Why I sold my Veritaseum (and will never reinvest).

Introduction

I recently sold my veritaseum and garnered a 78% profit. I got into "veri" because of Clif High's recommendation.

Clif High speaks very highly of Reggie Middleton and he's a big advocate of Veritaseum since it's inception. I trust Clif implicitly however, the buck stops with me. I put my family's money into these investments and if I lose, it's in my head, not Clif's or Reggie's.

Plagiarizing Veritaseum

I've done a lot of homework on Veritaseum and invested in the hype but truth be told, I still don't get it. It doesn't really seem to do anything that can't be easily plagiarized by a more all encompassing crytpo released in the near future (or one that's already here which just needs to be tweaked). Maybe one that also incorporated a multi-asset class wallet as part of the exchange (hint, hint... Anybody?).

Derivative Apocalypse

According to Reggie, Veritaseum's primary function is to allow clients to trade derivative instruments in a decentralized fashion (i.e. Peer to peer) and cut out the middleman/banks/brokerages. Conceptually, it sounds like a fantastic idea. It's a 2 quadrillion derivatives market that exists however, it's leveraged up to the high heavens (2016 Global GDP is only 75 Trillion Dollars by comparison) and let's face it, is on borrowed time. If one part of the derivative domino falls, it's lights out for the entire financial market, remember how close AIG was to destroying the global financial market? Well it's gotten bigger and uglier since 2008 and I wouldn't be counting on derivatives being around after the public outrage post the next financial Apocalypse. Besides, Isn't blockchain technology supposed to be about returning to honest money?

Either way, surely there are platforms that already do peer to peer exchange that could be tweaked to incorporate other financial asset classes including derivatives, etherdelta, Bisq, 0x, BitShares, KyberNetwork, and Omega One anyone? While for instance you can't trade derivative instruments on etherdelta at the moment, it's got a big name in the crypto community already, the exchange is stable and will likely expand into other asset classes as time goes by. Derivatives wouldn't be too much of a stretch, it's all software for heavens sake.

The etherdelta/veritaseum comparison is in the same vein as the pillar wallet comparison, which is in the preliminary stages of building an exchange mechanism/wallet between the top 50 cryptos by market cap however, one already exists, is up and running and works perfectly fine, it's called Exodus. Exodus wallet already does around 12 cryptos (and growing) which you can trade between, great interface, mature product and the management team seem switched on, oh and they're responsive (I've written to them with a few suggestions). Pillar is in it's preliminary design phase, in addition to holding crytos, Pillar is trying to attempt to consolidate giant social media platforms (facebook, twitter etc) into the same wallet, a feat which I'm sure other have tried and failed at, yet pillars market cap is increasing. Are people insane, I don't get it?

What is eh Veritaseum again Reggie?

Back to Veritaseum. I was unimpressed with Reggie's interview with Clif High. His body language is all wrong, he's slouched back in his leather sofa chair and not sitting up, enthusiastically banging the veritaseum drum. Clif seems to think that his product is more scalable than Reggie did himself during the interview (see 12mins 10 secs) and Reggie didn't really seem to describe what Veri actually does very well. As far as I can make out, it's a decentralized derivatives exchange mechanism that gives you exposure to underlying assets (i.e. derivatives) but not the assets themselves. So instead of trading futures and options through brokers and then the comex for instance, one would trade directly peer to peer. However, veritasuem isn't robust enough at the moment to allow you to buy the real assets themselves (i.e. you can't buy stocks directly and own them using Veritaseum). I think Clif should actually know what the product does before "leading the witness".

The Veri Big Elephant in the Room

One thing I would like to understand a bit better is how does the counterparty risk part of all this work? If you're a big hedge fund and you want to trade a huge derivative instrument, at the moment the banks are more or less obliged to take on the trade and later hedge the aforementioned derivative against another counterparty (e.g. an insurance company) but the bank has to wear the risk until the insurance company decides to take the opposite side of the Hedge Funds bet. How does this work in veritaseum and will there be enough liquidity in the veri pool to execute all derivative trades or will there be failed bids? Does Reggie accommodate listed and unlisted OTC derivative instruments?

I'm a simple man
and I still don't get why veritaseum is special...

• I don't get why more and more veri tokens are available on coinmarketcap.com everytime I check it.
• I don't get why people would invest a lot of capital in a derivatives industry that has a limited shelf life.
• I don't get why Reggie owns such a significant portion of the tokens himself.
• I don't get why veritaseum still isn't listed on any major exchange.
• I don't get why veri only has 3 people in the entire team including Reggie, only one developer and an analyst that's too ashamed to show his face!
• I don't get why the Veritaseum CEO doesn't even seem to be thinking about the next phase of veritaseum development.

Listen to Reggie respond to Clifs question regarding buying and owning a simple stock certificate, "Veritaseum can accommodate it, theoretically", so basically veritaseum is not built to accommodate buying single stock cash certificates? It's just got a narrow focus in an area which is going to implode and he's not making provisions for phase 2.0 of veritaseum.

Red flags anyone? :grimacing:

I sold my veri immediately after the interview between Reggie and Clif and I was "veri" happy with the returns. It's down significantly from when I sold it ($157 USD) to today's price of around $100 USD.

I wish Veritaseum holders the best of luck and in the meantime, I hope Reggie doesn't disappoint the thousands of people who believed in his vision and bought into his coin.