RE: Is McAfee's promotion of BEZOP.IO a scam, or just serious incompetence? Is there a difference?
Interesting enough, Deryck Jones, the CTO of Bezop, wrote a guide on how to not get scammed by an ICO:
My overall impression is that they are not a scam. They are just very amateur in presentation. Their business model is solid but not revolutionary in my opinion. I don't think that the target group, which is inexperienced offline merchants with no computer experience, will get settled in Bezop just because you don't need to know programming.
One thing that does really irritate me is their legal terms. It can only be two things. Either they are trying to find a loophole in which they won't be held accountable once they dump the project and take all the money. Or, and this is what I'm kind of hoping for, they want to comply to all local laws (whatever they may be in GB) and therefore HAVE to write that in their terms.
Ok enough said. Here are some concerning abstracts:
Page 20 of Whitepaper
From 6.1 LEGAL:
"[...] Bezop tokens cannot have a
performance or a particular value outside the Bezop Platform. Bezop tokens shall
therefore not be used or purchased for speculative or investment purposes. [...]"
6.1.3 IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
"[...] This white paper does not include or
contain any information or indication that might be considered as a
recommendation or that might be used as a basis for any investment decision.
Bezop tokens are just utility tokens which can be used only on the Bezop platform
and are not intended to be used as an investment. [...]
The offering of Bezop tokens on a trading platform is done in order to allow the use
of the Bezop platform and not for speculative purposes. [...]"
What are your thoughts?
@cryptolancer, thank you so much for the thoughtful comment on this.
The provisions that you cite, particularly 6.1, are really worrisome to me in terms of hoping to get my money back. They may not be planning on doing anything with exchanges.
I agree with you that it's not a scam in the following sense: I don't believe that the company officers have any criminal intent. They're not trying to rip anyone off, at least not intentionally. However, I think this is a good case for why ICOs should address the projects more like securities (e.g., the SEC rules). It's just too free-market and what we end up with are people that have a dream but no experience and so they're addressing this thing, quite literally, as a television informercial. That video I linked above is crazy, could you imagine a shareholder presentation by Berkshire Hathaway (or any serious company) where the leadership is talking about the company and prospects with inserted elevator music in the background?
None of the officers associated with Bezio have ever worked at a company that I even recognize, let alone held positions that would indicate leadership potential of a business like this. My two most favorite oddities here are:
Simon Warner who is their "Cheif Marketing Officer." They link to his profile on LinkedIn and that profile mentions nothing about Mr. Warner's affiliation with Bezio. What's on LinkedIn instead? A role as CEO of a marketing company and a concurrent career as a "Stage Hypnotist." Can't make this up. Look:
Their head of ecommerce (this is an ecommerce business) is Kevin Byrne. In the profile they write "the man is just amazing" because Mr. Byrne graduated with honors in 2006 with a college degree. That's really what they say on their website.
On LinkedIn, it turns out that the amazing Mr. Byrne reports that was self-employed and only offers a very vague description about what this self-employment was (started software company, built a pub and also some unnamed 7-figure "fashion" business) and in June of last year he became a Board Member and E Commerce Expert for Bezop.
So they may not be criminals, but it's definitely kid's sports here. The officers at Bezop haven't done anything other than hypnotize people on stage (and launching secret multi-million dollar brands while self employed and can't mention any details.
Wow! Also if you look at their Timeline, they want to have everything up and running for business by August 2018. Despite not even having their own wallet yet. I think that is a very naively optimistic approach.
This is my first ICO and i put 1500$ into it. I read about this ICO at McAfee's Twitter page and initially bought it because I knew there was going to be hype around it. But also because I thought this was an interesting project at first glance. Knowing all of this now, I will definetly dump all of my Bezops as soon as it (hopefully ever) hits the market. Either way this is a valuable lesson learned and I sure as hell will not invest in an ICO without researching every single bit of their project. This long-term investment turned into a short-term pump and dump really fast.
I wish us both best of luck and maybe we can even make a profit out of this - or at the very least come out even.
Edit: Btw, they changed their initial market release day from Jan 20th to Jan 23rd.
Thanks for all of this. Very educational as this is my first ICO as well, but I only put in 0.5 ETH. I also rushed in because of McAfee. Won't do THAT again. I never heard of MVP's before. Now I have.
I only started hesitating myself when their support turned out to be so bad. Never a response on their online chat link or even email. They have a Telegram group, but even there, the lone rep from Bezop seems(ed) overwhelmed.
So this is my contribution to a checklist of evaluating ICO's: check out their support before you jump in. See if you can reach them.
My experience with trade.io was much better, even though I couldn't make the minimum deposit. I wish I could have, they seemed much more legit. They responded almost instantly to their online chat. Like an ICO should. Kudos to trade.io.
Anyhow, lessons learned.