This is going to be my first post on Steemit and I wanted to make a good topic for everyone to enjoy.
My
Background ( 1.5 years in cryptoworld )
I am a day trader on several exchanges and also own a decent size mining setup. 15 rigs. Mining ETH.
My day started out on May 30th 2017 at around 7pm. I logged into slack and was preparing for the ICO of BAT.
In case you don't know what BAT was or is.
BAT - Basic Attention Token . It's a new coin that had its ICO today May 31st 2017. Its lead dev team is Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy. They developed Javascript, Mozilla, and evernote to name a few. Long story short the Cryptocurrency looked good and had a solid team. So I thought why not invest a good chunk of money for a decent sized return on my money. So i did as everyone else followed the pdf guide and added eth to wallet and was ready to send at specific time on May 31st 2017. At this point I got several family members involved too who liked the dev team of BAT.
As the time neared around 6am Pacific we were all drinking coffee and had the web browsers open and ready to participate in the ICO. Keep in mind this was the first ICO i've done with ETH.
So the time hits about 1 min before BAT ICO launch. Then BOOM. Ethereum blockchain and https://etherscan.io had a hiccup. For a second I thought because of all the madness maybe just maybe etherscan was getting DDOSed. So i ran over to my mining rigs and checked if they were all online. Ironically the blockchain updating was halted for about 3-5minutes. I thought to myself "What the hell is going on???" "Did China just wipe us out?" I quickly refreshed my browser and so did about 3 other people I know. Nothing on the screens. No updates nada Ethereum blockchain not updating on the website. It's like it was frozen. I even tried to send the Ether tokens to specific address for crowdsale after about 5 mins of no info from blockchain. Sure enough error code came back and nothing. About 30 minutes later the etherscan.io started working and the blockchain was updating again. I also just found out the crowdsale was over and the donation max was reached. I thought to myself how in the hell and why?
At this point about 2,000 users in the BAT slack forums are going nuts. Complaining and going crazy about how it was over in 3 seconds. Some people didn't even know what happened until it was all over. Some people probably still do not know what happened which is why I'm writing this article. I'm taking time out of my day to give you guys/girls some quality info.
So what did happen and how does this apply to the rest of ICO/ETH and crypto world.
- BAT TOKEN ICO was a complete insider trading job. This was not a initial coin offering for the public. This was a marketing ploy with private funding by greedy people.
We can start with the facts
A - 10 Minutes to ICO launch etherscan.io stops working and ETH blockchain stops updating.
B - Without a updating blockchain people don't know what block number they chain is on.
C - Lots of people just guessed on time zones and current time calculations on when to send money to address
D - The only way to stop the blockchain from updating is by disconnecting the internet of the current mining farm/rig temporary cutting it off from updating to the network.
E - All BAT tokens are held by as few as under 200 different people. Did each person put in a large amount? Or perhaps know the dev team or just a group of mining whales.
- BAT TOKEN ICO was a complete insider trading job. This was not a initial coin offering for the public. This was a marketing ploy with private funding by greedy people.
After looking at some of the information you can see that a small % of people own a very large amount of BAT.
How could they pull this off? and How can others pull this off? And how is this bad for ICO launches with ETH.
- You have coin you want to launch and have all the hype built about it. Everyone is looking for the contracts to be sent and start when ETH hits block number XXXXX. If you have enough contacts with big mining pools. Or you simply are a mining pool and want to grab a nice portion of the sale yourself. One would do the following.
- Wait for the blocknumbers to be announced for the specific ICO. Whenever the crowdsale is going on you would be in contact with the mining farm or be the worker with the block being hashed you would disable the internet connection temporarily from it. This would allow the blockchain to be temporarily frozen from updates. Nobody would know exactly when blocknumber XXXX started. Essentially you would be first in line with a ticket in your hand to buy however much you wanted. Then you coordinate the buys and send them in as the farm/rig comes backonline to update the blockchain. Everyone else was frozen in time for the past 15-30 minutes wondering why it stopped. You on the other hand had just sent the required Ether to create the contracts and now the limit is up. Nobody else can buy into the crowdsale. You are now the proud owner of X amount of tokens of whatever ICO is lauching.
Now why would you call out a ICO if it were really a Private fundraising event? The reasons are countless but basically for marketing strategy and to gauge market value of what your about to launch and keep it all in house. You see in stocks we have the SEC and regulations. In Crypto world its unregulated these guys can do whatever they want when they want. I love the volatility but lets be transparent. ICO's are almost all going to be rigged at the end of the day.
This is a concerning issue for me as a investor and day trader. I normally would never even post articles but I figured since i wasted alot of time and lost out on a chance to make some good money, I'd share some wisdom.
If you would like to donate please do so. Maybe it will help me write some more articles.
Either way thanks for reading my post.
Happy Trading.
-S-
Like the article? Please resteem it spread the word.!
- Wait for the blocknumbers to be announced for the specific ICO. Whenever the crowdsale is going on you would be in contact with the mining farm or be the worker with the block being hashed you would disable the internet connection temporarily from it. This would allow the blockchain to be temporarily frozen from updates. Nobody would know exactly when blocknumber XXXX started. Essentially you would be first in line with a ticket in your hand to buy however much you wanted. Then you coordinate the buys and send them in as the farm/rig comes backonline to update the blockchain. Everyone else was frozen in time for the past 15-30 minutes wondering why it stopped. You on the other hand had just sent the required Ether to create the contracts and now the limit is up. Nobody else can buy into the crowdsale. You are now the proud owner of X amount of tokens of whatever ICO is lauching.
