Invest With Caution: CoinMart.co

[Stunna]

I heard about this new marketplace and was actually rather impressed with their design and presentation and thought they had a shot to replace bitmit.

http://cryptosource.org/coinmart-co-a-cryptocurrency-marketplace-for-btc-ltc-dgc-in-development/

http://coinmart.co

After looking into this further, it appears they are gathering funding and selling shares to make their site a reality:

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php/topic,625.0.html

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=386703.0

I noticed they are taking contributions of 1 BTC for a merchant investor and 5 BTC for Long-term investor. I'm a sucker for clean, responsive design and I considered investing.  There was one thing I noticed that really bothered me though, it appears that they had blatantly ripped off much of the art/design which was the only thing that gave the site any value.

I noticed this initially as it appears they ripped off design work that a studio I've hired many times had done for another client. When I started looking up more and more of the images, some of them linked to different accounts on dribbble. Notice the lack of a single drawing/animation of bitcoin in the explainer video and the fact that their logo is superimposed at the end awkwardly, probably got the voiceover off fiverr. I wouldn't be surprised if the mockup was stolen as well and just edited a few times with bitcoin relevant users.

So essentially what we end up with is someone looking for up to $100k+ worth of coins in exchange for a bunch of stolen images and a promise to make a useful website. Obviously can't say for sure whether this is just a scam, but stealing all that design reflects pretty poorly on them and certainly makes it seem like they had only put a few hours and $5 into their current version and are looking to make out with a quick buck.

This is obviously just speculation, I can't say they are scammers but it appears like they are thieves. They could very well take those investments and make a kick-ass website, it just seems quite deceptive. This sort of behavior is often indicative of poor character/untrustworthiness.




If coinmart can provide evidence that they have permission to use these images and didn't just steal them, I will gladly lock this and consider an investment. I just wanted to post my thoughts on this before it gained more steam, I'd appreciate it if someone could link this onto the digital coin forum if you see this as I do not have an account there.




Examples of stolen work:

http://dribbble.com/pixelvu
Will add more tomorrow as I find them.


Owners response on reddit when I asked if he did the design work behind the site:

[Oztwinpeaks]

Interesting- I'm an artist/designer and I was rather certain that I'd seen the design somewhere else before too.
This really is still the wild west in terms of crypto start-ups- for every three investments I make, I almost expect one to fold.
Will be interesting to hear more opinions about CoinMart and the people behind it.

[Duff___Man]

Dribble itself is a community where designers publish their work for other designers to take inspiration from, and post rebounds of their work with their own takes on it. Some of our images which we used in our thread were modified from designs posted on Dribble. If you take a look at some of the designs which we sourced, we edited it and made our own adaptation of it which is basically what Dribble was made for.

We don't plan to make use of any of those designs which we used in our thread for commercial purposes. Those were only used to introduce Coinmart to an audience through a visual medium and won't be used in the site.

If you would like to know my credibility, I was the person who made a redesign the Digitalcoin website and gave it to baritus (the developer behing Digitalcoin) for free. You can PM him yourself and ask him the new Digitalcoin site should be up soon.

If you think we are scammers, PM me and we will invite you to take a look at the current version of Coinmart.

[Stunna]

Dribble itself is a community where designers publish their work for other designers to take inspiration from, and post rebounds of their work with their own takes on it. Some of our images which we used in our thread were modified from designs posted on Dribble. If you take a look at some of the designs which we sourced, we edited it and made our own adaptation of it which is basically what Dribble was made for.

We don't plan to make use of any of those designs which we used in our thread for commercial purposes. Those were only used to introduce Coinmart to an audience through a visual medium and won't be used in the site.

If you would like to know my credibility, I was the person who made a redesign the Digitalcoin website and gave it to baritus (the developer behing Digitalcoin) for free. You can PM him yourself and ask him the new Digitalcoin site should be up soon.

If you think we are scammers, PM me and we will invite you to take a look at the current version of Coinmart.

Dribble is a site for sharing work and showcasing it, all that work belongs to its rightful owners and if you are ripping their work off that isn't fair to them. Have you contacted the designers and asked them for permission? I personally know one of them and I don't think they'd appreciate you editing their work and claiming it as your own without their permission.

