5 ms·

How Floyd Mayweather Helped Two Young Guys from Miami Get Rich in ICO

66 points by WisNorCan 9y ago

zitterbewegung 9y ago
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.
megaman22 9y ago
Reinforcing the impression that Money Mayweather is quite a scuzzball.
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  The guy is a serial abuser of his girlfriends & wives. No reinforcement necessary.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    >but hopefully they learn their lesson
arcticfox 9y ago
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.
- TylerE 9y ago
  To be fair, that's basically Floyd's entire brand. They don't call him "Money" Mayweather for his charitable contributions.
- Radim 9y ago
  This a hundred times! People learn surprisingly quickly, when it's their money on the line. "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -Ronald Reagan
- olegkikin 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    > 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/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletin-accredited-investors https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/news-alerts/al...
thinkloop 9y ago
I think this might cost him a lot, securities regulations are very strict, especially when it comes to endorsement and solicitation.
- tehlike 9y ago
  Most likely a slap on the wrist.
maehwasu 9y ago
The ICO market is already adjusting to celebrity endorsements: Mark Cuban's Mercury ICO has completely flopped.
- maehwasu 9y ago
  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.
thisisit 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
wpietri 9y ago
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.
- beager 9y ago
  I think it's because secretly, people think they've got a chance to be in on the con and make bank before the regulators show up.
  - mtraven 9y ago
    Maybe secret to thenselves, but making the mark think he's in on the game is central to con artist technique.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  > 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.
  - fullshark 9y ago
    Sure but is there a single ICO that has proven to have any value at all? It's the entire game as opposed to a sideshow.
    - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
      I use some projects and don't mind using or being paid in their respective tokens. That is a value greater than 0 as long as I exist. Now multiply me by 10,000 and the answer is yes?
avip 9y ago
What do people want from him though? He was offered $$$ for a gig and took the offer. It was sure easier than his usuals. When other celebs s.a Dan Arieli or Whitfield Diffie are offered seats in boards for what is essentially the exact same PR, only targeting a different demographic, no-one calls BS on that.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  I would hope that Arieli or Diffie would understand something about the technology or its application. In other words, their support would correlate to the merits of the coin. On the other hand, Mayweather's advocacy correlates only with what he's paid. Worse, rumors are that he has some functional literacy issues. On the other hand, you're probably right. I'm just the target demographic to give undue weight to Diffie's opinion.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > He was offered $$$ 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/divisionsmarketregbdguidehtm.html https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/divisi... Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not securities, investment nor any other kind of advice.
djhworld 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  You can bet they got paid in fiat.
jcousins 9y ago
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 9y ago
  There’s way way too much money flowing around the economy in general. People are just tossing money into anything because why not.
  - deecewan 9y ago
    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).
ryuker16 9y ago
Any advice on how to short crypto currencies
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
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?

66 points by WisNorCan 9y ago

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.

megaman22 9y ago

Reinforcing the impression that Money Mayweather is quite a scuzzball.

kasey_junk 9y ago
The guy is a serial abuser of his girlfriends & wives. No reinforcement necessary.
- dominotw 9y ago
  >but hopefully they learn their lesson

arcticfox 9y ago

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.

TylerE 9y ago
To be fair, that's basically Floyd's entire brand. They don't call him "Money" Mayweather for his charitable contributions.
Radim 9y ago
This a hundred times! People learn surprisingly quickly, when it's their money on the line. "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -Ronald Reagan
olegkikin 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletin-accredited-investors https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/news-alerts/al...

thinkloop 9y ago

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

tehlike 9y ago
Most likely a slap on the wrist.

maehwasu 9y ago

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

maehwasu 9y ago
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.

thisisit 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

wpietri 9y ago

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.

beager 9y ago
I think it's because secretly, people think they've got a chance to be in on the con and make bank before the regulators show up.
- mtraven 9y ago
  Maybe secret to thenselves, but making the mark think he's in on the game is central to con artist technique.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
> 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.
- fullshark 9y ago
  Sure but is there a single ICO that has proven to have any value at all? It's the entire game as opposed to a sideshow.
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    I use some projects and don't mind using or being paid in their respective tokens. That is a value greater than 0 as long as I exist. Now multiply me by 10,000 and the answer is yes?

avip 9y ago

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.

Simon_says 9y ago
I would hope that Arieli or Diffie would understand something about the technology or its application. In other words, their support would correlate to the merits of the coin. On the other hand, Mayweather's advocacy correlates only with what he's paid. Worse, rumors are that he has some functional literacy issues. On the other hand, you're probably right. I'm just the target demographic to give undue weight to Diffie's opinion.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> 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/divisionsmarketregbdguidehtm.html https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/divisi... Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not securities, investment nor any other kind of advice.

djhworld 9y ago

> 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 9y ago
You can bet they got paid in fiat.

jcousins 9y ago

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 9y ago
There’s way way too much money flowing around the economy in general. People are just tossing money into anything because why not.
- deecewan 9y ago
  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).

ryuker16 9y ago

Any advice on how to short crypto currencies

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

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?