Crypto: Cutting out the Bull$hit

Welcome to the first CYBR blog. For those familiar with CYBR, you already know this is a “straight shooting” company. We are transparent, honest and don’t sugar coat anything. This initial entry discusses the “big lie” behind crypto companies and their fundraising practices. It will outline the myths and rampant deception that plagues the “pre-listing” process.

Let’s start with the BIG lie: “Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs)” are successful for most companies.

LIE. Total LIE.

Unless the exchange is Binance, Huobi or one of about four companies that mostly have “normalized” volume (we will cover this shortly), this is a total lie.

Most are familiar with CYBR’s debacle with Coineal. They are crooks (specifically CEO, Aaron Chen and Listing Director Oleg Postokin) but I will not go down that rabbit hole today. But Coineal is no different in the sense that they will do whatever they can to give the impression that a company has raised funds when it hasn’t. How does this lie unfold? There are several ways in which an IEO can be a total failure and appear successful.

Firstly, some exchanges just lie about what was raised. Move the status bar showing IEO sales and most people will take it on blind faith that money has been raised. (See Coineal). This creates excitement and FOMO so investors jump in once the token lists on the exchange. The price goes up, everyone is excited and then the company and/or the exchange dumps all of their tokens. Digipharm is an excellent example of a company who found themselves in this position. But what could they do? They hadn’t raised any money. They were being held over a barrel at gunpoint and if they went public Coineal would de-list them. So they played along. And in the end when their token price dumped, they were left with nothing but a bill to Coineal and that was essentially the end.

But they weren’t alone. RedFox claims to have raised a lot more. In truth they raised less than $100k and I have the PMs between myself and their executives to prove this. They had to raise outside capital to “move the bar” and Coineal just claimed that those private sales were part of the IEO. They weren’t, but again, it provided RedFox with just enough money to pay its debt to Coineal and not be delisted (again, by going public). Investors FOMO’d in, the tokens were dumped and another IEO perpetuated the myth that IEOs were a good thing.

As I stated previously, though; it’s not just Coineal. IDAX is being accused of scamming projects out of nearly $5M USD. Kudos to Crypto Market Ads for coming forward. You can read more about IDAX’s alleged fraudulent activities here: https://icolink.com/ico-link-blog/press-releases/idax-pro-scammed-crypto-projects.html

I will not mention names here, but I have personally heard from no less than three Market Makers (MMs) that LA Token is as bad as the rest when it comes to fraudulent IEOs. I will leave this here as I personally think LA Token is so shady, I’ve turned them down no less than 5 times and would never have even considered an IEO much less listing with them. Names like “Guido” and “Jimmy the Fish” come to mind when even speaking with their representatives. But I digress…

So how else do crypto companies lie about their fundraising? Well early on, I was approached by numerous companies that wanted to do token swaps. I thought this was great because other successful companies wanted OUR tokens. This had to mean we were being viewed as valuable, right?! Yeah, no. Some of these token swap offers were from companies that weren’t even legitimate. Think of it this way: if you asked me for $250k in tokens for free I would laugh you out of the room. But if you had a “company” and wanted to “swap”, well that is technically “investment” which means I just moved my “soft cap” bar to the right. It appears that I have sold $250k in tokens. And if I am a company looking to get in and out, what a perfect way to dupe the investor community create some hype and dump and run the first chance I get. I’m going to call out some “great” guys in the Telegram CEOKlub room that excel at these kind of practices. Please don’t FUD CYBR too much after reading this gentlemen as I will share the screenshots and “contract” offers many of you provided.

And this brings me to the International Blockchain (IBC) Group and Mario Nawfal. A quick history lesson: I initially ran into the IBC when I started CYBR and needed legal advice. I will be polite and not mention the gentleman who reached out (from IBC), but let’s just say as I’ve learned and grown, CYBR would have been in violation of the SEC, the company would probably have had its assets seized and I would be looking at jail time. So there’s that. I then (briefly) brought on “advisors” from IBC for fee that had outstanding relationships with “top exchanges”. These fantastic exchanges included the likes of LAToken, Coineal, IDAX…you can see where this is going.

Lets cut to the chase though shall we. If you visit the IBC website (ibcgroup.io) you will see (in big font) this motto: “Transparency and integrity is what led to our success, probably making IBC the leader in fundraising.” Read that again. I have a ton of emails from the IBC CEO, Mario Nawfal. The man hawks every product and service that they have. IBC does it all. Jack-of-all-trades; master of none. And what’s worse (see Mario’s LinkedIn profile) is that he makes outrageous claims that paint the IEO as the savior of crypto companies. This is EXACTLY the kind of pervasive bull$hit that is continuing to dupe crypto companies AND investors into buying in to the lies and drinking the proverbial Kool Aid. Keep up the great work, IBC.

