For a real fresh start at IOTA, a change at the top is needed.
PART I From Legacy to Chrysalis: How the IOTA Foundation’s attempt to create a Phoenix became an investor disaster due to misinformation.
I have been following the development of IOTA since 2017 Motivation for a 2019 entry into the token was then the M2M narrative according to which machines are becoming increasingly intelligent, can place orders, allocate capacities and settle among themselves with the help of a cryptocurrency, as well as the fee-free, fast transaction processing, A wonderful usecase and a convenient crypto payment method.
If you are not an insider they will inevitably have to rely on external information media. This includes press articles, interviews, AMAs with founders and programmers, social media. Young projects, due to a lack of reach, usually only have the founders, who as figureheads, significantly influence the opinion of investors.
Whereas the “classic capital market” is strictly regulated and faces severe fines and imprisonment for misinformation, cryptospace is still largely regulated with holes. This opens the door to manipulation, pump and dumps, and fraud. Anyone who has been in crypto for a while has had to see this several times and possibly even experience it firsthand.
This makes it all the more the responsibility of a project’s leaders to communicate diligently and truthfully so as not to unnecessarily increase the already considerable risk in the crypto space. While we see exemplary and restrained, in short professional, communication in projects like Ethereum, for example, raising exaggerated expectations in order to then drop coins or tokens is still a common method for insiders to gain financial advantages in other projects.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I have been following and observing IOTA for many years now. I found the vision exciting, according to which machines communicate autonomously with each other, place orders and pay with IOTA.
Apparently, many shared this view, because the token price climbed with this vision, which was accompanied by an entry of Bosch venture capital quota to a market capitalization of over $15 billion, never reached again, ranking in the TOP10 most expensive cryptocurrencies on Coinmarketcap (CMC).
Today, IOTA — is not only a dwarf compared to prices at that time, but has also long been overtaken by numerous new projects. If this development continues at the current pace, IOTA will have disappeared from the TOP100 most important projects in terms of market capitalization before the fall. Neither among institutional investors nor among private investors does the project play a significant role. If you take the number of Twitter followers or the number of investors who have IOTA on their CMC watchlist, there has been no significant growth for quite some time. Consequences for the current leadership?
None so far.
Image with symbolic power: The rest of the guide is largely invisible.
The top management now consists of only 2 people:
Dominik Schiener
Dr. Navin Ramachandran
De facto, one can confidently speak of Schiener’s autocracy, since he has a lifetime contract and thus cannot be terminated. Scoffers might remark that N. Ramanchandra is not even worthy of a photo on the IF homepage, on which the executives and the team are listed. A good external image looks different.
Originally the board consisted of 2 more people. But D. Sonstebo was disposed IOTA-like in a drama mud fight of D. Schiener and the mathematician S. Popov may give in the future exclusively his good advice to the best.
With the cleaning out of the board, the first vision was also disposed of and it was determined after years of back and forth that the IOTA network was no good for either the vision or other use cases long established in cryptospace such as DeFi. Unfortunately, the personnel purge spared the main culprit, of all people, due to his immunity. The fact that IOTA is still “alive” at all is probably due in large part to chief programmer Hans Moog:
Only because he dared to put everything to the test, to create a completely new consensus mechanism and also to put the gun to the chest of the management, the decision to dispose of the old network (“Legacy”) and to transfer all tokens into a new “Chrysalis” network, with which a new era “A New Dawn” should begin, could prevail.
New brooms don’t always sweep well. The Ledger disaster costs investors millions
What good is the nicest stock market rally if you can’t sell? That’s exactly what happened to IOTA investors who had secured their holdings with the help of LEDGER. While IOTA boss Dominik Schiener has never been a rhetoric genius, such a sensitive point MUST be clarified in detail with the hardware manufacturer in advance. But that was not enough. Once again, time specifications were handled far too negligently: 2–3 weeks became almost half a year, at the end the pump was over and the price had long since more than halved. Investor damage: Not to be quantified, it should be 2 or even 3 steady million amounts.
Consequences? Not at all.
Oh, as if that wasn’t enough, the hype was further fueled by Schiener: at least 3 major exchanges would be waiting to list IOTA after the launch of Chrysalis. Who would sell, given that everyone knows what a top listing does to the price.
