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Comment by jdormit | Hacker News Reader

> A group of Bay Area programmers this year used an I.C.O. to raise $35 million for their project, an anonymous web browser called Brave

As in Brave, the new browser from Brendan Eich (founder of Mozilla, famously invented JavaScript in 10 days)? Hardly a scam...

Either the reporter didn't do their research or twisted the facts to fit their story.

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The scam was not so much with Brave, but how the BAT token was distributed. There were 184 investors in the BAT ICO -- is this a fair distribution for what is proposed to be the new attention economy?

The scam is in the back end of how ICO's are run. Even if the project is legit, doesn't mean the token distribution was legit. $35m in 30 seconds??

More details: https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-podcast-blog/a-look-at-the-ba...

https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/6lnrf6/screenca...

How is that any different from issuing shares privately to VCs? It seems to me the only fundamental difference is with the technology. Things like voting and vesting can be done on a blockchain, so that's not a limitation. There isn't any rule that says a blockchains token distribution has to be "fair". Granted, a more "even" initial distribution makes sense for a currency, but it you're treating crypto tokens as shares in a company, those "rules" need not apply.

The difference is in how much value must be added before VCs can sell their holdings onto the public.

Many ICOs give deep discounts to "partners" who may not have even spent anything, but are just used as an endorsement and social proof. Within days those partners will be dumping on others.

I suppose by definition VCs look very similar to ICO "partners", but the latter's due diligence will rest entirely on finding the greater fool, whereas the VC will seek to establish whether the team can actually deliver, product fit, etc.

Thats said, I'm sure there are a handful of exceptions to both VCs and ICO partners.

> 184

Diffused to over 19,000 holders now:

https://etherscan.io/token/BAT#balances

Exactly. The narrative was all about strangers on the internet, so it would have been inconvenient to mention that the project is headed by the former CTO of Mozilla. Or to mention that the Brave browser was built long before the ICO happened.

Both of these facts mitigate the risk that the creators are scammers with no intention of using the funds for the designated project. But it doesn't fit the narrative!

As in Brave, the company whose business model is siphoning ad revenue from publishers.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Don't make stuff up. We never proposed "siphoning" as our default state is blocking. Unless you think users have no rights to block, then enabling automated micro-payments for content is not siphoning "from", it helps publishers.

We talked about indirect ads via Brave, too -- these would pay publishers a greater share than they get from programmatic ads today -- but haven't done them and we won't without publisher opt-in. We're focusing on user-private (not in any publisher ad slot) ads first.

>Either the reporter didn't do their research or twisted the facts to fit their story.

It is quite obvious it is both.

- Dogecoin creator was always a cryptocurrency skeptic. The article even admits it but papers over it.

- Blockchain =/= Bitcoin. The article insinuates that any blockchain-related startups are built on top of Bitcoin.

- ICOs =/= Bitcoin.

- "early adopters often used it to buy drugs, weapons, or other illicit goods on the dark web"

- "including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, who last week called Bitcoin a “fraud,”" This line makes it clear what NY Times' outlook is, they quote an opponent of cryptocurrencies like he is an expert.

He may not be an expert on cryptocurrencies, but he's certainly an expert on markets in some ways.

The NY Times recently restructured their reporting operations in a way that reduced the amount of fact-checking done[1]. FWIW I'm a daily reader and definitely feel the quality has suffered.

[1] https://www.poynter.org/news/new-york-times-copy-desk-top-ed...

So much this, the whole article is unbelievably biased against crypto (not to say misinformed or intentionally deceitful).

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