These are “classic market manipulation techniques”, he said.
ICO scams
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which this year set up a unit to monitor cryptocurrency investments, said spruikers should disclose they are being rewarded by the company.
ASIC estimates that one-quarter of initial coin offerings may be scams.
“Just because you call something an ICO [initial coin offering], doesn’t mean you are unregulated,” said ASIC commissioner John Price. “We are very focused on disclosure in this area.”
Power Ledger’s virtual currency, or token, is trading about 20 per cent below its issue price. Fewer than 100 buildings use its trading system.
“Some of our bounty group were professional bounty hunters chasing tokens because it’s what they do,” Power Ledger said in a post a few weeks after the token sale.
“Some were bots reporting an astounding 5000 likes of our social media output in a single 24-hour period.”
Continuing to pay
The company continues to pay spruikers who promote its currency, which was worth $2.4 billion at the peak of the bitcoin boom.
Chairman and co-founder Jemma Green, who was this year named an EY entrepreneur of the year, said the company wanted to create grassroots support for the currency sale, and disclosed it had set aside 1.5 million tokens for spruikers.
“Rewards were offered to community members to share our project with their own networks,” Dr Green said.
“The means by which they did so were outside of our control, and we made it clear that our core supporters who believed in the project and the future of renewable energy were the main audience for this program.”
from Viral up Blog http://bit.ly/2Aie94t
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