Update. 6-4-17
I'd just like to update you guys. It's been about a week now since the ICO. I've Seen prices as high as 28-30 cents per BAT. its on Bittrex exchange right now. Must have felt good to be an insider one of the 200 people who got a share at 3 cents. to 6-8 times your money in a week on something not proven.
Awesome analysis, damnn.. who are those whales? They can really manipulate the market like this. Its pretty scary
Those whales are the BAT new user pool and the BAT developer pool. Their creation was known before the ICO took place and detailed inside the T&Cs. This article is either woefully under-researched or OP is intentionally attempting to have you believe a false narrative.
People like you disgust me. I have no further comment.
Why? Because your post is weak and creates disinformation? Because you have no rebuttal to make whatsoever? Because there is no evidence to support any of your arguments?
You posted fake news.
Edit: And you upvoting your own comment doesn't fool me. No one would support you when it is clear that you are telling lies.
Up voting your own comment seems to be common.. .even the guy with the argument below is doing it.. . . Who cares lol
Followed.
Look at this ICO, we have a chance for good profit)
Bancor Network Token (BNT) Contribution & Token Creation Terms
https://steemit.com/bancor/@aivanouski/bancor-network-token-bnt-contribution-and-token-creation-terms
They setup minimum of 1hr limit, for prevent BAT ICO case.
So... If you had read the website, you'd had seen that those 2 big addresses are managed by BAT's team, as clearly stated there (200M for development pool + 300M for user growth).
Also, a high % of the 180ish transactions that entered in the ICO were not from whales but account for small amounts from regular investors, which you do not seem to note in your theory.
Sloppy of you not checking basic facts and claiming this to be the truth, when you have no decisive evidence.
I'm new to Steemit and you have no idea how much I appreciate your article. I read I think 7 or 8 articles before I read yours' and Trust me all the articles that I read before looked like they were posted only with one intention, Getting upvotes. They had no value to their post whatsoever. I really want to thank you, that you took your time to put this amazing artcile together, very informative. I'm not only new on Steemit, but I'm new to this whole cryptoworld, and this article tells me that beware, there are scammers out there. Once again I just want to thank you @swayzeee, for this post.
Thanks man. I really appreciate those comments. I do enjoy sharing information to others and had such a strong feeling about this situation I went out of my norm and wrote a article on it. After the feedback I'm getting from people who want more and actually donating me money for taking time to share info is ground breaking. I love steemit concept and think some people can really have a daily use for this program to make serious cash.
If OP had bothered to do any decent research he would know that those two addresses are the BAT new user pool (i.e. free tokens for new users) and the developer pool. They were created before the token sale. Their existence is highlighted in the T&Cs of the BAT ICO sale. There is nothing nefarious about them. It is 100% transparent. I don't know how OP could have overlooked this so I suspect he is trying to have you believe a false narrative for his own purpose.
Really really interesting article and insight on the ICO. Makes me hesitant to invest, would you suggest investing in ETHEREUM!?
I think ETH will grow. But only to a point. It won't be bigger than BTC. IMHO.
True! Thanks for the insight. Do you believe it would be a good investment to throw some money at?
Swayzeee! You made it bro! I made that post for you.
Followed you as well.
Thanks bud
No problem. Looking forward to some good ico advice. Watch your tags! Use ones that are trending.
Can I change my tags? Or they are set in stone?
You can edit them. I'd use cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, steemit, life, blog
I lied ethereum not Bitcoin.
Also think about doing a proper introduction post.
I don't get how I can edit the tags? Should I just repost under proper intro?
Open your post. Near the footer should be an edit option. Click that. (I think.)
Thanks I got it. I'm such a noob with steemit.
Great post, they have a solid team. What they don't have is a large community of crypto and none crypto users like on here, they also don't have users who can buy the tokens at a reasonable price as it's being bought up in large chunks by institutional investors. Steem is currently 1 dollar, very affordable and available. Time will tell anyway, competition is healthy
Very true the entire steem community seems to me to be shaping up faster than anyone thought.
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Intresante those analyze
Great post...:)
@swayzeee
Followed.
I've been in the cryptospace for a while, trying to gain skills in picking quality projects. Thanks for your quality publication.
It's not a quality publication. It's woefully inaccurate and under-researched.
I was following in Real Time the BAT ICO, and my experience was a bit different. My parity node was up all the time receiving updates. Most of the BAT was distributed privately before the ICO started as you said. The 25% share is probably from BAT team themselves so the Cap was already near Max when ICO started. A really lot of people confused Gas with Gas Price, putting a lot of Gas on transactions a standard Gas Price. People who have correctly scheduled the transaction and put a Gas Price over 400G got mined and included on the limited available BATs. It looks like Team already have the majority of money from private investors and choose to sell not over ICO but on exchanges when the price was a lot higher.
The top two addresses are BAT. The address holding 25% of tokens is the new user pool (i.e. free tokens for new users) and the other one is set aside for developers. There is nothing nefarious about them.
You have a point here about the BAT, starting to regret my initial involvement a bit.