

Issued: 2660533.07366406 MCO

Participants: 1421

There are a lot of warning about this ICO:

From their webpage we can see the links to the team members's linkedin profiles. Only CEO Kris Marszalek even mentions Monaco on his Linkedin profile, no-one else from the team! And even on Kris Marszalek's Linkedin profile it only mentions "Monaco" at the top, nothing under experience and no link to the Moncao website. Scam!!!

Yes, there's really so many warning, I guess people that invest in this ico don't care, they won so many money with alt or btc that they try every ico, especially hype's one.

[BitWhale]

Looks like a new twist on the same ole scam to me.

I just saw this advertisement on Youtube. This shit will probably blow up like OneCoin did with how hard they are trying to market it to normies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za3fjOm3--I

[jmpFCE2]

Yeah sell Moonero , buy DASH

[Tatanka]

a "behind" video, office photo, some designs, etc, would be nice  

[cjmoles]

Ah....Been fooled by fancier looking ICO's.....

First impression: cough-cough bull shit!  <---- only because the project sounds too sweet ---> "Introducing world's best cryptocurrency card - the Monaco VISA®. Spend and send money globally at perfect interbank exchange rates, saving EUR30-40 on every EUR500 equivalent spent."

I like the idea....but won't invest....may get the card if it becomes available.

Note: An ambitious project like this would have no problem getting private investors....so....why did they pass on it?

Dunno either way....but....as exciting as it sounds, I'm leaving this one alone and I am generally a sucker for these ICO's!

No FOMO here!

[2bfree]

Ah....Been fooled by fancier looking ICO's.....

First impression: cough-cough bull shit!  <---- only because the project sounds too sweet ---> "Introducing world's best cryptocurrency card - the Monaco VISA®. Spend and send money globally at perfect interbank exchange rates, saving EUR30-40 on every EUR500 equivalent spent."

I like the idea....but won't invest....may get the card if it becomes available.

Note: An ambitious project like this would have no problem getting private investors....so....why did they pass on it?

Dunno either way....but....as exciting as it sounds, I'm leaving this one alone and I am generally a sucker for these ICO's!

No FOMO here!

I just got shafted buy one card paid for express delivery and got then they said it's no good I only used it once! They are offering to give me a new one but i'm on the road that is why i got the express DHL. So I'm looking for an honest card that doesn't have crazy fees so if this Monoco is that I'll use it, but I don't trust anyone there are so many human haters here looking to just steel my money and I'm sick of it so I'll wait to see if it's scam no scam then I'll send BTC to the card. I just hate scammers and hopefully this card is not another scam.

[ICOindex.com]

Hello everyone, we have been contacted by Virginia Lam who is part of Monaco ICO team. They were interested in listing Monaco ICO at http://icoindex.com/.

We never heard about the project before so we told them they will first need to go through our verification process before being listed at ICOindex.

Their response was negative and they offered us "$0.05 for listing".

We quickly found out why they refused to get verified after reading through this Bitcointalk thread and watching this video from Boxmining youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUBC8_orpXc&list=TLGGU2IOFOgSTPYyNTA1MjAxNw

First of all, I would like to thank all of you in this thread for taking your time to gather all suspicious information about this project. I also want to thank Boxmining for making a video about the controversy of Monaco ICO and for warning many people.

ICOindex is NOT another ICO site that lists all ICOs regardless of their quality. We want to bring added value for people that are interested in ICOs but want to avoid scam and suspicious projects. That is why we verify the projects before being listed.

ICOindex is a community-based project for ICO enthusiasts and investors who want to find reliable information about ICOs at one place. We need people like you who are able to bust scams and suspicious ICO projects before they raise money from naive people.

I would like to invite all of you to join our slack chat. (https://icoindex-official.herokuapp.com/) Subscribe to our newsletter on our website http://icoindex.com/. We also have a facebook group where you can discuss Initial Coin Offerings https://www.facebook.com/groups/InitialCoinOffering/