ICO, The story from beginning to end.

[MbyzIco]

We have been talking a lot in different levels and sections of the forum, about the ICO, from how to evaluate them, to lists of scams, but this time I want to tell you the story of how one is made from the beginning until the 90 days of the ICO. for some it will be interesting, which will allow them to evaluate an ICO from the inside and they will understand why sometimes it is so easy to mount a scam and how difficult it is to try to do it sometimes in good faith.

Like all history, at first it's boring, so patience, that the thing is going to get good ...

It all starts in Tampa, Florida (USA) out there in 2015/2016, after reading a lot, not only here in the forum, but in the Altcointalk, just talking to many knowledgeable friends of the subject in Miami, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela, Spain, Australia, Portugal and Italy (these are the advantages of the migrations). Definitely we had identified an unattended niche market and even more without a specific solution, nothing is to be invented at this point, they are only improvements on the existing and / or integration of parts, except for a few exceptions, but in any case there was a real possibility of business.

At that time the decisions began, where the company would be founded? what would the product be called? we could launch it in how much time, what was the best technological application for it?

All these questions began to fall by their own weight, it happens that the legislation is very abstract to say the least in many countries, so we had to start by evaluating, which would be the most friendly country, not only for business, but for establish the company that would be the owner of the whole. the result was that the United Kingdom fulfilled all the characteristics I was looking for, so without further delay, I rushed to find some lawyers to help me with the issue, it happens that I got them in Spain, obviously it was easier to go to London, but part of the test of fire, was to be able to handle everything without this present directly there, so I had to prove that I could do it remotely and everything turned out very well, really that everything happened in the terms and form that they had stipulated, with one caveat, There can’t be a company without partners, that is, I could not open a company on my own, so I had to find a partner, which I had not planned.

At this point, I had already invested, not only time, but had bought more than a couple of transatlantic tickets, with investment of stay, food and lobby. For those who do not know what the Lobby is in this business, well, imagine the system of merits of the forum, but where to win they had to make appointments with real people in a bar or restaurant and say what they want to hear so they tell you the track for the next stage of the business riddle, that's always paying your bar bill.

At this point, I needed a partner, and as you could imagine, the 2017 boom had not happened, so half of the people did not believe in this and the other half had no idea. After spending a lot of money on the phone, I decided to look for the agenda of my friends from school, where I studied internship, those are lifelong friends, until I found a very good lawyer friend, who shared with me a bit over there in 2003 when we would have commercial channels for SMS marketing in Latin America, I remember that the last time I had seen him in Buenos Aires in a meat restaurant in Puerto Madero, without further ado I called him and told him what he was doing, after a long silence He told me, Bro, Quiet, I help you, now I am in Venezuela, when you come we talk.

I got on a plane to the new continent, I arrived in Florida, I spent a few days with my wife and daughter and I told them, I went to Venezuela to a meeting, I do not know how long it took me, at this point I was already calculating if it was true that I could start all this with my savings, I went by car to Miami and took flight to Caracas, time that was not going there, there were scares of all kinds, what would you find ?, would it be worth this trip? I had already spent thousands of my savings, there was still to invest in the creation of the company and still had no clear perspective on how to start this, there are no books, courses or anything like how to undertake in the world of cryptocurrencies.

The flight was on time, in general, everything was quiet, I say calm for the trip, not with me, that I kept with the mixed feelings. We landed on time, but there, without knowing it yet, would begin the difficult ...

To be continue...

[MbyzIco]

The arrival in Caracas was anything but calm, I do not want to expand at this point, but when a giant poster with the face of Chávez receives you, nothing good is expected. And I was not wrong, the airport seemed like a desert, nothing in stores, people with a suspicious face and at least waiting to see how you got some money, but well, that is for other publications if someday I cheer up.
In short, I came home to rest for a while, because the next day I would see my friend, there was no time for anything else.

The next day, like everything else in Venezuela, not too early or too late, we saw each other for coffee around 10:00 AM, and by 11:00 AM I had told her my plan in broad strokes and what I needed of him, that beyond that only be associated with me, it happened because he gave me a second opinion on the legal aspects, for some reason, although I still need a year to graduate as a second career lawyer, and although I stopped studying law a long time ago , I have spent a lot of time writing and reviewing commercial contracts, but if I have learned something, the second opinion in these aspects can sometimes be very important. Long story short, my friend thought for a while and said: "You know that I'm going to help you in whatever you want, but as you know, I do not understand this much and I really do not know if I can understand it, but if I What you need is a partner in the roles of your trust, in that if I can help you, but do not think I'm going to put a penny, because I'm in other things and I'm still not clear about what you're talking about. " We laughed and enjoyed the coffee, what we agreed was that, he would be my partner in the company, but above all, he would be the guardian and custodian of that portion of the company, where everyone would be involved, because he knew that in the road was going to have to pawn part of the company many times and he had to take care of that part. So we stayed and three days later I would hand over the documentation to send it to Spain and receive back the documents to sign.
Deep down I felt that I had just sold the soul to the devil, I do not know if by the circumstances, but I did not have very good experience with partners, that little wise of what would happen next, in the ICO there is a different moral, a model of business very, very far from reality, this issue of the actions of the company, were just to start.

I already had a partner, what I had not defined was even the name of the coin to create, so I started to investigate the first coins of the story, it was there when the day before sending the documents to the lawyers, I was crossed a coin of the Hellenic Empire, which had inscribed a letter, I called my attention and took the 4 letters as a base and I assumed them as a name. The project already had a name, unpronounceable, but it had already taken a step.

So far all very manageable, expensive, but manageable, nothing that was not different to what years in the commercial part of technology and tourism companies have not left me as an experience. It was time to enter into the development part, while I would continue working on the definition of the commercial part and evaluating relationships that would allow me to advance in the project. I had to choose where and with whom to develop the project technically. Up to this point I did not know yet, that this choice was crucial, since the ICOs are evaluated by the technical people involved in the project, it is understood that those who evaluate it are usually people from the technical area. Without knowing it, I did not have much problem in this, having been project leader and commercial manager of companies allied with Microsoft and Oracle, I had had very well prepared work teams, some instructors of these companies at the moment, so I started by calling a Friend in Bogotá, to guide me about what profile I was looking for, he asked me a few days to understand what this person should do specifically. Five days later I had an abstract profile, without name or face of the person I was looking for as a project leader, I had to roll the ball between the technicians to see who appeared, I wrote to everyone I could about the search I was doing.
Take advantage of my stay in Caracas, to see me with a great friend, with whom we made projects in Asterisk over there in 2005. Coffee and anecdotes again, but this time, when I talked about why I was in Caracas, I realized that I did not have what to look for, I spoke with one of the best systems engineers I knew, graduated summa cumlaude, and with an arsenal of projects I knew I had done and even patents to his name I had, when I realized I was not late in inviting him to the project. But the answer at least was strange.

To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

Many years ago I read the Trojan Horse of J.J. Benitez, and be in love with the way of handling the expectation of the reader, apart from him, I love also as does Dan Brown, with a management of the anguish of the protagonists so well worked. What's this all about? What happens next seems to be taken from a classic crime or crime novel, but I can assure you that it is totally attached to the reasoning of the moment.

When I proposed to my friend to join the project, his answer surprised me, in a few words he told me, that he would program and define the technical requirements that were needed, but again, that he did not put a penny in the project, it's funny, he would call me months later to invest in Bitcoin, but that is part of another story. The amazing thing about this is that he tells me, but there are things about development that we should clarify, and here is not the place, he told me that I had to visit his mother in Cali, Colombia, if I was not excited to go to Colombia, he knew that I felt Colombia as my home, I had lived there for 5 years, even one of my daughters was born in Bogotá. My answer did not delay, I felt that he spoke to me between the lines and that was not his style, he accepted cheerfully, but I told him that we were seeing each other in Bogota, as it would help me to start exploring the commercial plan, I knew many people prepared in this area there. I must confess that my second intention was to get him out of his comfort zone.

