Confido ICO is Being Called an ‘Exit Scam’; TokenLot Involves FBI

Confido, a company that touted itself as a “Smart Contract Smart Contract A smart contract is a piece of software that automatically executes a pre-determined set of actions when a certain set of criteria or met. One of the key tenets of smart contracts is their ability to perform credible transactions without third parties and are self-executing, with their conditions written into the lines of code that form themAdditionally, these transactions are both trackable and irreversible. For example, a smart contract could be used to give royalty payouts to a musical artist A smart contract is a piece of software that automatically executes a pre-determined set of actions when a certain set of criteria or met. One of the key tenets of smart contracts is their ability to perform credible transactions without third parties and are self-executing, with their conditions written into the lines of code that form themAdditionally, these transactions are both trackable and irreversible. For example, a smart contract could be used to give royalty payouts to a musical artist Read this Term” Startup Startup A company operating within its first stage of investing is known as a startup. While startups may give the impression that the company must be new, that is not always the case.Many companies can have this designation after nearly three years of existence. Typically, a company exits the startup status after a period between 3 to 5 years or after successful funding rounds where capital is acquired. Startups tend to derive out of the belief that there is a demand for a service or product which is c A company operating within its first stage of investing is known as a startup. While startups may give the impression that the company must be new, that is not always the case.Many companies can have this designation after nearly three years of existence. Typically, a company exits the startup status after a period between 3 to 5 years or after successful funding rounds where capital is acquired. Startups tend to derive out of the belief that there is a demand for a service or product which is c Read this Term, has veritably disappeared, leaving its ICO investors in the dust with empty pockets. The Confido ICO, which raised US$374,000 - no small chunk of change, but a pithy amount in the ICO landscape - has left investors holding useless ERC20 tokens.

Shortly following the ICO, CFD tokens lost over 98% of their value, plunging from US$1.20 apiece on November 14 to just US$0.02. Following the massive drop, the Confido website and the company’s presence on social media were erased. Online digital assets associated with the company were deleted.

Confido’s disappearance has been dubbed an “exit scam”.

A “Tight Spot”

Mysteriously, the company left just one online trace in its wake. A cached version of a Medium post written by Joost van Doorn, the alleged Confido CEO, told of “legal trouble” that the company was having with a contract that had put it in a “tight spot”. On a cached version of the since-deleted Confido website, van Doorn is described as holding a master’s degree in international business with field experience at PepsiCo, eBay, and Zalando.

In the post, van Doorn wrote that the company “signed the contract with assurance from our legal advisor that there was minimal risk and it would not be an issue. I can’t and won’t go into details, but he was wrong. It is a problem.”

Lots of Questions, No Answers Yet

Van Doorn added that “we are trying our best to fight our way through this. As it currently stands, development has been delayed until a resolution is found.”

While some may find it more comfortable to believe that Confido was not a malicious company, but was rather an innocent organization that was somehow caught in a legal trap, the details surrounding the company’s disappearance and the loss of token value are extremely suspicious.

TokenLot, the platform that hosted the ICO, has officially stated that the Confido ICO was a scam, and announced plans to contact the FBI.