Verge (XVG), a coin heavily subject to controversy, stems from the formerly known Dogecoindark (DOGED) which re-branded to Verge on February 16, 2016.
The coin is subject to controversy because of the general incapability of the team which has lead to missed deadlines, vulnerable code being used by the network, and the coin being deliberately marketed to gullible people with money.
It was by far the best performing coin of 2017. Yet, anyone who had any knowledge about crypto assets knew right away that it was a fraud. It left legitimate investors behind, and made manipulators and dumb money rich.
Due to the massive gains this project realized for those who invested (gambled) early on we will look beyond the Verge.
The birth and death of Dogecoindark
The earliest occurrence of DogecoinDark that I can find is from October 9, 2014.
Unfortunately, web archive does not have a historical copy of the bitcointalk topic.
However all of the images which are dead point to ‘dogecoindark.net’.
The first historical copy available on the web archive is from 19/01/2015.
According to the homepage at that time; they were “raining” DOGED in the IRC channel if people asked for it. In other words: they were handing out a small amount of DOGED to the community and a large amount to themselves. Keep this in mind, it will be important later on.
Apart from a few poor website redesigns nothing fancy was going on on the website. The “raindrop” notice stayed up there until 28/08/2016, six months after the re-brand to Verge.
At this point I have a few theories: the first one being that the team accumulated a massive amount of DOGED and re-branded afterwards in an attempt to hide the fact (and to make the marketing easier). The second theory being that a handful of people accumulated a massive amount of DOGED and decided to fork and kill DOGED.
The second theory is proven to be untrue because of the way the bitcointalk account is set up. The account Dogedarkdev created the first thread in 2014 and is currently managing the Verge thread and actively replying to posts in the topic.
Let’s take a step back: why are they handing out DOGED in the IRC channel?
IRC chats are anonymous and secure (not by nature, but if configured properly). There is no sure way for a law agency to find out who received DOGED, and even if they could get their hands on the logs they’d be worthless. Clever.
Similarities between Dogecoindark and Raiblocks
Just as with DOGED, XRB was also distributed in a dubious way, in the case of RaiBlocks, coins were distributed through a faucet. The faucet consisted of a captcha which had to be solved, for which the user was rewarded a sizable amount of XRB.
No issues with it, unless people actually create bots for it. Why circumvent normal distribution and use an insecure medium to distribute your coins?
Massive amounts of XRB were harvested allowing a select few to get hold of a big share of XRB.
Similar to the re-brand of Dogecoindark to Verge, Raiblocks re-branded to Nano. The price got manipulated, the marketing engine was turned on and the money came in, similar to how the money flowed into Verge.
Okay, what now?
Manipulation is king in the crypto markets. The people running the marketing campaigns and the people at the top of the rich list are the same. They have a direct incentive to pull as much gullible people into the trap as possible. They have the monetary capacity to run extensive marketing campaigns and they reap the benefits of doing so.
As I previously mentioned in my introductory ‘Who is Snipe’:
The harsh reality is that the entire market runs on assumptions and confirmation bias and that my own research does not matter. If 200 people say something is good and it is valuable, it will be valuable. Even though it is not worthy of being valuable because of technical or fundamental reasons, it is no longer relevant.
A small minority of people in the crypto space will be able to differentiate a legitimate project with garbage. Even the people that got lured into buying Verge in the first place will keep defending it when presented with the horrible facts afterwards. That is the reason why this blog post (as all the other negative blog posts) will have no effect on the price whatsoever.
Current investors of Verge are in a state of cognitive dissonance and write legitimate concerns off as ‘FUD’. Each Verge community member is in a constant loop of manipulation, supported by the confirmation bias of those whom are equally stupid.
Verge is the Rich Nigerian Prince
We all know about the rich Nigerian prince spam e-mails that have existed for ages. We also know that they contained spelling errors on purpose to minimize the responses down to those who are stupid enough to engage in the first place.
Verge is exactly the same. It (currently existing community + continuous marketing/manipulation efforts) will pull gullible people in and keep smart people out because they will be able to differentiate a good project from a bad project. In the same way the smart person will ignore the e-mail from the Nigerian prince and the gullible person will respond.
Verge is the Nigerian prince on steroids. Much more refined, much more subtle. But very real. And make no mistake, it’s not just Verge. It is, however, a perfect example.
What did we learn from this?
Looking for the next Verge?
Look for 100 coins who match the description:
- Skewed richlist
- Accumulation / High volume on a small cap coin
- Dubious ways of distribution
- Ugly name (not necessarily, but can be used for a re-brand later on)
I will end this blog post with a video of James Veitch.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
Until next time ;)
Snipe