They spent the days quietly, as long as you can be quiet in Caracas and the days I was landing in Bogota, it would be a short trip, I had to go to Mexico City at the end of the week, Bogotá as always, a charm of contrasts, a enviable climate and stop to count the endless reasons why I love it, the truth is that my first stop would be direct in the offices of my friends, there waited for both the Colombians, and the Argentine and Peruvian friends, which we agree coincidentally, there was the best of the guerrilla trade in Latin America, none with giant support companies, despite the fact that we had all gone through being commercial managers or channels of companies like IBM, Coca Cola, BellSouth, Schindler, etc. not counting the media that some of these characters had directed, after catching up, and already entered the end of the afternoon, it was my turn to say what I would put on the table, I'm talking about the people who sell refrigerators to Eskimos, so for me it was a test of fire, I reassure them watching them paying attention, when they started the questions, those that make you to understand more, and not the ones I hear many times in some forums, where the idea is to see if You know or show that they know a new word. I had passed the test of fire and there came the question, Well, very good your story, in particular I like it, said the oldest of the group, seconded by each and every one with gestures or directly and in that moment he ask me, what is there to do? Who has to kill? And when do we start? I felt a big weight that fell from my shoulders, the people I respected in the area of technology commerce, not only had understood, they were excited to sell the product and even more, I had to stop them so they would not start making calls and appointments.
We finished the business meeting, giving them the status of how the project was going, each one offered parallel solutions to accelerate things, I stopped them saying, "Do not worry, I resolve, when I have gone wrong?" And here I had pledged my word for the first time. I retired not before coordinating the meeting with my friend who would come from Cali the next day, as usual we would see each other for breakfast majestically.

As usual, an extended breakfast is the best way and time to do business, he spoke very directly at the end of our introductory talk, he already had a technical project manager, but I understood the reason why we talked on that site and not in Caracas, the situation in Caracas requires a lot of caution, he told me, even though you know more than me that for the mining issue it can be an excellent location and that there are very good engineers, the regulations and the economic and political situation, will put us in the eye of the hurricane sooner than we think, have imprisoned many for just mining, which I knew, imagine if we set out to develop solutions and propose that people use cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, remember that I'm not the one who's going to face it, will you be, are you ready for that? The question for a moment disquieted me, so direct, but my answer was blunt, you know that I know very well the risk I'm running, my wife and daughters are out of Venezuela and so they will stay, if there is any risk I will assume Me, not my family or you. Once this was clarified, we agreed on the process of cooperation and participation, he recommended me to some designers which we contacted and would see on my return to Venezuela, although they were not Venezuelans they were doing a project there and he preferred to work with them throughout the integration process and I believed him because of his experience in this regard.

It was enough of Colombia, for now, I had to go to Mexico City, there was a missing part to validate, finances, they are an independent micro world, and the reference of this in Mexico is very good, so a friend that I have there, He runs a brokerage house and for reasons of fate he knew they were mutating to an Exchange of crypto assets. It was a short flight, not in time, the accumulation of ideas in my head made me sleep on the flight, I do not like that because one gets something lost to the destination.

For years I was Country Manager of “Mexicana de Aviación”, so I knew the airport of Mexico City very well, I felt comfortable there, but I had to move fast, if my visit to Colombia had been quick, in Mexico it would not be much more than that. I arrived at the Hotel Geneve in the “Zona Rosa”, I always arrived there, I do not remember why, but in any case, I was willing to rest the rest of the day.

To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

I love Mexico's businesses, they have that magical part of Latinos, but they have the pragmatism of first world countries, and as such, direct and frank was my meeting in that majestic meeting room of a brokerage house in Mexico, everything happened quickly, my friend and a couple of partners released all the artillery they had in less than 10 minutes, they asked me and they asked me, even in a thesis defense in the university I felt so depressed, but something must have gone well , they were comfortable with what we talked about, they looked at their faces and they said it openly, they knew where the market was moving and they knew that they had in their particular case, that moving faster than the big financial companies, they should Take advantage of the fact that it is more difficult to move a 50-story tower than an office with a few floors. In short I received the blessing and they invited me to lunch, which in Mexico is quite a show, but we are not in a gastronomic guide and as usual there was no more business talk. I was ready to go to Caracas.

I had already validated the most relevant thing that was for me at that time, the commercial, technical and financial, should continue reading how much information I got on the networks to keep me alert of any new developments in the field of cryptocurrencies, a great help was at that time the BITCOINTALK forum, I still did not decide to register, I did not feel ready or moderately ready to face criticism, and I was sorry to ask stupid questions, I never liked and I had noticed that the forum was at least intolerant to certain types of questions and questions. So I decided to continue as an observer and reader, this situation would not change at least in the next year, it would be my bedside book, but secretly.
When I arrived in Caracas, I finally had to sit down and calculate not only what had been spent so far, but what I had lost from the company along the way and, above all, calculate how to proceed and how much that would cost. Logically, I still had to negotiate the price with the designers and needed a plant economist, as well as a technician for network administrator, post and services, without forgetting that we were in the XXI century, needed someone to manage social networks . On the same table I had what would be the draft initial chart and a statement of my bank, I had to reconcile those accounts, keeping in mind that I had to keep my family safe from any risk, and the news about cryptocurrencies in Venezuela had started to run.

They had already left at least a couple of coins with the accent that they were completely Venezuelan, I do not know why the effort to categorize things, it sounds more than wanting to penetrate a segment, they want to deceive only some of them, I started to shyly approach these projects, always in the shadows, what a disappointment, they were all a scam, they were the most popular model in Venezuela, to seek to do money laundering for great people who have benefited from the oil country. For those who do not know, in Venezuela speaking of a 5% profit is not viable, people want to earn at least 30% and all that in 30 days or less. What makes that to meet these requirements everything sounds like a scam, pyramid or at least cheating. At that time entering any of the new exchanges was relatively easier, so these currencies were even being placed in said Exchanges, unfortunately with the only idea, to convert local currency into foreign currency. They did not have, nor do they have to date, this utility and the creators do not have and can not sell clear for what they were created. They are something like the theory of, because the cat licks itself? Because he can.

Obviously after this analysis, I realized that I would not find a local partner with my same intentions, I was not proposing a high profit business in a short time, I was proposing a long-standing company, I definitely could not be born as a business or company Private capital, we had to resort to an ICO, it was the first time I thought about it, although without much enthusiasm. This logic put at risk all my capital, a strong bet, but I still did not know how much the members of the missing group would charge me, so to be able to estimate the whole, as they say in the town of my popes, the evil happened to hurry .

Quick and without any delay, I met with the designers who had recommended me, I told them that the project was going and what I was trying to achieve, I still remember their faces, they did not understand half, and the other half I think they still think about it. , I summarized it in a corporate image and something creative that I had in my head, after explanations and clarifications of rigor, we went directly to the verb, How much do you want? And why so much? The answer was clear, cash, constant and sound, typical of Venezuela, after a talk, get down the costs a little, in exchange for effective participation in the project once it manages to capitalize something. They accepted although I still think they do not know what exactly they accepted. The meeting with the economist was not very different, with the exception that she understood a little more about the topic because of the similarity to the topic of international finance. The result was also an amount in cash and a stake in the company, so I only had to specify with the common friend of the technical director and me, to direct at least the communications, since I knew that I would have to be actively involved in all this. , I cite it with the social network administrator I had chosen, which would start immediately, that negotiation was direct for an amount without participation in the company, otherwise with the director of internal communications, who would work for the pure participation in the company And so, we started the adventure.

So far the result, was that I had lost at least 3 parts of the company, spent a few thousand dollars, was far from my family and even the trip had not started, but we had to get down to work immediately.

