
Lies and deceit in the Blockchain and AI industries - imartin2k
https://medium.com/@alasaarela/everybody-lies-in-the-blockchain-and-ai-industries-da0a4aabc3e9
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jillesvangurp
I've been working with the author of this article for the last five years on
building Inbot taking care of the backend and technical strategy. For most of
this year we've been planning to do an ICO and a few weeks ago we decided to
not proceed with that for essentially the reasons outlined in the article.

We are actually keeping the utility token but are no longer planning to do an
ICO with that. The plan is for this to be a proper utility token that our
customers can buy (using fiat or crypto) to buy services from our user base.
This makes it a proper utility token where the value is coupled to economic
activity in our platform. Simply put, it's a function of how much our
customers are spending on these tokens.

We are launching the token on the Stellar platform. This is after having
prototyped our token on Ethereum as an ERC 20 token. Smart contracts have a
lot of potential but the current state of affairs in Ethereum makes that a
very impractical platform for doing business. There are challenges related to
regulation/kyc, UX, performance/throughput, and getting your token listed on
an exchange. Simply put, launching a token on ethereum is currently extremely
expensive and using the tokens is comparatively hard.

It also requires you to do business with a lot of unsavory types in the
industry. This is a big reason for us to move away from Ethereum.

Stellar is so far looking pretty good for us. It has a distributed exchange
and compliance protocols. It is proof of work based, which solves the scaling
issues with Ethereum as well as enabling microtransactions. Unlike ethereum,
we can actually use it to build out our usecases and expect to have reasonable
performance and cost. It also has a federation mechanism that allows us to
shield our user base from the complexity of dealing with crypto currencies.

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FreeWater
Hello Mikko, I do believe the good guys will win one day. However, I am a firm
believer that our economic platforms are what drives greed and are what needs
to be changed. Currently, in a Capitalistic, Socialistic, or Sharing Economy
companies compete to see who can create the cheapest product while selling it
at the highest price. However, an interesting process begins after products
are made free. Because if we're both distributing free products the next
logical step is to offer more value than free. The moment that happens we are
now trying to do more for our customer, society, and the environment. I'm sure
this sounds crazy, but companies can earn greater profits offering goods and
services for free while earning their revenue from other sources. My partners
and I will be doing just that as we start with free water that pays you to
drink it. But, the water will be more than free because half of our profits
will be shared with our members, advertisers and charity. But,the most
beautiful part comes next because our future competition will have to offer
free water plus 51% profit-sharing. So, if you are concerned about corruption
lead by example and begin to create profitable products that you can
distribute to your customers for free! Best Regards, Josh Cliffords

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mikeisle
Josh, well said. We are doing exactly that. Our startup Inbot helps businesses
grow with trust, and our community of 64,000 members are essentially
shareholders in the success they jointly create. I truly hope these new,
benevolent models of capitalism will grow and flourish!

