RE: Scam Accusations: Togacoin
We’ve received our second Scam accusation!
When we received the first one, we did not take it as something serious, as the premises of the accusation were weak, mainly coming from the use of a face recognition software (yes, that same one used on Facebook apps to see ‘Which celebrity do you look alike?’) trying to prove that the pictures used for the Team were fake. We discussed it, gave our reasons, then forgot about it and continued trying to reach our goals. We just assumed that the individual behind it was going to ask for money sooner than later, this did not happen at all, however they found someone else to ‘review’ our ICO.
We get it. Since Initial Coin Offerings started gaining popularity there have been millions of dollars of investor’s money that had gone into a black hole. False names, identity theft, and fake promises are the main red flags for anyone. But is it really that hard to do a proper investigation? 21st Century and the magic of the internet makes it pretty easy to spot scammers. It just takes some time and a bit of common sense. You did not only do a very poor research, but you also pointed out what could fit your conclusions, missing a lot of information and also showing a very inconsistent logic.
Let’s take a look at the premises used for your conclusion:
1 - “The legend has it that in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) there’s a lot of sun, wind and appealing tax benefits all year long.”
Definition of legend: a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated.
Have you ever read about the Trade Winds? Have you ever been in Tenerife?
Have you at least check Tenerife’s weather conditions? Have you heard about the ZEC zone? We suggest you do so, the island’s weather isn’t any kind of legend, it’s a fact. Trying to use this to discredit the project is wrong and it’s dumb.
2 - “Specially made for Sim City lovers. What kind of video is this anyways? In my childhood I built things that were way more interesting. Guys, where’s the Jacuzzi?”
We are very sorry to hear that you didn’t like our video presentation. How does that turns us into a scam? Our data center has not been built yet, if so, why would be even doing an ICO instead of an IPO?
3 - “The pre-sale price for 1 TGA coin is $0,45, now it costs $0,75, and ultimately the price will increase up to 1 dollar. Now pay attention! The sale began on July 4th and will end on May 1st of next year. Are you kidding me? Here we are, bitching people that can’t manage to sell everything in a few months, but Togacoin’s process lasts for a whole fucking year! How may investors will make it to the finale?”
Yes, pre-sale price was $0.45. Now it is $0.70 (5 cents difference, no big deal).
Our sale began on June 4 and indeed we extended our crowdsale. You don’t like that? None of your business. We informed our community which steps were going to be taken as we were not reaching our softcap around the time that was previously planned. We also gave our investors the opportunity of leaving the project and get their money back in their pockets, and if we don’t reach the softcap, everyone gets their money back. Isn’t that fair?
4 - “Btw, they accept almost everything. It’s the first time I see something like this. Is it even legal?”
How come payment options are a problem? How can you talk about ‘legal’ while ICOs and cryptocurrencies aren’t properly regulated yet? We have a legal advisor for that purpose, don’t worry, we are sure that we are good. We are not willing to take the risk of sending all our hard work and years of reputation to the trash.
5- “At least the calculator (oh how I love “imagine yourself being a millionaire” revenue calculators) counts investments and profit only in dollars.”
“All illustrations and examples are based on estimates and must not be considered a promise or a guarantee, or a purchase/sale offer of titles. For more detailed estimates and calculations, see our WhitePaper.”
Why this? Mining profitability changes fast and depends on many factors. We updated our Calculations in September for that specific purpose because ASICs profitability had changed since we released our first Whitepaper. How we calculated the ROI is explained there and you can check it yourself together with ASICs profitability here, but as mentioned before, profitability changes fast and that’s why we made it clear that the calculations are based on estimates and examples. How does that turn us into a scam? Maybe if we didn’t have that text, it would make sense to be claiming that someone is trying to scam you and promising things. But we insisted on making it clear that this are all estimates.
6 - “The founders didn’t put much thought into allocating the funds. Development, administration and marketing don’t count as project realization? Wow, thanks for this eye-opening revelation! We need to go make some memes now”
??? We aren’t sure how this cannot be clear for you, none of our investors have ever mentioned having any kind of issue with funds allocation.
7 - “They want to issue at most 120 million tokens. If they will be sold during all phases of the sale, they will make about 80 million dollars. Not bad for some Italian nonames, who are attempting to build a super profitable eco-mining farm on the Canary Islands.”
Congratulations! You just did a basic multiplication just to realize that our hardcap is $76.321.000. This information was mentioned in our Website, Whitepaper and Onepager.