Cite everyone involved to a first meeting, where I would show them the work plan I was working on, and thus be able to open channels of communication among all, my partner, who was not the object of any of this yet, wanted him present as a witness everything, a little so that he was aware, and also as a lawyer, if something happened, he was aware. The simplest part had begun, I explained my vision of the business to the designers so that they could give a first approach to a corporate image and I sat down with the Engineer to explain that he wanted me to make the coin and evaluate the possible Blockchain. Both things happened relatively fast, the commitment was to see first advances in a week or less. Thing that obviously did not happen, we took a lot more and this was added, that was coming year end, and in 2017 was just around the corner.

I decided to make a meeting more progress, assign tasks and start a period of rest for new year, to resume activities in January, it was a break of more than a month, but I needed that moment of reflection with my family, I was beginning to see that was coming, what was to invest was not little, much less for a single pocket, had been reviewing international legislation and it happens that half of what was coming in the Bitcoin Forum was illegal, could not do or did not understand because they did it, if mathematically or financially they put the value of the project at risk. Additionally, the evaluations and comments in the ICOs were the most biased I had seen, all were evaluated in terms of achievements and technical advances, the most radical ones evaluated them based on their speculative benefit, I felt a coldness in my body that ran through me. the head to my wallet, it was clear from the beginning that the offer in our case was not based on anything of the above, is to facilitate the use and its overcrowding, coupled with that for some romantic reason I added the education as an additional. I still remember that feeling of fear in presenting a proposal to a group of people perhaps better prepared than me, obviously I could not go back to university at this point, I had my current degrees, where titles specializations and masters seemed not to have much weight, The only thing that really counted was my experience and what I had saved so far, there was no specific legislation or literature, but I was not going to give up, I thought there was something good there and the fear was an unequivocal symptom that something good was about to happen , the only problem is that times sometimes give us better lessons.


To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

Once the semi-forced holidays at the end of the year were over, I had to resume and accelerate the whole, we were already in 2017 and although you and I know that there was a big boom for that year, I'm not the mentalist, I did not know what would happen, I only heard the noise in the media that something was happening, there was more presence in international circles and in conclusion, I felt again that I was on the right path.

I started with the group of designers, they already had an image proposal, I was eager to see it, so I arranged the time and sat down with them in a cafe to see what they had. What a disappointment, I had not managed to explain what I had in mind, I think that has been my problem many times. I know very well from experience, that all clients think of themselves as designers, but it was important to me that if we wanted to mass produce, we could not carry a very sophisticated image that would intimidate smaller users into capital, let alone a very technique that ran to the few experts in the field, this was not aimed at existing users, my idea was based on capturing new users and building loyalty. Therefore that meeting was extended, it was extended until I could explain my vision, it was almost a work table, because I did not let them move until they were telling me what they understood of my explanation. In the end, at least it seemed that we were on the same page, unfortunately this would delay the whole. I would take the time to see more projects, and draw conclusions from what I wanted to show, the best and worst of the market offer, to create a model that I liked.

At this point three intense months of trial and error came, in terms of what I wanted the page to do, and the corporate design of the company, once this period had elapsed, we finally had a final design and page functionality, now we had to integrate both, without forgetting that I had to buy the domains and the accommodation for all this, I supported the technical head and my credit card. The cash register was still ringing but in the wrong direction.

It was already calmer, although we had eaten a third of the year and we did not have anything concrete, in addition to what was spent, but finally we were working on the proposal. Parallel to all this, I continued in my research, there I realized that I had to do an ANN in the forum if I wanted to be allowed at least to be evaluated in the exchanges, that I needed a GitHub account where the code would rest. I did, but the most frightening thing was that I had to have all the team visible in linkedin, something that would seem routine, except that the team I worked with was very, very Venezuelan, so that Linkedin does not It was a lot, many of them, despite how much they could contribute, they did not even have much in there, much less had loaded data of them and their experience obviously. I felt that I had to start by preparing this whole subject, because if once everything was on the air that detail was missing, everything would be left waiting.

So the following months went by, relying on friendships in the Human Resources area, it was necessary to polish and create the profiles of everyone on Linkedin, in parallel to create the currency and finally open the social network accounts that would be available.

Again, there were unmanageable delays, the leader of the social networking area approached me one day, shortly before a trip I had, to tell me that she could no longer work with me, even though she was one of the few who had salary, she told me that she had gotten an opportunity to finally go to Italy and did not want to be wrong with me, that she was waiting for my return, but that she would definitely leave, I know the situation well in Venezuela, so at the end of her presentation, I did not have another to congratulate her and wish her the best, I did not want to risk a remote job, I had seen the inconveniences working nearby, I did not even want to imagine an operation control with a change of schedule. But in the end, I had the first big lesson, every thief, and judge by your condition. In social networks despite the endless number of existing courses, your best tool is experience and although you may not believe it, in each country social networks are handled differently, the ones that are most used may be one or the other and more than simply publishing, if we are not behind the results of each publication, but more importantly, if we do not define the expectation of each publication we will not be able to make the corrections. Conclusion, do not generalize, what happens in your environment, does not necessarily happen around the world.

Already entered in the middle of the year, when taking accounts, I had nothing concrete yet, only many definitions and needs to be written in a notebook, and a list of expenses in the same book, it was going to be almost a year since I started this topic, and I still did not feel that I was at the end, what was certain at this point is that I would do an ICO and that I needed to capitalize, and my accounts were not the same as before.

The last quarter of the year was approaching, we already had a draft of the page, and a list of pending to be created in social networks, but did not have anyone who worked in this part, and the economist had begun to work on valuing the potential of the project as global figures, I needed to know the theoretical valuation, to estimate if this would be worth it. The results of the valuation were more than hopeful, but you should always bear in mind that paper holds everything, so there was no reason to party yet, there were reasons to work harder. I was going to interview someone to be the administrator of social networks, the meeting very well, but as always, they had no idea of the business, and they still believed as some believe, that the idea was to gain followers to make "trends", In this business, 10 followers are very interested and with knowledge or desire to learn that a million followers who neither understand nor are interested in what you do.

Three quarters of 2017 had passed and the balance to date was, defined web page and mail, acquired domains, contracted economist, contracted designers, ready social network administrator, ready social networks and began to work on the content, even We did not have the company open, I preferred to put up with the payment a bit until we were sure of what we were doing and it would give us a more tangible date. I had already consumed without realizing more than Forty Thousand Dollars and I had not invested in anything important yet, I knew that a whole marketing issue was ahead, so we started working on the flow charts and work plans to be able to have a tentative date of departure.
All very well, except that no one could imagine what would happen at the end of 2017 and there we went without knowing it.

To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

No matter how hard we try to prepare ourselves and take the time to advance in the objectives, there was something that just now at the end of 2017 began to clarify, the WhitePaper, that tool so named and little appreciated, apparently as each of the more respectable projects that I had seen, each one gave less value to that tool, there are those who do not read it, they see it as a requirement to fulfill only, afterwards I found out why, it happens that many pages where you can get information about ICOs is based in what appears in these documents, although many of them are at least poorly written, because there are some who do not even express the real intention of the venture, it is strange, I found many that seemed to be a copy and paste of another document, recurring words and apparently all based or argued their existence with words like "the first ..." "the only ..." things that for me, that I have been in the area of marketing, they only sound like commercial tricks to hunt unsuspecting, in fact they are the preferred phrases of the pyramidal systems.

