> I missed the part where this was ever a good project.
Agreed.
> Cryptocurrency mining has to use the cheapest available power
Mostly agreed.
> A big problem with successful ICOs is that the companies immediately have too many shareholders to let them pivot.
An ICO doesn't give you shareholders. Some ICOs outright call the money you give them "contributions" or "donations". (Tezos, who had a very successful coin offering and then hit somewhat similar challenges as this lot was very explicit: "Any contribution made to TEZOS during the Contribution Period as described below is qualified as a non-refundable donation...") But even the ones who label the money as an investment aren't giving out anything remotely resembling ownership, control, or voting rights to the purchasers.
I don't see any reason why a pivot wouldn't be possible. And, cynically, a lot of ICOs do pivot almost immediately, from "building the product they promised" to "spending the money they raised". :)
> not with 100s of retail shareholders demanding progress
They can "demand" all they like, but what can they do? They have no ownership, no control, and no votes. The company is apparently owned by one Matthias Woestmann; as the article notes, he doesn't even have to listen to the founders. He certainly doesn't need to listen to the people who participated in the ICO.
Agree to all of those points. The part where any "investors" essentially have no say, control, or equity in the company would certainly defy any possible reason for a sentient angel or corporate investor to make an investment. There's an abundance of red flags that people need to seriously look at.
Other gems from the article:
> “I know most of the I.C.O.s out there are either fraud or won’t deliver on their promises,” he said. Envion, he believed, was different.
Uhh...
> Seif Shieshakly, an adviser to Envion who is based in the United Arab Emirates, said that the I.C.O. structure had “cut out so many middlemen” and created new investment opportunities, but that “the lack of regulations, again because of the infancy of I.C.O.s, carries risks that regulated environments would generally have far less of.”
This one again speaks for itself.
> The investors have also turned up evidence that some of the founders sold their own tokens before the current mess spilled into the public.
Wow... so I guess with a lack of regulation, insider trading is suddenly cool again.
> But he said the funds added up to only $50 million at this point, not the $100 million that the founders had claimed. Mr. Woestmann said the founders hadn’t raised as much money as they claimed. And the declining price of virtual currencies has dropped the value of the various digital tokens Envion is holding.
So they not only willingly defrauded investors, but also basically used the money like a bank instead of a company, and just purchased other crypto assets to trade and earn from.
> Jessica Smith, a 21-year-old in England, said she had put $28,000 into Envion — almost all of the money she had made over the last two years of trading cryptocurrencies nearly full time. She said she was now looking for new work.
That's a very painful lesson about putting all your eggs in one basket, but one she will probably learn from.
I found the term "contributions" odd, and when Googling it, found the following, which seems to be the epitome of the sort of ICO you describe, the "Useless Ethereum Token":
Agreed.
> Cryptocurrency mining has to use the cheapest available power
Mostly agreed.
> A big problem with successful ICOs is that the companies immediately have too many shareholders to let them pivot.
An ICO doesn't give you shareholders. Some ICOs outright call the money you give them "contributions" or "donations". (Tezos, who had a very successful coin offering and then hit somewhat similar challenges as this lot was very explicit: "Any contribution made to TEZOS during the Contribution Period as described below is qualified as a non-refundable donation...") But even the ones who label the money as an investment aren't giving out anything remotely resembling ownership, control, or voting rights to the purchasers.
I don't see any reason why a pivot wouldn't be possible. And, cynically, a lot of ICOs do pivot almost immediately, from "building the product they promised" to "spending the money they raised". :)
> not with 100s of retail shareholders demanding progress
They can "demand" all they like, but what can they do? They have no ownership, no control, and no votes. The company is apparently owned by one Matthias Woestmann; as the article notes, he doesn't even have to listen to the founders. He certainly doesn't need to listen to the people who participated in the ICO.