But wait… there was selling: Insiders and the IOTA Foundation — while others were chomping at the bit in the face of impotence because Ledger wasn’t moving forward with support and they couldn’t take advantage of high prices.
MORE LISTINGS!!! Probably nothing more hoped for at the time. Kraken, Coinbase and perhaps Robinhood could offer the hands us so finally millions of new potential users an access. But Kraken’s boss had already outlined the external perception of IOTA with a single sentence: “Only complete idiots buy IOTA”. In retrospect, one has to concede a certain truth to this statement.
But anointed by Dominik’s visions and at that time duration -AMAs one carries the designation “Vollidiot” (I dissociate myself here expressly) with pride and dignity the name “MORON” as creed. How far have we come…?
In the AMAs it was also dreamed with nice regularity of big companies, which would only wait for Chrysalis. There should be at least 40 (!) of them, including of course global corporations. Until today we are waiting for the mass adoption, which was also cabled as “Cambian explosion”. Instead, there was a incentivised test network for the main network (Shimmer) followed by test networks for the test network. Now everyone is just hoping for an MVP — A minimal product that is.
That the incentivised testing is so far without incentives — almost a gift in this context.
Consequences for management? NO
Apropos.. token sales:
In general, the mentioned figures of the allegedly high reserves of the Foundation in cash and cryptos might be unrealistic — or the own trust in IOTA token might be gone.
Because why the hell should the Foundation sell exclusively its most valuable asset (IOTAtoken), when “A New Dawn” had just dawned? More than 40 million EUR were supposedly still in the Foundation’s coffers? This is probably just as untrue as the argumentation with which the mass layoffs were presented to us as a “spin off”. However, due to the lack of transparency of the IF, I cannot provide any proof. But it is at least circumstantial.
It is more likely that the bear market on the capital market had caused financial fears and that the still very long periods until the release of usable products in the main network did not allow us to expect a price upswing for the main source of financing.
When in the previous month 2 Ti IOTAs were thrown on the market by the Foundation at about 0.80$, one could (as I had done and written on Twitter) trouble the calculator and realize that at a price of 20 cents and the same costs 8 Ti would have to be sold and the financial resources would shrink extremely fast. Good thing Shimmer staking was introduced in time, magically creating additional funds. However, the additional financial security was bought with considerable uncertainties regarding the future of the IOTA main network. Obsolete, many say. Critics already note that the Shimmer network, announced as “Incentified Testet”, has not yet distributed any “Incentives” to us. A rogue who thinks evil thereby.
A manager who cannot convincingly dispel such serious concerns of users and investors is definitely doing something wrong. The 2nd layer network Assembly, for which we are currently diligently staking, is already being called stillborn by many. What a communications disaster. Or another change of strategy? In both cases this would be reason enough to fire a manager.
But the untouchable Dominik Schiener?
No consequences for him.
Needless to say, the fewer AMAs were held, the less pumping effect they had. Now a new test network apparently offers opportunity for a new pump-hype AMA to be held in the first week of April. The price has reacted a few percentage points in advance.
To be clear, we all want higher prices. But not pumped increases, but sustainable increases based on real demand. A concept of how this is to be achieved by finally winning over more stock exchanges, large investors and a broad retail investor community has been absent to date.
Not even the most persistent rumors could be convincingly refuted.
A company leader must be able to do something like that. Or find someone who can. Or leave.
By the way, after the announcement of this series, some people wrote to me who are from D.S.’s close circle or who have worked with him. Rumors about market manipulation, undue influence on projects (The most obvious victim was probably LendExe) and questionable private investments in millions of Dom’s were reported to me in detail and cross-confirmed. In the absence of evidence, I can only dub this a rumor and will therefore not elaborate. For me, however, things add up. Especially since also top projects have voiced corresponding. Perhaps even material for a separate blog article.
Read in part 2:
Initially a blessing, now a millstone — No structure, no chasing the market, and slogans of perseverance.
Forever “soon”: How the turncoat Schiener threatens to squander market opportunities with poor communication, a lack of self-criticism and no clear compass.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice, the article explicitly reflects the personal private opinion of the author and does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell IOTA or any other of the mentioned cryptocurrencies. Do your own research and always consider the risks by investing as much as you are willing to lose.
