Bitcoiin, the cryptomoney sold by Steven Seagal
The actor could be committing something illegal, as the new digital currency is generating more doubts than confidence.
In the middle of last year, just before his publicized bout with Connor McGregor, boxer Floyd Mayweather was one of the first celebrities to sign up for the promotion of cryptomoney, earning an astronomical sum in profits for it. The rise in digital currencies in recent months - Bitcoin burst all the gauges and then fell with the same intensity - caused the United States Security and Exchange Commission to complain about it last November.
Bitcoiin, Seagal's cryptcoin
The SEC warned in a statement that "celebrities and others are using social networks to encourage the public to buy stock and other investments. Such sponsorships could be illegal if the nature, source and amount of any compensation payments, directly or indirectly, are not disclosed by the sponsoring company.
I legit love this:
Steven Seagal is endorsing an extremely shady cryptocurrency ICO
It's called "bitcoiin" (two "i"s)
... but it's on the Ethereum blockchain (lol)
the affiliate payout is depicted in this handy definitely-not-a-pyramid-scheme pyramid chart pic.twitter.com/ja7HnnGeqE
Today we met with the umpteenth' celebrity' to sign up for the car sponsoring a cryptomontage. No less than Steven Seagal, an action movie actor who had his golden era between the 80's and 90's with blockbusters such as Alerta Maxima, and who today is best known for his reality and his friendship with Vladimir Putin, who granted him Russian nationality. Seagal is the sponsor of Bitcoiin, a new digital currency. And no, we have not mistakenly typed' bitcoin', but the coin is called this way, a plagiarism of name to which only one more' i' has been added.
As we can see on the Web, what surrounds this cryptomoney could be what the SEC is complaining about precisely, since Bitcoiin2Gen's website does not list any details of who is actually behind the digital currency. His domain was registered in 2015 in Panama - we began - but he changed hands on January 8. The curious thing is that despite the name, bitcoiin has nothing to do with the popular Bitcoin, but the Bitcoiin2Gen website points out that it is based on the blockchain of another well-known cryptomoneda, the Ethereum.
A doubtful investment
Seagal, which is the "world ambassador" of the bitcoiin, sponsors an ICO, an Initial Offer of Currency where the company offers to buy it at a very low starting price, accompanied by a pyramid scheme of investments and a press release that mixes the Zen wisdom of Steven Seagal with the technicality of cryptodivisas.
On Twitter, of course, it has not taken them long to use humor to describe Seagal's bitcoiin and sponsorship of the dubious digital coin. Will the bitcoiin ICO be as successful as Mayweather sponsored last summer? Or does it rather look more murky than the possibility of seeing the old action hero back to cinema as his Mercenary counterparts?