Our project is modular and there are various hypothesis regarding the realization of the green data center (all of them specified in our Whitepaper), it will all depend on the results of the crowdsale. $76.321.000 is the best case scenario, our hardcap.
We’ll talk about the ‘Italian nonames’ thing in the next paragraph.
8- “Btw, we haven’t mentioned anything about the team yet. The startup has 4 co-founders. Almost like HOQU
Two of them are working for a service that helps create websites Misterdomain (judging from this source, it’s kinda so-so). The third one doesn’t give a fuck about his LInkedin. The fourth one represents Dead Poet Society. I’m kidding, he’s just the namesake of an Italian poet, who died on a quiet night in 1974.
We couldn’t find anything about blockchain, mining or green energy in their CVs.”
Firstly, why does it matter if there are four Co-Founders? How is HOQU even related to us? Is it just because they also have four people as co-founders?
That’s obviously a great way to jump into scam conclusions.
Secondly, the ‘source’ you used to judge the service that Misterdomain.eu provides is an SEO MARKETING TOOL. How does SEO relate to the quality of the service provided by a company?
About ‘the third one’, have you heard of GIGA.IT ? It is another web hosting company, and guess who is the General Manager? Your ‘third one’, Sergio Livrieri. You could have easily found out that information just by hovering on his name on our website.
About the ‘Italian dead poet’ thing, do you realize that there are more people than just one person in the world named Massimo Ferretti? You can take a look here if you thought that was the case. By the way, you can even find our Massimo there.
There are indeed Blockchain Development and Green Energy Consultants. Also, many projects that were considered a success in the industry didn’t have any team members with previous experiences in Blockchain. Not having ‘previous experience’ on a specific project doesn’t mean that you don’t have any knowledge at all in the crypto field. How many crypto miners are there that have not participated in a specific project apart from their own mining rooms? How many investors and stakeholders formally have Blockchain knowledge in their CVs? With this we are not implying that every miner, investor or stakeholder is a Blockchain expert, but saying that not having that in your CV automatically turns you into a noob is simply wrong as a matter of facts.
9- “We accidentally found the slogan for their project in their Telegram chat. How to earn bitcoin in this group?”
Someone asked that question (How to earn bitcoin in this group?) in our chat and one of the customer service representatives answered with the same information available elsewhere. This user now shows as ‘Deleted’(how convenient for our accusers, however customer service rep’s answers are still live in our group), but this was the full conversation:
Alessandro, [02.11.18 15:11]
Welcome Richard
Richard Antonio, [02.11.18 15:15]
Thank u
Richard Antonio, [02.11.18 15:16]
I have a question ?
Richard Antonio, [02.11.18 15:16]
How to earn bitcoin in this group
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:19]
Hi there! Well, we are not mining bitcoin specifically but we do mine other cryptocurrencies. Which ones we mine depends on the current profitability, our team has developed an auto switch for that. Our project aims to provide mining as a service, powered by green energy and backed with three more activities in case mining becomes no longer profitable, which are hosting/housing, energy resale and app development.
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:20]
Token owners receive a weekly payout to their ERC20 compatible wallets. After the end of the token sale, payouts will be sent monthly.
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:21]
The minimum amount is 200 TGA and the current price during this specific phase of the ICO is $0.70 per TGA.
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:22]
I hope this helps, feel free to ask us anything! You can read our whitepaper here: https://togacoin.com/whitepaper.pdf.
Richard Antonio, [02.11.18 15:23]
Maybe more scam here
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:25]
[In reply to Richard Antonio]
Well, you can easily research our team or you can visit our research and development office here in Tenerife 😁
Richard Antonio, [02.11.18 15:26]
Ok maam thank u 😁😁😁
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:27]
But definitely not a scam. Right now it ain’t that hard finding out which projects are scam or not 😅 just takes a bit of time to research (but that’s my personal opinion)
Richard Antonio, [02.11.18 15:31]
Its ok …i trust you even in the short time i met you
Sofia, [02.11.18 15:32]
Haha thank you! I feel honoured 😊 Again, feel free to ask us anything, that’s why we created this group 😄
We have to admit that we had fun reading the article, because we have nothing to hide. We have been transparent with our community and our investors so our conscience is clear. It’s OK if you don’t agree with our business model, but that does not turn us into a scam. It’s also OK if you want to stop scammers from taking people’s money but in order to do that efficently you have to do three things: change the logic you are currently using because it is not entirely correct, focus on REAL scams and last but definitely the most important, PLEASE DO A PROPER RESEARCH BEFORE throwing trash to the fan. If you have any doubt, feel free to join our Telegram Group and ask.