The document had already taken shape, we had a route and a defined objective, now it would be valid to validate it with ordinary people involved with financial markets and Retail in general. The contacts generated a series of comments, recommendations and corrections, especially, because like these lines, everything is expressed in terms of personal experience and that is usually very regional, I had to write and correct everything to be neutral , so that another basic requirement happened, the document had to be translated into English since the native language was not valid, we had to convert to the more generalized language. That is the dilemma, I needed a translation of the document made by professionals, that sounds easy, any translation service could be used, one would think, but it happens that it is not, what is rarely taken into account is that if the translators do not have idea about cryptos, only make a translation and not an interpretation of the idea to express, so we should not only discard the Google Translator but we should choose the translation service that managed to interpret the very essence of the project. As usual nothing is impossible, just that it costs a little more, and in that sense the translation process cost more than estimated, and my book of expense annotation already had more in the part of expenses than in the objectives achieved.

In any case, it was approaching the end of the year and we already had what we needed, I already had a document, a work plan and many validations, we were in the process of testing many open source or generic use services for handling the solution, I do not know because all those who make an approach in this area believe that the focus is on making a new portfolio a new data manager, etc. Not everything is there, perhaps everything is to make better use of existing, not all WEB solutions require a new browser, the browser is already there, just use it more effectively and take advantage of the improvements that those dedicated to that specific business do, that is what happens with the portfolios of cryptos, for each project one is created, and if that effort was used to improve existing ones, success would be assured.

To my surprise in the process of validating the project, talking to a group that makes corporate image for many transnational companies, I was recommended to speak with a character who was very involved with cryptocurrencies, this character was an active part of forums and events where he represented the "Consensus" of many cryptocurrencies, I thought it was excellent, as well as knocking on the door of a great businessman, the problem was that he was advising at this time a government of an island in the Caribbean for the issuance of a currency that would be backed by an emission of public debt and encourage their use, developing new sustainable technology for the generation of electricity for mining cryptocurrencies, beyond the traditional solar and wind sources. My budget, although I do not believe it, was very badly beaten as to invest in a trip with stopovers in the Caribbean to interview with this character, although there would be no economic benefit, obviously if there would be at least one important learning. Which is why I discarded this visit and concentrated on finding out a little about what was going on around me.

The biggest surprise did not come from the fact that there were at least five medium-large projects in Venezuela, the most impressive was to see that they had been done at best, under the theory: Why do cats lick their crotches? Simply because they can. So basic were all the projects, they had been done because they could do them, there was no short-term goal or specific reason they wanted to expand. At the end of the day, to my regret, they were all scam projects, their goal was to raise money and their offer was that people would make money with it that they could turn into profits and capitalize it in FIAT currency immediately, big money launderers. Immediately obviously obviate any possibility of association, feel related to these people or characters was not beneficial to me, or for the project. I started to turn inadvertently into a phase that we all spent in some way involved in cryptocurrencies and I assumed my role as a preacher, trying to contribute what I could most in all the communities with which I was interacting, one of the conditions that affected me. self-imposed was, that I would never charge to teach anyone, while that person had the attitude to learn, discuss and at least leave me some of his business knowledge and so I have done so far.

Many of the people I met on the way, are convinced to have found the holy grail of wealth, nothing could be further from the truth, I have met people who once approached me to understand the business, or to know how to mine, which now give classes and classes on cryptocurrencies, although I always repeat that in terms of the value of cryptocurrencies, every hour there are 180 possible movements, and that no one unless it is a real humpback whale within the economic world of that currency, you'll never know what can happen.
This was a stage of disappointment, I saw how they cheated with the coins, sold with over-priced mining equipment, with a 200% profit at least and apparently buyers rather than investors were unwary paying for something that would never recover its initial value. I saw others charging for opening a free wallet to third parties, I saw how "experts" taught trading, when they did not have a portfolio of more than $ 300 invested, but they charged up to $ 500 to teach. I'm not saying that this does not happen, of course it happens and even worse, although this seems to be one of the most classic things in the stock market, where an employee who arrives in the subway, teaches financiers who arrive by helicopter, as invest your money, I'm still surprised that someone wants a witch to tell them what number of the lottery to play, and they pay for it. I will not go into explaining what is the Law of Large Numbers or Bernoulli's theorem. Just clarify that the general rule of the speculative markets for my concept are based more on the fallacy of the player than anything else.
If all of the above moderately could cause depression and anguish in those involved in the world of cryptocurrencies, for more, came the end of 2017, the Boom of cryptocurrencies, an endless number of uncontrollable circumstances that passed, since the end of the year in China, the sale of futures and the formal entry of Bitcoin into the world market, only paraphrasing some without order. If there were vultures and scavengers in the market that multiplied by 10 or 100 but in any case I was still in the middle of the tide of people trying to enter the market standing in the middle with my "whitepaper" in my hand, and my Limited budget to continue and a large investment made. The time had come to accelerate the pace and press a result.


To be continue…

[AccidentalTuber]

Very intrigued to know what happens next. I want to know more for my own ico that I am working on at the moment.

[BusyShows]

Working with a ICO can be very hard and stressfull and a long journey. Interested in knowing what happens with your story, keep posting.

[MbyzIco]

What we all know had started, the big rise of 2017, everything began to change very fast, so fast that it was difficult to understand. Wolves dressed in sheepskins everywhere, prices not only aroused the existence of a market to the world, but also aroused many exploiters, the famous swallow’s capitals made their appearance. Unfortunately, this would distract attention from the relevant and shift the focus to profitability, not that one thing is exclusive of the other, but the quality filter was distorted. Scams, exploiters and other figures typical of market explosions came into play.

At that time for ICO purposes, we were going slowly, but without pause and had to print speed, my first decision, was to seize the moment and sell ten ASIC mining machines, although I do not consider myself a scholar in the matter, the price difference between the possible purchase and sale of those machines, they allowed me to oxygenate the ICO and not wait for the performance in the medium term, I was convinced that the price rise, it did not make sense to be sustainable over time. In any case, it would give me slack in the short-term cash flow and if the plan was to accelerate it would be what it would take.

The 3 months of madness began, we already had a date, by January 2018 it had to have a clear road map, and for February it should start the 90 days of the first stage of the ICO.
The horizon was so cloudy at this time that things that I did not expect began to happen, this time it was my partner, who with a question made me understand what the market was seeing, I wonder: now how much is the company worth? At that time although I should have laughed, I preferred to explain what was happening, I saw everything as a circumstantial situation, but I realized that I really saw that society felt like him, even though I had no idea what I was doing. They did not take long to get the technical link asking something similar, I wanted to understand how much the estimated total benefit we expected.

Given the avalanche of questions from people who at any time ask, I preferred to do 2 things, prepare a generic email to explain what was happening to me understand in the market for all who had consulted and on the other hand make a meeting with all those directly involved. The meeting was taking place at a very troubled time for Venezuela, the government had started talking about cryptocurrencies, the biggest surprise was impossible, the same government that wanted to capture the people who were mining and persecuting cryptocurrency holders, now said that they wanted to enter in the game, it really disconcerted many people, but more than that to the moderately serious community of the country, "advisors" appeared from nowhere to tell the government how to do things. But I'll dig into that. The meeting ended on good terms, we had to accelerate and change some conditions, leaving only a couple of members as allies and the rest to pay them for their work without any benefit.

The end of the year arrived and I had barely had time to find out who the advisors of Venezuela were for issuing, I was busy buying domains, creating email accounts and defining the specific commercial route for the ICO.

In the serious market, Forks happened, became famous for the theft of coins from a wallet, began the approaches between the bank and the cryptocurrencies, meanwhile in Venezuela would happen what we will call the first failure of the Petro, that statistic currency with supposed backup, was launched on the ethereum network and immediately realize that said blockchain is not governable, so it quickly goes out of use, although now it is known that the advisors did charge full.

As for the ICO, I had already bought domains, created mail users and very subtly opened social networks, none of the above had a clear content, did not yet have the corporate image on the part of the designers and the technical area not yet I had delivered a reliable token in my Wallet. The market was still convulsed, Wall Street had already reached Bitcoin or vice versa. In any case now the whales sent, and had acquired some 200 million futures. I will not expand on technicalities, but for ICO purposes what happens in the market is the most important, is the vision that ordinary people have of what is happening and although whales mark the price is the generalized impression the one that marks the investment.

