
How Floyd Mayweather Helped Two Young Guys from Miami Get Rich in ICO - WisNorCan
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/technology/how-floyd-mayweather-helped-two-young-guys-from-miami-get-rich.html
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arcticfox
This process is basically famous people taking money from stupid followers and
giving it to scammers in exchange for a cut.

I feel a little bad for people with blind loyalty that will lose money, but
hopefully they learn their lesson.

~~~
olegkikin
It's only a scam if false promises are made to the investors, knowingly that
is.

I looked up Centra, Stox, Hubii, and while they all look somewhat generic, I
don't see any crazy promises, especially to the investors.

From what I see the ICO hype is driven entirely by the investors and the FOMO.
Many people missed most of the cryptocurrency exponential rise, and they think
it's the second chance.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I don 't see any crazy promises, especially to the investors._

Skimmed the Stox white paper [1]. Its Risk Factors (page 49) seem like an
honest if deficient effort. They gloss over important factors, _e.g._
conflicts of interest between the founding team and the investor or any
disclosures regarding Stox Ltd. (who get 27.5% of the tokens "to bring
strategic partners to the Stox ecosystem, and as operational reserve").

There also seems to have been little effort to restrict these sales to
accredited investors [2]. Besides being illegal, I doubt an accredited
investor's lawyer would have signed off on the Risk Factors as presented.

[1] [https://www.stox.com/assets/stox-
whitepaper.pdf](https://www.stox.com/assets/stox-whitepaper.pdf)

[2] [https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/news-
alerts/al...](https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/news-
alerts/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletin-accredited-investors)

------
wpietri
As much as I think blockchains are cool as a technology, I am dumbfounded by
how rich the history of fraud and failure surrounding them is. I get why
people are skeptical about regulation, and I think it's always worth
questioning orthodoxies. But it's as if people set out to reenact the sordid
history that got us modern anti-fraud financial regulations.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
> I am dumbfounded by how rich the history of fraud and failure surrounding
> them is.

Thats just because of overexposure. Benign routine frauds are masqueraded as
international news just because ico/blockchain/bitcoin is involved in some
capacity.

I guarantee you there were ten times more 30 million $ frauds over the same
amount of time, buried within SEC enforcement circulars, DOJ enforcement
circulars, FTC enforcement circulars, let alone amongst state agencies, let
alone in other countries worldwide.

~~~
wpietri
I'm not sure I know what a "benign routine fraud" is.

If there are 10x more frauds in the rest of the world, then that's not very
good. The blockchain world having 9% of total major fraud is a lot given that
it's not even 0.009% of total economic activity.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
> 10x

haha, I gave an example of numbers there's nothing quantitative to run with.

99.9999% of transactions on/involving a blockchain are not fraudulent or part
of fraudulent projects.

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thisisit
It is interesting to checkout their website:
[https://centra.tech](https://centra.tech)

They were either too lazy or out of money after hiring Mayweather that they
don't even put a pretense of a "whitepaper".

The rudimentary "roadmap" page here:
[https://centra.tech/roadmap/](https://centra.tech/roadmap/) There it says
partnership with major bank and registration with Fincen is completed. But I
skimmed and there doesn't seem to be anything there. Not on their blog
@medium: [https://medium.com/@Centra](https://medium.com/@Centra). I could be
wrong so someone can correct me on this, if they find this information.

The funniest part is the products page:
[https://centra.tech/products/index.html](https://centra.tech/products/index.html)
Everything says "Click Below to get more details today!" but there no button
at all. So there is no way to know what spending 500 or 100 ETH will get you.

From the looks of it, the product is so called "wallet" and a centralised one
at that. So I am sure interested in the first step of their roadmap "Concept
of connecting digital currencies to fiat". What did they figure out? ;)

~~~
beager
Occam's razor. These guys are not planning on building anything real, they
mimed the usual pattern of celebrity-pimping an ICO based on smoke and mirrors
and will pocket the money after this all dies down.

Another one for the "shameless swindle" column of ICO. At this point I can't
tell if any ICO has actually been real and has delivered back its funding in
value.

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jcousins
Another one showed up from DJ Khaled the other day.

I am reminded of that adage (maybe a quote?) from past stock mania: when the
shoeshine boys are talking stocks it's time to sell. Is this peak ICO?

