The altcoin known as BOLT has come under fire recently for some skeletons in its closet and for allegedly faking the view count on its sports app.

BOLT+ is a streaming app that claims to have some 3M global users. Specializing mainly in sports and live streaming, it is powered by BOLT tokens which are used to access its content. However, the project has come under fire recently for its questionable past.

BOLT’s Sketchy Past

As David Holt (@IDrawCharts) recently dug up, the BOLT project has had a complicated past, to say the least. It began as a rebrand of a failed company called SyQic. The company went under in 2016 due to being unable to back up its financial statements after an audit. SyQic was, just like BOLT+, a “mobile entertainment service provider” for streaming.

Since then, SyQic has rebranded and restored its finances with the help of a token sale. Although done under dubious circumstances, Holt underscores that this is not technically illegal but nonetheless still concerning. The BOLT website is still largely a ‘copy-and-paste’ job from its days as SyQic. Holt claims that “nothing about the company has changed except the name and the addition of a token.”

Fudging the Numbers

However, the controversy runs deeper once the BOLT+ app is taken into consideration. The project claims to have 1M monthly active users and, at first glance, the app’s view count supports this number. However, @bccponzi finds that the view count numbers are apparently completely random. In tracking the view count of various streams over a few months, it was found to be completely unchanged.

The BOLT team has expectedly claimed this is a bug. However, considering that this is a core feature of the app and has been ongoing for over five months now, this is hard to believe.

When all of this is taken into consideration, it seems that BOLT has been promoting itself on suspicious grounds. Inflating its view count is a red flag in itself, but the fact that it was a previously-failed company with the same business model is added cause for concern. The BOLT team will inevitably defend itself against these accusations, but the facts speak for themselves.