Tezos was one of the most hyped in 2017 and it turned out to be one most disappointing. I had invested based on the craze created by all kinds of crypto people I trust, but investors are still waiting for the launch of the network and their tokens to be delivered, the founders and the head of the foundation broke up, and the latest announcement about investors being required to perform KYC / AML checks before they could receive tokens has caused a lot of arousal. Again.

What's the problem?

The biggest problem is the lack of clear communication about the timeline and the fulfillment of any given milestones so far. The Tezos software is closed source so far, so nobody can actually check the progress or audit the software from the outside. This is all really troubling, and I've actually written off my investment towards the end of last year already. Given these problems and the likely massive drop in Tezzies price, it's kinda unlikely anybody will ever make a positive return on their investment. Here are some more reasons:

• Lack of a community that would build applications on top of Tezos due to its closed-source nature
• Technological advancements of existing platforms that could make the mere existence of Tezos obsolete
• Uncertainty about compatibility of the platform to users' expectations
• EOS

Aaand some more

As if that wasn't enough, now the community is ranting about the announcement to require KYC and the hard fork that has been announced. While I don't necessarily think a hard fork is such a bad thing (except for splitting the small community), I really don't know why that's such an issue to so many.

It's not that "the standard" for ICOs has changed so much over the last year, it already was recommended to do KYC and AML last year despite so many people not doing it. It's kinda clear you'd like to avoid money laundering and terror financing, potentially at scale, no matter what type of token you're selling and whether it's classified as a security or not (see SEC's Ethereum ruling last week).

In addition, you're not actually giving the data to Tezos, but to Onfido, and typically your data wouldn't be stored on Tezos' servers, at least not all of it.

The best option

In any case, the best option for all the investors would be to just get a refund. It's bad enough that we (the investors) have missed out on opportunities within the last year, but getting some BTC or ETH back would surely be better than a bunch of almost useless tokens, KYCed or not. I hope that the funds are still under control of the foundation...