A Call to Form the German ICO Consortium
I’m not mad, I’m just… disappointed.
We met the savedroid team in mid-December. They had reached out to Iconiq Lab, asking us to advise them in their ICO. After a long workshop, we rejected working with Yassin and his team due to clear grey areas in German securities law they were skating, and the clear rush they were in to do their ICO.
I have met Yassin personally many times, and I find him to be a genuinely nice guy. I believe this recent PR-stunt was done with good intentions, but the fallout for savedroid and the crypto community, particularly here in Germany, will be massive (and it’s already begun).
This is what happened during the 24-hour period of savedroid “scam”:
- Many members of savedroid community sold their SVD tokens OTC at a huge loss during this PR debacle as they believed they had just been scammed.
- The savedroid Telegram channel of 50k users became a hotbed for spam and crypto scams as the admins left the channel completely defenceless.
- The global media now has more fire power to accuse the crypto space, especially the German ICO market, of being scams. Credibility will be difficult to win back.
- Key advisors and strategic partners of savedroid were kept in the dark of the entire plan.
- More cries of “F*** Germany” than I care to mention in the admin-less savedroid Telegram.
This is not what the crypto community needs right now as responsible players are trying to establish legitimacy in the token economy. To pretend a $50M ICO was a scam for 24 hours is morally reprehensible. savedroid left their community believing they lost their investment for a day and gave the world reason to doubt the crypto economy as a whole. In the traditional financial world managers are bound by fiduciary duties to investors and such behaviour would be met with swift prosecution.
ICO’s are a risky and highly unregulated venture, and it is our responsibility to hold ourselves accountable to abide by the principles that govern our societies through law, and more importantly, our shared morals and values. These principles must be rooted in transparency, accountability, responsibility, value generation and sustainability. This is done through working with our regulators, tax authorities, advisors, KYC/AML providers, and most importantly, each other in our communities.
THIS is what German quality ICO’s are! THIS is the standard everyone should, and will, be held to!
And this is why we are calling on the German blockchain and ICO community to form the German ICO Consortium, a think-tank of crypto industry leaders to establish best practices and guidelines in ICO compliance in Germany. Our community has been discussing such an initiative for some time, and it is clear the time for such an initiative is now. Our joint group will be issuing a statement soon.
Please join us on this mission by reaching us on LinkedIn or in the Iconiq Lab Telegram community at the link below. Together we will reject such irresponsible practices and foster an environment for innovative growth in crypto for a country globally recognized by its German Quality!
Patrick Lowry, CEO and Managing Partner of Iconiq Lab
Telegram: https://t.me/iconiqlabchat,
Website: https://iconiqlab.com/