~~~
empath75
There’s way way too much money flowing around the economy in general. People
are just tossing money into anything because why not.

~~~
deecewan
I think people see how Bitcoin went from a thousandth of a cent to thousands
of dollars and want to get in on the ground floor for the next one.

And I can't say I blame them. Seeing the prices now, I wish I'd taken a deeper
interest when I first started playing around with it, and hung on more tightly
to my wallet(s).

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avip
What do people want from him though? He was offered $$$ for a gig and took the
offer. It was sure easier than his usuals.

When other celebs s.a Dan Arieli or Whitfield Diffie are offered seats in
boards for what is essentially the exact same PR, only targeting a different
demographic, no-one calls BS on that.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _He was offered $$$ for a gig and took the offer_

This doesn't fly when you're selling securities. Floyd Mayweather does not
appear to be a registered representative of a broker-dealer. He appears to
have "engaged in the business of effecting transactions in securities for the
account of others," the general definition of a "broker" under the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934 [1]. He also appears to have received transaction-related
compensation, the gold standard the SEC uses for identifying brokers under the
Exchange Act [2].

We made these rules to ensure people selling securities, particularly those
getting a commission for it, are incentivized to do basic diligence on what
they sell.

[1]
[https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sea34.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sea34.pdf)
_§ 3(a)(4)(A), page 4_

[2] [https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-
publications/divisi...](https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-
publications/divisionsmarketregbdguidehtm.html)

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not securities, investment nor any
other kind of advice._

------
AndrewKemendo
I've thought about this phenomena recently and it boggles my mind why
celebrities can influence so many people to take action about a myriad of
topics that they know nothing about, while the experts in the field are
ignored.

Basically it seems to go like this:

1\. People listen to an author because they have some interest in the topic
they agree with.

2\. The listener thinks the author is an authority on this topic through
exposure to authority signaling behavior from the author, irrespective of how
related it is to other fields.

3\. The author speaks on a topic that is outside of their field of expertise
or how they gained the original authority.

4\. The authority, in the minds of the reader _leaps fields_ and is assumed
that they have authority on the second field.

It's this leap in authority that I am credulous to and I am unsure why it is
so pervasive that people think this.

I would never expect Peter Higgs to be competent in Machine Learning or Yann
Lecun to be competent in finance by virtue of their eminence in their
respective fields. So why should I listen to what the eminent boxer of our day
has to advise about Cryptocurrency without proof that they are eminent in
blockchain/crypto?

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maehwasu
The ICO market is already adjusting to celebrity endorsements: Mark Cuban's
Mercury ICO has completely flopped.

~~~
maehwasu
Replying to myself; the last line of the article explains _why_ celebrity ICOs
are flopping now:

> “What’s important is Centra is being endorsed and they have a product,” a
> Reddit user named islandsurf wrote back to the critics, explaining his own
> investment. “That’s what matters to investors!”

Investors thought other people would care about endorsements. Once they see
others not caring, the cycle stops almost overnight.

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megaman22
Reinforcing the impression that Money Mayweather is quite a scuzzball.

~~~
kasey_junk
The guy is a serial abuser of his girlfriends & wives. No reinforcement
necessary.

~~~
dominotw
>but hopefully they learn their lesson

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djhworld
> _After being contacted by The Times, Mr. Mayweather deleted his Instagram
> and Facebook posts endorsing Centra, though he left up a Twitter post._

> _Ms. Hilton deleted the post after Forbes reporters uncovered the checkered
> legal past of the founder of Lydian Coin, who had aimed to raise $100
> million._

It's interesting to see the celebrities distancing themselves quickly once
journalists are on their back.

Wonder how much they got paid for these endorsements?

~~~
beager
You can bet they got paid in fiat.

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thinkloop
I think this might cost him a lot, securities regulations are very strict,
especially when it comes to endorsement and solicitation.

~~~
tehlike
Most likely a slap on the wrist.

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zitterbewegung
I have a bad feeling about this because a celebrity will endorse a ICO scam .
Also people don’t understand what crypto coins are and might get scammed just
by the people that have that coin.

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ryuker16
Any advice on how to short crypto currencies