On the subject of Market Makers (MMs). A good exchange usually equates to a good MM. Exception: Kucoin. One company apparently sent $2M USD to their MMs (as directed and required by Kucoin) and the money disappeared. This is obviously not good business. A comparative example though is IDEX who doesn’t require a specific MM but in our case recommended Liquid Malta. This company is honest, transparent and trustworthy. They came highly recommended (after thorough due diligence) and I cannot speak more highly of them or IDEX.

This is supposed to be a blog and not a book (that will happen in time) so for now let me just list other things to be on the lookout for that do not pass the “sniff test”:

Miscellaneous bogus “stuff”:

LinkedIn profiles for “Listing Directors” that have no credentials. They are faux profiles and if you as a company are foolish enough to spend your investment funds on a “ghost”, you should not be running a company. Period.

Telegram “Listing Partners” that approach you. “For the low, low price of 10 BTC, I can get you one the following ten “top exchanges”. I call these people one of two tings: “liars” or “listing whores”. How can you focus your time and attention on the company you are “listing” if you work with every exchange under the sun? End of rant.

Telegram “CEOs”: All Telegram accounts have a unique Telegram name. Mine for example is “CEO_CYBR_cybrtoken_io”. I will never ask you for money or even discuss investment directly unless you have reached out to me first. But you know who might? “CEO_CYBR_cybrtoken_i0”. Or “CEO_CYBR_cybrt0ken_io”. The profiles says “CEO_CYBR”. The picture is the same. Look closely at the actual Telegram “name” and notice the substitutions of “0” for “o”. Yep. That’s the subtle difference and it costs people thousands of dollars a day.

Misnomers:

ICOBench is a reliable source for ICOs/IEOs. Please. ICOBench will give out a great rating to any company that applies for the most part. Then the numbers go down. When you ask why this is happening, you are instructed to engage one of their “professionals” (for fee). If you do so, your ICO/IEO rating magically goes up. If you do not…

CoinMarketCap (CMC): CMC is on the right track. But they have a history of showing exchanges with volume that is primarily due to internal “wash” trading by the exchange. These exchanges do not do a fraction of the volume “organically” and it once again gives the crypto companies and investors a false belief that exchanges like CoinTiger, IDAX, BitForex and others are the exchanges that companies need to trade on. If you want to see exchanges that have “normalized” (aka REAL) volume, go to Coingecko.com and take a look at the exchanges that have real volume: https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges

“Events”: How many crypto related events do we need? Singapore. Malta, Miami. New York. You know who makes money at these events? The people who host them. And if you are fortunate enough like CYBR was to meet a “top exchange” like Coineal there….well, you can see where this is going. Enough…these events are crap 99% of the time. Companies aren’t finding large investors and the companies are peddling pipe dreams and white papers disguised as marketing collateral for the most part. Show me a working product or stay at home…but this is a blog for another time.

Folks, the primary reason companies go under consist of 1. Not having enough cash flow (operational costs, development, marketing) and 2. Not having any revenue. 95% or more of these companies have no money other that what YOU as the investors provide them. They generally had no working capital to start with and as the IEO fraud has been thoroughly addressed above, you should see why they are going to fail. No money means no working products. No money means no development or expansion. No money means no marketing for the products they don’t have. In a nutshell, if the company doesn’t have an existing prototype of some sort, do NOT invest. CYBR already had hundreds of thousands of dollars in research and development, a working product and enterprise sales BEFORE we even entered the crypto space. This should be a fundamental requirement for any investor. Otherwise, you are not investing; you are gambling. At least go to Vega$ or Monaco where you can get free drinks while you watch your money evaporate.

I could go on and on. And at some point I will. But you can see just from this initial blog that fraud is rampant, most exchanges are shite and in an industry that desperately needs integrity and ethics to attract institutional investors and grow, it has a LONG way to go.

Until proven otherwise, these are the ONLY exchanges that CYBR endorses at this time. Not to say they might not have issues of their own, but they are not on our blacklist:

Binance, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Coinbase, OKex, Bitfinex, Oceanex, IDEX and Bitstamp.

As you were; back to another day in crypto paradise. Godspeed!