When reading through the NoCoin-thread and looking at their site, they like to mention "the foundation" and all this crap. But how comes the domain, for example, isn't owned by a foundation, but by Dan Kaufman?
Registrant Name:Daniel Kaufman
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: PO Box 921
Registrant City:Richlandtown
Registrant State/Province:Pennsylvania
Registrant Postal Code:18955
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.6462481385
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email:daniel.l.kaufman@gmail.comOkay, now let's look at the Linkedin-profile of two of the NoCoins representants:
Sandrine Ayral - Head of Community @ NeuCoin
- Junior consultant, ESSEC Conseil International
- Business Developer, EasyLife Pack
- Vice president, ESSEC Conseil International
- Analyst Intern, Alven Capital Partners
- Business Skiller @ Le Camping, Silicon Sentier
- Ambassador, TheFamily
- Customer Support, Coinbase
Not bad for a CV, right? Is something missing? Well, maybe this:
Business development for a Parisian startup.
This can be found on the NoCoin-Homepage. Not very specific, correct?
Well, and the CV of Dan Kaufman is well known. He seems to have been involved in so many companies that it is hard to keep track.
But one thing is missing...
May 6, 2014, Dan Kaufman was obviously in Paris. While being there, he established the company "Althouse Development", located at 3 Rue de Teheran in 75008 Paris.
May 14, this company was duly registered, with Daniel Louis Kaufman, born November 10, 1968, living at 1793 Country Lane, Quakertown, PA, USA. Well, not "Richlandtown" like the address he used for registering the company, but Quakertown.
However, he immedeately became president of the board of this company which paid 12500 Euro as stock capital on an account at "Société Général" in Paris.
October 24, Dan Kaufman resigned as a president and was replaced by Sandrine Ayral, born 1989.
She, too, didn't stay long and was replaced August 14 of this year by Jonathan Gnassia from the company Eljomino Venture.
Why are those facts relevant?
Althouse Developement rented some work space at Coworkshop in Paris. Coworkshop asked Kaufman and Ayral what they are doing. Here's the response:
We are working on developing a new cryptocurrency. If you have ever heard of bitcoin, it is similar to that. Our founder Daniel has been thinking about creating a new cryptocurrency since January and the team was assembled in June.
What are the roles within the team?
We are a team of six people. Three of us are on the business side of it, developing strategies and the other three are the technology experts and they are building a web platform.
Why did you choose Coworkshop?
When we saw the space we knew it would be a good place for the team to work. It has a lot of flexibility, which we liked. It also is in a great location. It is very convenient for everyone on the team.
Okay, so Althouse is creating a new coin. Beside this, not a lot is known about the "team" which is creating this coin.
Who is known regarding NoCoin? Right, there's one Maël Nison, Software Engineer at Neucoin, who writes, for example:
Neucoin is a new cryptocurrency, based on Bitcoin. It intends to spread the adoption of crypto-coins to the masses by dedicating vast resources toward a strong marketing plan. I currently work with them as a software developer, tweaking and improving their official client.
On the NoKoin-homepage, they introduce Maël Nison as their "Core Coin Developer":
Maël has worked with several innovative startups and most notably Sketchfab, a TechStars-backed web company. He graduated from EPITECH, a top European Computer Science school, where he also taught C and C++. In his spare time, he works on various open source projects such as Virtjs, a javascript emulation library.
At github, Maël Nison goes as "arcanis", working not for "NeuCoin", but for Althouse Development. Which makes sense, for "NeuCoin" is only a brand name, while the employer is in fact Althouse Development.
As a "Core Coin Developer", Nison contributes to projects from "althousedev", mainly to a fork of bitcore from Bitpay, "A pure and powerful JavaScript Bitcoin library". Some of his contributions are worth mentioning:
July 24: althousedev/bitcore: Adds neucoin testnet parameters
July 28: althousedev/bitcore: Changes precision - warning, ppcoin / neucoin only
Adds Transaction#setTransaction
Today: althousedev/bitcore: Changes the dust threshold to 10000
So today, they still are working on their project, while claiming "Launch expected to happen between Aug 6 and 13".
Another althousedev-project, btw: NeucoinWhitepaper, updated on June 18.
Basically, what they never mentioned before:
a) The company Althouse in France is behind the Neucoin-project
b) Until two weeks ago, first Dan Kaufman and then Sandrine Ayral were presidents of Althouse
c) This company has a rather small stock capital, i.e. if the project goes down the drain, there's nothing to be taken from them.
d) Neucoin seems to be based on the bitcore-project
Also interesting: Up until now, Althouse hasn't filed a financial statement with the French authorities. If they had done this, it should be publicly available.
It would be interesting to see the statement, for there is one major question: Who owns the Bitcoins which were sold in the presale? If, at the end of the day, it is Althouse, then they will have to pay taxes for them. If a person or a company in France owns Bitcoin with a value higher than €5,000, they will have to pay taxes, according to a government's plan.
So there are interesting times ahead....