I was waiting for the final delivery of the tokens and the design to start, but without saying anything yet, I knew that the launch date would not be fulfilled, so I postponed the creation of the company, also because I wanted to know what it would really own, I thought I should buy a domain, and it happened, that I needed extensions .com .io .store .us .org .info and stop counting, any gap that I left open would be easy target of a scam with my name in between, and if something I have had in my life is my word and my face, and I do not break the first so that I do not break the second, thank goodness that all this was well learned, is the fundamental basis of this business "Prestige" so there is to take care of who you associate with and with whom you relate.

In Venezuela specifically, the usual swindlers appeared, offering riches for pennies, where in the end only the cents are lost and the riches is not seen, the case in other regions of Latin America did not differ much, but luckily, the scammers with capital for making large movements had not yet migrated to this technology, they were in the process of learning and those who for some reason knew me approached me daily to give them a half-hour induction, fast and accurate, to go out and sell at least machines of mined. Today a couple of these careerists are selling induction courses to cryptocurrencies where in the end, you not only pay for the course but also convince you to buy something or a specialized course.
I arrived at the end of the year, I had to review some places to validate what I had in my hand, I started in the United States, where I could soak up what was really happening in the market, since the information that reaches Latin America is very vitiated of particular needs, as well as what happens in other places is alien to these vices and seeks to solve particular problems, the idea was to involve all those requirements of one another. It would return via Mexico, Colombia and Peru to Venezuela, so that it could begin the year 2018 with a more globalized vision of the subject.

Venezuela welcomed me with the first known failure of the Petro, disguised by the hiring of new advisors (collectors) from Russia, advice the government in its launch, long story short, the company hired by the government did not exist in the crypto community, They came from the food area and there the new failure would be sealed, failure number 2. At the same time I had to attend the farewell of a friend who was going to live in Mexico, he did not clarify much that he was leaving, but we had already talked, he would go to Mexico as a collaborator of an Exchange in Mexico, to date he has been a very good informant of what is happening in those companies.

The good thing is that I had just received and approved the original design of the web page and the corporate image and was days away from receiving the tokens definitely on my wallet. The complicated thing that had appeared is that now it happens that there was no strategy, platform or just a healthy application to sell the token in pre-sale, it had to be developed, because what was in the market and to date is what is, they are not friendly, it is a relationship where only the company that offers the solution will win, because some even keep the database. The first serious inconvenience had arisen.


To be continue…

[tterrorpipa]

It is very interesting, I thank you for posting this topic. I really need to continue reading on this part because it gives me good keypoints since I myself also is planning to launch an ico that is currently being in maintenance, it is a good help. Thank you for that.

[rickn]

ICOs had a terrible Q3 performance according to a study from ICO analysis firm ICORating published Nov. 15.
As the report states, Q3 2018 saw 597 ICOs raise over $1.8 billion, a notably lower value than the over $8.3 billion reportedly raised in the previous quarter.
Crypto market is being challenged by investors' mistrust and lack of appetite.

[johnine]

In this year ICO's are now being forced to stop do  the marketing because of the bad situation of the market and also about the development of the project, also we have SEC that restrict some countries and they need to go through in SEC procedure.

[MbyzIco]

Although it seems crazy to have to develop all the solution for the acquisition during the ICO of the tokens, a few days after would be very helpful.

That delayed things beyond February, which should be the date of our launch, or think for now on that date, had other problems at the moment, minor things, such as hiring accommodation for the page as well as post and other services, all this apparently are trifles, but when a single person is financing the whole, it is not easy, you have to measure a lot that is what is really needed.

While the technical team worked on the payment solution and the design and social networks prepared the launch, I for my part, I did the best of the exercises that can be done from the commercial area, take my phone diary cross it with the mail and any notebook I found, to refresh my list of acquaintances and friends to classify and see if they could have something to do with what I was doing at this time, some names came out and I prepared to contact them to see how it began to seal alliances , this task was not easy, we had to start by explaining what he was talking about and now even more with the shadow that the Petro produced, nobody wanted to get involved with it, especially when in the US imposed very clear sanctions for those who had something to do with said cryptocurrency (sorry if I offend someone for calling her that way). This way of starting commercially taught me a great friend who now lives in Panama and gives advice to companies, and as the technique crossed very well with what I learned from whom I call my sales teacher who is in Bogota, for a I have applied time and it really works, both are believers, with good reason, in the value of a very good network of friends, I have also learned that the more we get together, the more friends and better results, so I decided to incorporate the process to my "partner" to do the exercise with me, again disappoint me the situation, this I had never seen, or a fairly valuable contribution to the list of friends.

When we choose a partner, we usually do it in search of capital and empathy, and it happens that the most important thing of a partner is what can contribute to the business beyond money. The money can be borrowed, but the contribution, commitment and attitude cannot.

I had at this point to start thinking about everything I could do with the social connections I had, I have to admit that it was a hard decision, but I had to get on a plane and go through every possible corner, I needed a global vision of what What I was doing, the fear I always had and even more so with the arrival of the Petro Trend to the markets, is not only to understand, but to make everyone understand that cryptocurrency projects are never local and when they are posed in that way they are destined to failure.

At this point if I found it interesting before buying a ticket, anoint me of a Cypherpunk to give me the go-ahead, no matter how good an idea may sound if it moves away from the global vision and future of a project, there is nothing search, so I thought it would be interesting to take advantage of the fact that the expert who advised Caribbean islands was in the country and visiting him could be the great guidance he needed. So it was, I met with him and without taking notes I tried to absorb everything I could, it was a kind of love at first sight, when he, without shoes and with his feet on the table, spoke to this guy who only asked and cross-questioned It's amazing when you achieve a synaptic connection, the sensation is spectacular when you talk to someone who understands you and has the same vision of the future, but making the long story short, after validating that he was not so crazy, I summarized the meeting by asking him one question. If you were in my position, what would you do at this moment? His response was direct, clear and concise, “leave Venezuela right NOW" do not mess up your project with any kind of association with Venezuela, at this time. The words seem hard but I explain what he meant, so as not to hurt susceptibilities, many people in Venezuela at the time were looking for quick and unethical benefits, the care in cryptographic projects should be double, and so the wear could be significantly higher.

I had understood the message, I had to prepare my work route, it would not be very different from the previous one, but now I had to leave tasks rolling or it would not be a waste of time. For the economic part, the decision was already made, call my wife and I said it was now or never, I was going to sell the house, if I do not bet I do not win, and the capital invested until now reached 7 figures but it was still far Way to go, she asked me if I was sure, my answer was ... after marrying you, I have not been more sure of something else. Ready, we take the risk.

Meanwhile the global market had turned upside down, there was no longer any secure gain in the purchase of cryptoassets, apparently now we had to work on the issues more than before, the explosion of ICOs had stopped, but the market to my vision of 25 years later, he was at his best to begin.
I made my way, after saying goodbye to my house, which by the way had remodeled just as I wanted it. I left clear tasks to everyone who worked on the project and I set out to seal alliances.

This trip resulted, more free courses offered than closed businesses, that did not worry me or worry me yet, without the simplicity of business in the short term and when we see the cryptocurrency as a job for 30 or 50 years we see everything as a planting that will become a harvest in the future.

I communicated daily with the team, and aside from the expenses of the trips I was making, there were the last minute requirements that were generated in what we will call the project's parent company. My approach always tried to keep it in the commercial area, even though I really worried about the cash flow.