The fact that you didn't cite them or give them any credit for it even just makes me think lowly of you as professional, even if you did cite them it would still be stealing without gaining their permission. Also the edits you made could have been made by myself personally, they hardly distinguish themselves from the original content. If you consider yourself a designer at all, you can agree that what you're doing is wrong. I'm curious where you dug up the explainer video from as well.

[jimmothy]

Honestly who gives a shit if a dev/startup borrows images? I understand that legally any company wishing to profit must use only content it created or has permission to use. This site as of now is not making a profit just showing an early unfinished design. I an sure when they are making any substantial profit they will pay an artist to whip up some fresh designs.

Besides who posts images/artwork online without watermarks expecting nobody to use it?

Seriously a huge overreaction in this thread...

[Stunna]

Honestly who gives a shit if a dev/startup borrows images? I understand that legally any company wishing to profit must use only content it created or has permission to use. This site as of now is not making a profit just showing an early unfinished design. I an sure when they are making any substantial profit they will pay an artist to whip up some fresh designs.

Besides who posts images/artwork online without watermarks expecting nobody to use it?

Seriously a huge overreaction in this thread...

The thing you're missing at is the fact that this guy "duff man" claims to be a designer himself, why would he poorly rip off content or need to save for those designs when he can whip them up himself. When you are investing you are paying for his design expertise since there is no proof that any code has been done other than the "75% of the code for the site has been completed" notice in his advertisement.

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that site design he put up is completely stolen as well. I've sent him a PM to gather more details proving the design is his work and am yet to here back from him.

At the end of the day, should you trust a deceptive new user with $100k+? I don't see how this is an overreaction at all. Behavior like this is almost always linked to scamming or a get rich quick scheme. The reason why I noticed this in the first place and am upset about it is due to the fact that he ripped off work from a good friend of mine. "Invest with caution" is a reasonable warning.

[jimmothy]

Honestly who gives a shit if a dev/startup borrows images? I understand that legally any company wishing to profit must use only content it created or has permission to use. This site as of now is not making a profit just showing an early unfinished design. I an sure when they are making any substantial profit they will pay an artist to whip up some fresh designs.

Besides who posts images/artwork online without watermarks expecting nobody to use it?

Seriously a huge overreaction in this thread...

The thing you're missing at is the fact that this guy "duff man" claims to be a designer himself, why would he poorly rip off content or need to save for those designs when he can whip them up himself. When you are investing you are paying for his design expertise since there is no proof that any code has been done other than the "75% of the code for the site has been completed" notice in his advertisement.

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that site design he put up is completely stolen as well. I've sent him a PM to gather more details proving the design is his work and am yet to here back from him.

At the end of the day, should you trust a deceptive new user with $100k+? I don't see how this is an overreaction at all. Behavior like this is almost always linked to scamming or a get rich quick scheme. The reason why I noticed this in the first place and am upset about it is due to the fact that he ripped off work from a good friend of mine. "Invest with caution" is a reasonable warning.

I wouldn't trust him with anything until he proves he can operate his business. From what I understand he designed the website which is perfectly fine.

Not sure why a website like this would need $100k in investments though..

[r32godzilla]

This reminds me of CryptoAve, an altcoin exchange platform, made by altcoin "devs", that also sold shares of itself and still only has only a web page design.

No one really should invest without part of the development already on the way (and please, no screenshots).

CryptoAve is in beta at the moment and has been tested by many users including myself. It is VERY real and is due for release around Jan 31.

More information here

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php/board,7.0.html

and you can also speak to people who have beta tested it in DGC IRC @ irc.freenode.net #digitalcoin

[nahtnam]

Hey!

Hopefully I am not necro posting (restarting a really old topic), but I want to add some stuff here.

This is "his" site: http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html

which is copied from here: http://coletownsend.com/

Whats funny is that he isnt even trying to hide it.

[Stunna]

Hey!

Hopefully I am not necro posting (restarting a really old topic), but I want to add some stuff here.

This is "his" site: http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html

which is copied from here: http://coletownsend.com/

Whats funny is that he isnt even trying to hide it.

Can't view it, first link was taken down so perhaps he is trying to hide it.

[nahtnam]

Hey!

Hopefully I am not necro posting (restarting a really old topic), but I want to add some stuff here.

This is "his" site: http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html

which is copied from here: http://coletownsend.com/

Whats funny is that he isnt even trying to hide it.

