As some of you know, our team exists in multiple countries and we operate using the wonders of technology to advance the project. The core members know each other well enough that we could be called friends. In reality, some members of the team have a keen eye for the crypto market and the rules of lawlessness that composes the Peer-to-Peer principle behind most cryptocurrencies. Other members are more enthusiastic in their dealings with the crypto world and especially eager when negotiating with Exchanges such as Shortex offering their « services » for IEO and private investors. As we had stated on Bitcointalk Forums, most of the team was skeptical going down the IEO route.
Beyond the « I told you so » we took some time to profoundly analyze the methods used by these project eaters calling themselves exchanges. We would like to warn any projects to run away from all these white collar thieves selling you moon rocks only to find out you've been buying radioactive dust from Chernobyl.
What these people all have in common is their tactics. They lie. That's tactic #1. To better illustrate the type of lies they use, here's what you might encounter in your search for IEO partnership.
Good guy, bad guy routine. Before you buy their services, the good guy will lie about how much you'll make, what's to be expected and they'll sugar coat it all. Once you've bought their services you'll get the bad guy routine. He'll tell you it's not their fault, it's your fault, or someone's else fault (bad time for crypto). It's all a giant act, because in this situation there's only one loser, the project who believed in them to begin with. Whatever happens to these project eaters, they still make their money and as we speak they are chasing more projects to lie to in order to sell them a quick trip to paradise that they will never see.
Shortex did just that with one of our team members who wanted to contribute to the project's advancement by investing in IEO. He understood there were risks and did it with good intents. Sadly, good intents don't seem to be the norm of behavior in the crypto market. Of course, once Shortex received their payment, communication dimmed down to near oblivion. Surely enough, once we began asking questions they engaged in their roleplay scenario and tried to pin responsibility on their client. By then the team knew what was going on and took a step back and looked into Shortex and other parasites of the sort. We quickly understood the game they were playing at, so we started doing things differently. We contacted other projects working with Shortex (their list of clients is open information, note for later) and we started to see how right our suspicions were. None of the projects we approached were satisfied with Shortex, not a single one. Some of them even called them « Gangsters ». By then we had a pretty good idea that even though they had done nothing to promote our project, we would never get our money back either – as it's not exactly the habit of gangsters to give back anything.
If only the story ended there. Shortex then contacted us and told us we had breached the NDA and thus terminated our contract. That's when the fun began. We spent lengthy hours telling them we had taken all the precautions to never discuss sensitive information or trade secrets that would potentially breach an NDA. They never really had anything to respond to that. Because, they don't know what an NDA is. Kudos to them. I loosely quote « Shortex is not made of crypto-enthusiasts but of real life experts in the financial sector. » I guess those real life experts don't know what an NDA is and how you actually break it. What they did know for sure, is that our contract was terminated – a wrongful termination we will fight legally if we have to. Sad to say, we don't really believe they are at all worried about legality. What we do believe is that they are sick individuals leeching off the hopes of projects to sell them false hope – all so they may fatten their own pockets undetected without delivering anything but words.
This was a hit for Orionix as it impacted one of our own – financially and emotionally. Orionix is here to stay and we still have many ideas, many campaigns to run and we're determined to succeed. However, for cryptocurrency to ever be a good influence in the world, we, the people, need to condemn and shame these methods which are bringing doom and gloom to the crypto scene. Without honest work, honest behavior, honest communication and honest pricing, the world of crypto will fall down an endless ditch that is called greed.
Again, we would like to reassure those who have invested in ORX that your money was not used in the Shortex deal. They were private funds. Orionix's project is still on track and even though we have been busy combating the enemy, we are preparing some important campaigns! We would like to reward our community with ORX tokens for any actions taken to disrupt the fake reputation of Shortex for the sake of alerting as many people as possible as the unscrupulous methods of these parasites are slowly eating away at projects which have potential. Because of exchanges like Shortex many teams we communicated with were at a loss and were clearly left with crushed hopes and empty wallets.
Thank you for taking your time to read this open letter from the Orionix team. Please share this information around, as every small action counts and might help some projects be spared from unfair loss.