After this tour through multiple cities, it was time to buy what was necessary to go on air, I already had the diagram of the webpage and other details, so I would start by opening the company in the United Kingdom as it was determined to be. As an anecdote, after the payment and presentation of the documentation for this, what happened to many seems incredible, the problem I had, was based on the fact that I could not demonstrate residency as they intended me to do, which is the way simpler, presenting a service invoice in my name, this is simple and basic for many, in Venezuela, it does not exist, in Venezuela there is no mail services, I understand that many will ask, and how do you get the receipt of the power supply? The answer is simple, it does not arrive, neither the electricity, nor the telephone, nor the gas, nor could anything ... then that small and stupid requirement not fulfill it. After long explanations I sent them the cell phone receipt that arrived digitized by email, it was the only thing I had. After this and a few thousand dollars later, by February 2018 we finally existed as a company, although there are no companies owning the cryptocurrencies, third parties usually need to know that there is a company behind the project, ironic in a decentralized ecosystem, but sometimes they ask for this kind of thing.

To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

We had reached the point where we started everything, I had finished writing the white paper, and had passed through several hands asking for your opinion, in the end it turned out that I had more errors than success apparently, everyone gave their opinion and as I was I had asked for them, I tried to include them, after about five or more corrections I realized that I had lost the original meaning, so I had to go back to the beginning and return to my original idea, because it had already become something that neither I understood So I took the form corrections, discarded the background and went back to the basics, so it went to translation, obviously I had to present it in English at least for this to reach as many people as possible, I will not go into details, but I got an official interpreter to do the work for me, but I had to talk to her at least daily during the whole translation because half of the concepts did not understand them and she, as a good professional, wanted to give the correct interpretation beyond of the simple translation, but in general line that ran at a good speed and I liked the professionalism that the interpreter put her. It's not cheap, but it's a very good investment, that's the birth certificate.

The designers were ready to adapt the White paper to the format of the corporate image that we had chosen, while the English version arrived, in parallel we were diagramming the web page, which was going to be nourished by the same content of the White paper, as it should be. since that ensures coherence between one and the other.

Time passed quickly and the money was spent even faster, but I liked the results, we started to open all the social networks, and there we found the incongruities of this digital world, in some social networks we had a name in others it was already taken and we had to change, I do not like this commercially, it's a mistake, so we had to find a way to solve it, which obviously was to add details to the name and even with that there were some cases where the name was taken, so we had to Taking the name that would allow us to have the largest number of social networks under this same name, although it may not seem so, is delicate, because the decision affects the commercial and emotional part of the project. In the end it was achieved without further mishap that, but I must limit the first encounter with reality, is that words like "Coin", "Crypto" and others like that, exposes you directly to be rejected your name request, why? Simple, at that moment I stopped to see how many had tried to cheat with the use of these words.

We already had the page in draft, not yet open to the public, social networks without more content but already mostly lists, the White paper in Spanish was already in final and was waiting for the English version. The problem at this point is that I did not dare to give even a date for the start of the ICO, I do not know if out of fear or insecurity, it was not an easy decision, in my head I had 90 days from that moment, for develop the content and demonstrate that the project was going, this is a simple belief, it does not become a market custom.

At some point I learned that the important thing was to establish a start date and do everything possible to fulfill it, so I called the interpreter and asked her for the delivery date, according to the designers a time to make the adjustment and with the technicians how long it would take in uploading all the information. From there resulted a definitive date of beginning of the ICO, first of June of 2018.

At this point I must be honest, many ICO are based on the spirit of getting funds to develop, sometimes they get it, sometimes they do not, but in any case they use what they can get from capital, to be able to move forward, I do not talk about getting the goal, just to move forward, for the date we talked about the ICOs were more oriented to two aspects, raise capital as the main objective, but from there they could or could not carry out the project, the time had already ended in that the projects received donations to start projects, now those who had the capacity to support a project, were more careful, I could not count here the number of projects that ended up being scams, but not satisfied with them there were a lot of projects so regional, that They filled the template of options with unviable projects for many regions. They had started parallel businesses, it happens that in the forums two figures had been institutionalized, the "Bounty Program" and the "airdrops" one more dangerous than the other.

Let's go back a little in time, if you remember I did a whole validation before just trying to start this project, it seems simple, copy yourself from another successful project, change it to your plan and you will succeed, because I'm sorry to say it, but it does not work that way. The research I do left me with a couple of clear things about these parallel businesses, the Bounty, were in themselves a reaffirmation that the project was a "security" a figure within the financial world, which means that your project has just been contagious a venereal disease. While it is true you can continue with it and some have done very well, every day they are cleaning things up, so it is not good to be exposed in this way if you are trying to be a serious project, many say that only applies to United States and may or may not be true, but what is true is that you cannot start a project based on the fact that you exclude a community like that. On the other hand are the Airdrops, a kind of tasting plan of the currency, where you literally give a few with the intention of making them known, this was another great discussion during my research there is a topic to evaluate here, if you offer many, you lose Any possibility of carrying out your project seriously, since you have distributed your capital in exchange for an uncertain publicity, on the other hand if you do not do it in sufficient degree, you will not have if you do not throw away these coins, because the market effect has a tendency to zero.

Regarding the above topics and for those who want to use these lines as a reference for your project, my recommendation is that you do your research thoroughly on these aspects, there is nothing conclusive, there are always those who are in favor and those who are against, but do not rely on what the beneficiaries of both programs say, it's like asking a car dealer if the car is good, I recommend that you go to other projects and find out if it suited them and if they did today they would do it in the same way.
All the above are just tips not requested, so I will not dwell on the subject, in the specific case of our ICO, the decision was to launch for 90 days, we did not need more to see the maturity of information what is relevant in this case. On the other hand we would not do neither Bounty nor Airdrop, it's more to be honest, the idea was that we did not have any kind of capital raising in this phase, yes, I know it seems crazy, but later you will understand why it is the healthiest.

In short, we were ready, we already had everything we needed, armed teams and all the information in both languages ready to go to the ring, at this time we would start with the announcement in the forum of our launch, scheduled for the first of June, with everything ready and everything tested, we launched our announcement in the forum, and there began the ordeal. Now we had to try to be present not only in the common social networks but in those that had been made specifically for this type of activities, ad pages and others, the big clash with reality was just around the corner. We would know another type of business created for this new technology.


To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

The long-awaited day arrived, we had everything ready and we started our ICO, to the disappointment of many, nothing extraordinary happens on this specific day, only that you start the public exhibition of what you are projecting, now, for those whose purposes are more oriented to capture resources, this is not the starting point, but what happened to us this day that we started, that is, from here we started the inscriptions in any entity that could give us a name in the ecosystem , if the plan had been to raise money, we would have done it within a PreICO, but as I said before, it was not our plan, the idea was to get to know and get into other ranges.

We began to locate all the pages that expose, promote and evaluate the ICOs, there are many in reality, and we had to evaluate their specific weight in the market before starting the registration process, because even if they do not believe it here the free market begins. It happens that many of these pages claim to charge to expose your project or evaluate it, the worst is that sometimes my sister has more followers and reach them, I am convinced that a page that charged me 0.5 BTC had less scope than an invitation to a My sister's party. This forced us to be more cautious in all these aspects, evaluate each page that asked us for money to publish was necessary, the resources are not infinite, but the time spent in this type of activities are also very expensive, considering that we have a clock rolling against 90 days. It was at this time that I decided with the team of social networks and design to make 2 multidisciplinary teams, which would cost me work time that I had to pay obviously, for a team to take care of evaluating payment sites and prioritizing and on the other side a team that was taking the pages that were free registration to also start the inscriptions in order of priority according to the scope of each page. Everything sounds very professional, right? Well apparently that does not like much in this ecosystem, they had already planned.

