Half a Billion Dollar ICO Crowdsale for Serial Abuser?
Entrepreneur who was convicted and sentenced to jail for beating women in two separate incidents to raise world’s biggest ICO for $500M (yes, half a billion) dollars. Tech press gives him a pass and calls him “Boy with Midas Touch” in a puff piece.
Nick Ayton wrote a pretty good piece here about Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs
In it he says:
It (referring to ICOs) isn’t a scam machine reported by so many, and in every market it is inevitable some people will take advantage of what is largely unregulated, albeit the crypto community does police it best it can and places hurdles on the people behind each ICO.
This is a nice idea, but the same Nick Ayton has written this piece recently about “Boys” with the Midas Touch.
This is a puff piece that glorifies Gurbaksh Chahal and talks about how he plans to raise $500M (yes over half a Billion dollars) in an ICO.
Enter stage left, Gurbaksh Chahal who certainly has the Midas touch when it comes to backing the latest technology and is already disrupting global advertising with his AI marketing engine Gravity4. He wants to launch the largest ICO ever breaking the $500 mln plus mark, and who would be against him?
Indeed who would be against him?
This is the same Gurbaksh Chahal who punched and kicked his girlfriend 117 times on a video camera and then attempted to suffocate her. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/19/gurbaksh-chahal-domestic-violence-new-job-venture-capital then was again arrested a second time for domestic violence.
Pretty much the entire Silcon Valley venture capital ecosystem would be against him, as he is essentially radioactive. If any of them were to fund him, they would face a pretty epic backlash.
So now Nick Ayton who is previously touting how great ICOs are is now promoting this guy?
The sickening thing is there will be several classes of investor in Chahal:
- Those who are fooled and wont hear about his abuses, thanks to his expensive lawyers and online “reputation management” efforts and who will invest in his ICO
- Even more appalling are those who know about his criminal history and will invest anyway out of pure greed and possibly tacit approval of his ruthless aggression.
The VC industry is not free from abuse…but recent events affecting Binary Capital, Lightspeed, 500 Startups, Ignition partners and Uber have at least created awareness in the industry that blatantly abusive behavior, even behind closed doors has significant repercussions.
And now along comes this ICO, and this promoter, blithely supporting the ICO of Gurbaksh Chahal
So when I tweeted this back to Mr Ayton, look at the reply I got:
So… I guess I will take “my issues” here. Remember that Ayton wrote in his previous piece:
the crypto community does police it best it can and places hurdles on the people behind each ICO.
What the hell kind of hurdle is KNOWING that he is a serial woman beater and giving him a puff piece promoting his ICO? I told Ayton to investigate Chahal (which would take less than 1 minute on Google) and he told me to “take my issues elswhere”. Great case in point.
Gurbaksh Chahal is going to raise 500M in an ICO and is being given a free pass and glorified as a “Boy with Midas Touch”. Something feels very out of whack to me. In this current atmosphere, why would a writer take this position that it’s not material to the article that the “Business Person” in question is a convicted serial abuser of women. Wondering whether there is some financial involvement.
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