Can't view it, first link was taken down so perhaps he is trying to hide it.

It was a 100% copy. Try looking at a google cache.

[Stunna]

Hey!

Hopefully I am not necro posting (restarting a really old topic), but I want to add some stuff here.

This is "his" site: http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html

which is copied from here: http://coletownsend.com/

Whats funny is that he isnt even trying to hide it.

Can't view it, first link was taken down so perhaps he is trying to hide it.

It was a 100% copy. Try looking at a google cache.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html   For those interested, and yeah definitely is ripped off. It's pretty pathetic how this guy has ripped off virtually every single thing he's done in his short design career.

[nahtnam]

Hey!

Hopefully I am not necro posting (restarting a really old topic), but I want to add some stuff here.

This is "his" site: http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html

which is copied from here: http://coletownsend.com/

Whats funny is that he isnt even trying to hide it.

Can't view it, first link was taken down so perhaps he is trying to hide it.

It was a 100% copy. Try looking at a google cache.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://duffman.cloudvent.net/en/index.html   For those interested, and yeah definitely is ripped off. It's pretty pathetic how this guy has ripped off virtually every single thing he's done in his short design career.

I had a nice chat with the original owner of the site. I asked if I could use one of his images on my site and he said no because he spent a very long time on it. I'm sure as hell duff man didnt get permission for it.

[samson]

This reminds me of CryptoAve, an altcoin exchange platform, made by altcoin "devs", that also sold shares of itself and still only has only a web page design.

No one really should invest without part of the development already on the way (and please, no screenshots).

Be sure to check out CryptoAve when it launches !

[samson]

I thought it was in "open beta". Can't I try it myself yet?

also i managed myself to get a negative balance of 2k dgc after selling just 1.6k dgc, i don't know if this is already a known issue or not. i send you details via email.

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php?topic=746.msg4808#msg4808

okay.

They decided to locate and fix as many bugs as possible before launching it.

[nahtnam]

I thought it was in "open beta". Can't I try it myself yet?

also i managed myself to get a negative balance of 2k dgc after selling just 1.6k dgc, i don't know if this is already a known issue or not. i send you details via email.

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php?topic=746.msg4808#msg4808

okay.

They decided to locate and fix as many bugs as possible before launching it.

Even if this works, it will likely get into many issues as they are copying code from others without their consent.

[samson]

I thought it was in "open beta". Can't I try it myself yet?

also i managed myself to get a negative balance of 2k dgc after selling just 1.6k dgc, i don't know if this is already a known issue or not. i send you details via email.

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php?topic=746.msg4808#msg4808

okay.

They decided to locate and fix as many bugs as possible before launching it.

Even if this works, it will likely get into many issues as they are copying code from others without their consent.

What makes you think CoinMart are copying code ?

[nahtnam]

I thought it was in "open beta". Can't I try it myself yet?

also i managed myself to get a negative balance of 2k dgc after selling just 1.6k dgc, i don't know if this is already a known issue or not. i send you details via email.

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php?topic=746.msg4808#msg4808

okay.

They decided to locate and fix as many bugs as possible before launching it.

Even if this works, it will likely get into many issues as they are copying code from others without their consent.

What makes you think CoinMart are copying code ?

Did you not read the OP and the first page?

[cryptmebro]

I thought it was in "open beta". Can't I try it myself yet?

also i managed myself to get a negative balance of 2k dgc after selling just 1.6k dgc, i don't know if this is already a known issue or not. i send you details via email.

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php?topic=746.msg4808#msg4808

okay.

They decided to locate and fix as many bugs as possible before launching it.

Even if this works, it will likely get into many issues as they are copying code from others without their consent.

proof?

[cryptmebro]

I thought it was in "open beta". Can't I try it myself yet?

also i managed myself to get a negative balance of 2k dgc after selling just 1.6k dgc, i don't know if this is already a known issue or not. i send you details via email.

http://digitalcoin.co/forums/index.php?topic=746.msg4808#msg4808

okay.

They decided to locate and fix as many bugs as possible before launching it.

Well, duh. You don't open something with that kind of bugs to the public, especially because there is actual money at play.
But here's the thing: this kind of bug being only detected by testers shows there is strong inexperience from the developer(s), and no proper design of the trading engine should even allow it to happen. This is a disaster in the making.

Haters gonna hate.