For a moment I forgot everything I had learned in the 90s, when we charged up to 50 thousand dollars for making a simple web page. It happens that the "free" pages were not always such, they had and involved a trick to pay, they let you load the information, but they did not publish it until you paid, these were the most decent, because we also knew the ones that applied the extortion, unfortunately the public in general does not know about these misadventures of the ICOs, it happens that many and when I say many, is that they are almost the majority, they apply the basic extortion model, the saddest thing is that some of them are in the top ranking pages consulted by users, how does this method work? It is very simple, the page does not charge to sign up, they tell you that you only have to put the information, once you have entered all the information, it is necessary that you pay for it to be published, this is the most kind example of all, you simply pay for it. publish, there are the others, that once loaded the data include almost last and clarify that you have not been evaluated yet, so they reserve the opinion, many of these are disguised and played with the 90 days they know you have, and they tell you that you should expect them to evaluate an endless number of projects that are first waiting for you, that can take 3 to 4 weeks, which in a 12-week universe is a world, and after that period, publish without any evaluation , since you have not paid, but the most serious extortion model is played by a couple of pages that are among the 10 most consulted to evaluate ICOs, they allow you to load the data, publish them, but publish them with warning of scam or with a bad reputation, you know how to remove those marks from your project, right? Well pay, if you do not want to pay, can you delete the project from the page? No, neither, so ... Checkmate, pay or I evaluate you badly and declare you as a scam.

Here in this part we met the monster inside, it happens that not only there are people dedicated to create solutions for ICOs, there are those who take advantage of these, so much so, that there are a couple of pages that say that our project is a scam, although we have not taken a penny from anyone, rather I have paid everything out of my pocket, including a couple of digital extortions of which comment.

This procedure did not stop, it happened in all possible ways, I remember that there was a very serious Spanish company, which charged us in advance to publish us, and after evaluating us said that we were not mature enough and we had not raised enough capital, immediately I paid back what was paid, very serious the company in this aspect, although I still have doubts of stories projects in ICO stage will have the maturity for your taste or the necessary capital, well this is not the realm of subjectivity unfortunately and I cannot change, so in that aspect and for the seriousness as they treated the subject, they still have my respect.

After we started receiving information about offers of services to "help" with our project for a small fee, it is amazing what you start to read and hear from these people, there are those who offer to upload followers on social networks or include your currency in X Exchange and at least you want to charge 1 BTC, there are some who have a whole payment plan, but the funniest are those that offer you to revalue your currency and include it in multiple exchanges, but do not accept your currency as a form of payment, to one I get to ask you if you are going to revalue it and include it in an Exchange, because I cannot pay you with it? I do not know what I said, but most never communicated with me. In any case, I summarize what I learned with these offers, when they see an ICO with thousands of followers in social networks and a preferential presence on at least one of those ICOs evaluation pages, distrust, that did not happen for free they are trying to sell it that they are not

At first everything happened in an eternal struggle with the media, no matter how good or bad it was or it seemed your project, you had to pay first, the worst was still what even after so long, I still worry, how evaluate these projects? Everyone evaluates them from their perspective, which is understandable, but we cannot pretend and take as a defect that a project is not based on our area of expertise, I for example evaluate the projects for their real functionality and effect on the public, the technical part for me is abstract, but unfortunately for the technicians it happens the other way around, the effect on the masses, on the public or on the market is irrelevant if you have not invented anything new technologically, that is and has been my struggle since beginning.

At this point we had already run a couple of weeks within the ICO, I talk about 12 hours a day at least put in the computer answering questions, making requests and collaborating with the work teams that had distributed to try to reach the highest number of possible people, which made them comfortable for about 8 hours a day in working days, since I paid them for it, there is another important learning, this ecosystem works every day of the year at every hour of the day, there are no nights nor weekends, when in America it is night, in Asia they are 100% active and they will not wait to make their movements.

We had reached one of the most important points, after so many struggles and disappointments, we had to start knocking on the doors in the exchanges to see how we got into them, here the good started, the requirements were not normal and at least we could call them flawed, when what they asked for could only be fulfilled by a specific type of project. It is as if a technological development company were asked, as a requirement, to present a sample with packaging and a bag of what they sell and compare it with a Walmart product, no matter how hard you try, or how well you explain it, it is your protocol and you cannot change it, even worse you know that they are evaluating you badly, but you want to keep going, because the community is used to evaluate projects on that page and if you are not there, you simply do not exist. You already know which page I'm referring to.


To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

What had started as subtle attempts to be in some exchanges and pages where we were broadcast, resulted and is even more complex than before, it happens that all options not only require a payment, but the ecosystem in general, still puritanical in terms of forms of evaluation, we speak of freedom as long as that freedom is based on what I believe, if not, there is not the least care in calling any fraud at least.

Along the way, we found projects where they blatantly and blatantly told you they were a scam. What I do not understand at this time is how these currencies or projects do to be present in "respectable" places for evaluation. Take as an example one and I did follow-up, it happens that a medium capital, superior to mine obviously, they mount a project where even the members of other projects clone and pay to be published in some pages, this according to my calculations has a cost of about 100,000 USD $, with that, they begin to raise funds and there are those who even contribute for considering them a joke, they find it funny, but others do not, this is the case of a coin that they created which raised just over 7 million dollars, Once that sum was reached, they withdrew 6 million dollars and let the market do the rest. In less than a month they had opened 2 more projects with the funds raised, that now being older could act even faster, and duplicate at least what was obtained previously, the ironic thing is that this coin was in the most respectable exchanges that had denied me the access as well as in the evaluation pages of the most prestigious "Market Cap", which by the way also had at least conditioned access.

This scam model, still exists, for each one that leaves, it becomes at least 3 more. In addition there are what we call local projects, they are projects that are not designed to globalize and are not going to do it, but they occupy a lot of space in the sites of global evaluation of projects, in the end they do not manage neither to raise capital to be done nor can they give continuity of any way, because they started from raising capital to start.

We continued knocking doors in different places, in parallel, I started the pilgrimage to publicize the project and even more try to find merchants with whom to integrate the project, I could not tell you what was the most difficult part, the rules of the game were not made in none of the portals to evaluate or accept a project with commercial value, had created the structure for the technical evaluation, but in no way an evaluation of the use concept was foreseen, this was not surprising to anyone, they are still asking to see your publication in GITHUB before just seeing what you are talking about and what happens, that our project started, as it is understood in the use and dissemination of knowledge based on tools that were already consolidated in the market, but as we always say, even these portals expected , that to make a web page, you will develop an entire explorer. The most irritating and difficult was the issue of the merchants, after investing almost a month with at least 3 visits a day to merchants of all levels, we found the first barrier, there is no way for a merchant to assume a solution of this type, if He does not even know what we are talking about, even less when they have already been visited by other projects that offer a solution that does not interact with other pre-existing ones. To make matters worse, the Venezuelan market suffered a strange paradox, they needed the solution, they wanted to use it, but they could not promote it because they feared government reprisals for it, which turned any business that was in a position to participate in a dead letter, it exists, but you can’t tell it to anyone. The case in other countries, except the fear of the state, is not very different, they do not understand what to do after receiving a cryptocurrency, and you have to do the conversion to FIAT, almost immediately.

On repeated occasions we have said that the usability of the coins is what will really give them value, it will never be the exchange in Exchanges, but if that usability is limited by a clock against the conversion to FIAT by the receiver, it is destined to fail any project, therefore had to work with suppliers and other members of the supply chain and consumption. The work is not easy and I am sure that a joint effort to encourage the use of all or many of the projects would be more effective than the spasmodic efforts of small projects. Obviously this sounds more than impossible, even utopian, especially when I said before, all projects try to create a new Wallet, a new Blockchain, a new usability principle, etc.

With all this Social burden on my back, I went ahead, I firmly believe in sticking to a plan, whatever it may be, where I can change a step, but not the goal. My funds for the project were still in a considerable decline, and we had already consumed at least 2 thirds of the established 90-day time. At this time, I had invested in advertising on social networks, work equipment and per diem to try to make the necessary alliances, we were doing well, it is not the first time that I started a project from scratch, but I had to incur a new I needed help with the equipment, I was loading myself with at least the whole commercial issue and that part weighed a lot, there were more than 50 mails a day at least, with offers of services in general, since as you will know the pages where we requested include us, really live to sell that database for the supply of services, such as those that offer to increase weekly your Telegram channel in at least 1,000 weekly followers in exchange for a "small" sum of money. I stayed within my conditions in this regard, had hundreds of followers but they were real, they had nothing to do with any "fastTrack" model to get them, the same happened in all our social networks, if we had ONE follower, that follower was real.

The pressure to make a "Bounty" or an "airdrop" did not stop on the part of some close friends, and I stayed in my position, but when I spoke with some friends from Colombia and Argentina they told me something that had happened to us at least 10 years before when we started marketing commercial solutions for SMS, "the rules are there, you cannot break them, but if you can find a way to get the same thing in another way" based on that theory we modified what made the Bounty into a dangerous figure and we created a figure called Social Networks Campaign, with an established payment, without competences or anything like that, with a contract to provide services and an established payment. That broke the biggest defect that the Bounty had, the problem arose again, in the habit, apparently no matter how new technology is being talked about, many prefer to stay in their comfort zone, so that the rules to publish and announce this type of activity were based on the obligation to announce a Bounty, so we had to comply with the norm, but clarify that we were not doing that, one of the strangest things that a tradition forced us to do, be incoherent in what we do.

We were already entering the last third of the ICO and there the first vision about the real business appeared, they communicated with me directly via email, treating me by name and doing an introduction about the project, which spoke very well, in this medium of automatic messages, someone offered us $ 2,000,000 to invest in our project. Validate the data of the company and not only it really existed, but it had already invested in a couple of other projects. The most emotional was my wallet, but as usual there would be a new lesson to learn.

To be continue…

[MbyzIco]

I started without much enthusiasm the analysis of what was happening, a person X from somewhere in Europe, wanted to invest in a project in training at the other end of the world, something that learns in Colombia, was very applicable in these cases, which says something like: careful, that of the Good, they do not give so much. Faced with suspicion, I took care to validate the company and start contact with this company, one of the advantages of moving in the Latin American market, is that you have stories and first-hand experiences of people who have been related to business at least little licit, that's where I found an underworld that I did not know.

My doubt about the claims of this investor made me find out a little about the possible intentions and in the end I managed to understand how the game was.

The idea of this company was to make new projects, with little capitalization, with commercial rather than technical ideas, that would be a better explanation for investors, I say investors, but you will see what it was, the idea is that they collected 4 million dollars from investors, we were paid 2 for the project, they did not say it directly but the plan was to keep the project in its entirety, I must clarify that more than the project, were the coins, with the remaining 2 million investing about 500 thousand dollars in hosting the currency in some exchanges, paying the fees they demand for it, to finally sell to people who intend to launder money, supported by the other 500 thousand dollars that they would use to make the first purchases of the currency and increase its value, but having them to totality of the currency they could manipulate to very low cost the value of the same one.

As you can see it is a perfect business, in the case of our currency, they would do this exercise with a group of 4 or more investors, making a capital of more than 5 million, although it is true that we would receive 2, it is understood that for them it was a very good business.

When we saw this, we asked ourselves why they did not create the coin themselves, it would seem easier, the matter is that the times they have tried, they have appeared as SCAM, because as you know, they can’t appear directly as owners and even more, they could not repeat the game again and again, as they will see what they were buying more than anything else was the face of those who participated, that in the end, if that money laundered, came at some point to annoy the financial or judicial system, it would be Our face would appear responsible and the money received would not pay the costs of lawyers that we would need to get out of the problem, much less be able to explain what happened.

Some people told me not to worry about the use of the coin and other more serious warned me of what could happen if I took that route, my decision was blunt, I would not accept the option, I preferred to continue on the route that I had drawn from day zero for the project, I did not need to get my hands dirty with something like this. Maybe they think that I let a very good opportunity pass, but I do not see it that way.

Soon after, the subject of this type of proposal seemed to me that it had become a fad, but it happens that after I realized that it is normal, when arriving at the end of the ICO you receive an endless number of strange proposals, where almost all They go through getting into your head something like get rich in 3 easy lessons. Which we know will never happen without effort and a good idea.

In the case of many Latin American countries, and even more so in the Venezuela of the end of 2018, what they were looking for was a fast dollar conversion solution. What is more lapidary than an airdrop for any project.

I even had the case of a person who introduced himself to me, as we were included in our first decentralized Exchange, asking if he bought the currency, how long was the money in his "Bank of America" account, I started playing with the answers, I said things like: let's see, it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you have it in your account … as in 2 years. It was very funny to see the faces of these characters, they did not understand what they were asking, and their eagerness to make a conversion to FIAT was such, that it was a waste of time to explain something further.

Almost in same time came a new "fashion", El Petro, that diffuse object created without feet or head, with more slogans and propaganda than content, began to reach people who said things like: "I have the solution for the Petro, but I need your currency, ... " At that point the most aggressive told me that they bought me and others offered me society, but in any case they had someone in the government who would give them Petros in exchange for the currency, or BTC in exchange for my currency to buy Petros, making the Petro marketable through the currency.

I always had the patience to listen to everyone when they come to consider a business, I think that in every approach there is something interesting in the background, everything is a matter of sometimes rounding the idea. Obviously no offer that went through a scam model was to my liking, either directly a scam or to cover another.

We were about to finish the ICO in days and the great dilemma was evident, the effort to not seem that we were raising capital and the commercial pressure that we had exerted, was leaving us in a complex position, we had already entered into a decentralized Exchange, approved the income and payment pending in 3 more decentralized and 2 centralized. But here the problem began, and my finances did not allow me to maintain the payroll to continue with the presence in networks and so on, and to that I joined the payment of income in the Exchanges that had approved us.

I had to make decisions at this time, I wanted to get a model of what we spoke between the lines throughout the ICO for the eyes of all and demonstrate the functionality of our first phase of the project, I did not want to leave social networks, but we needed at least one Exchange enabled The decision was easier than it seems, call the financial advisor, and I asked him to assemble files with the 5 exchanges that had authorized us the income and was pending payment, so that we put them on "Stand By" until January 2019 , I convened the development team and I asked them that I wanted a model in 90 days of what our project would be, I met with the team that managed social networks, I informed them that we would continue the same, that during the ICO, until December 2018, with The Design Team worked on some final pieces and teachers for social networks and they would start working on the new product and launch for 2019. I had given priority to the work team, before the payment of admission to new exchanges, we would work with only one, for now.

It was my turn to prepare a managerial report, it seemed fair to the community, that without good or bad I would have paid or not paid due attention, those who at some time had paid me some attention, deserved from us a response as a team and of my person in particular, I had to make this report and publish it in BitcoinTalk, although I could not give many details of what the next steps were, I had to keep myself in the same speech with which I had worked all this time, and now I dare to explain why. When one starts this type of project, the evaluation of concept leads us to evaluate possible competitors and that work, together with the endless number of allies that visit, made me see that I had a commercial product that did not exist yet and the strictest ones. They recommended excluding it from the proposal directly, since they were even patentable, so I did not include them in any part of the explanation of the project, although they are an integral part of the project, they will understand why my intention was not to raise capital, it was to be able to reach at this point.

To be continue…

[ryan992]

It is very interesting, thank you for posting this topic. where is you get the resource about your topic? I want read that too. one more thank you

[Barabulya]

In my opinion, ico in the form in which we are accustomed to see them will gradually cease to exist, and they will be entirely under the control of the relevant departments. But I am sure that there are many unprecedented projects that appeared due to the rush in 2017-18.

[Igor.J]

Very intrigued to know what happens next. I want to know more for my own ico that I am working on at the moment.

That's how much you need to go through the circles of hell to create your useful product. And it is not easy for fraudsters to create new ways of cheating each time.