The time when a startup behind one of the top 15 upcoming ICOs shit on all of its deadlines for rolling out a product, blew off its social media pages, made its sale into an open-air market and packed itself with very strange characters.

We bloody love rankings. Where’s Marshall Mathers’s latest album in the charts? How far is McGregor behind Khabib? Did Pepsi ever get the better of Coca-Cola? 😀

It’s the same with crypto. There are loads of ranking lists that claim to show just how awesome certain startups are. A lot of dudes believe them. One day we ordered some pizza together (it was Splinter’s idea) and decided to check whether it’s worth taking guidance from these charts.

The project Cognida was chosen at random. It’s not a chart-topper yet, but is apparently among the 15 most anticipated ICOs.

We did some Googling and found out that it’s a data security system that runs on blockchain. What’s more, it can work on any existing blockchain. Agnostic, as they say. All in all, the boys need 20 million bucks and to this end they’ve issued 550 million tokens, 54% of which have been put up for sale.

It’s anyone’s guess where they sent a whopping 10% of the tokens and why. It’s unlikely that the only buyer so far put down 4 million bucks. Or have they overpaid their advisers? 🙂

By the way, this is the only official info regarding the tokens and their intended use. There is no sign of a Distribution of Funds or any other traditional ICO stuff.

The sale is interesting too. No discounts announced for the private phase, delays and stupid explanations. It turns out that the sale has been going on for ages – it didn’t actually finish on 20 July, but it’s top-secret. Deals are made in private messages. More like a farmers’ market than blockchain.

As we can see, they were supposed to launch a completed network on 20 July. They have not. The same goes for many other promises. No fucks have been given about any of the roadmaps. By the way, which one of them is up-to-date? Looks like they’ve fucked up either way 😀

The news page only mentions conferences. That’s obviously their number 1 priority.

It is uncertain which phase the project is currently in. Phase zero, we think. Why else would the team still be hiding their GitHub page, which they promised to make public before the sale?

What should the product be? In their words, “reliable solutions on blockchain that make it possible to solve increasingly complex information exchange issues blah-blah-blah”. They even drew us a picture.

Nevertheless, the guys haven’t really put much effort into justifying the need for all this bullshit. They’ve just put that it’s cool coz blockchain and paid for some posts on crypto resources that warn about long-term investments.

But they need cash for that. And a token. The rationale is, of course, a clusterfuck. Really looks like a shitty scam.

More predictable and stable service costs? Have you lost your fucking minds? More predictable than Bitcoin? You don’t say! It’s strange they’re not promising a certain 100500x by the end of the year.

The Facebook and Twitter pages are poor, as if it weren’t a hyped ICO project, but a Rastafarian store in Alabama.

Obviously, good work on social media does not rule out the possibility that a project is a scam. Ubex is great proof of this . But our confidence in the fact that Cognida really is a hyped-up startup is fading fast. To be completely fucking honest, it’s already disappeared completely 😀

Do you agree that only very inept people could come up with such a shady pile of wank? Let’s see who they are.

Michael Hathaway is the co-founder and CEO of Windmill Enterprise. He has exactly the same name as Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway’s brother, a little-known writer. Facebook is teeming with namesakes too.

So some suspicion creeps in: is this Michael Hathaway real? LinkedIn shows that he graduated from Harvard and founded a company that no longer exists.

He worked for a company whose website doesn’t work . Then he managed a sketchy (it changed its name and had obscure clients) company alongside his current ICO partner at Cognida.

And a year ago he finally founded Windmill Enterprise . To hold the ICO.

Just look at how the timeframes of the two projects coincide.

Not much is really known about Hathaway’s partner. The guys claim he’s written a best-selling book about blockchain.

But if you dig a little deeper, it turns out that our Bing was just the co-pilot , i.e. co-author (if that’s actually him, of course). And the book is in 1,140,157th place for downloads on Amazon. Are you sure it’s a bestseller?

There’s another Byington in the project, Dustin. Most likely Bing’s son. He’s an adviser for Cognida. Facebook and LinkedIn claim that he was president of Wanchain itself. He left in May.

Another adviser is a current Wanchain employee, Oliver Birch. Such are the traces of Chinese influence on the project.

Another of the founding fathers, Wayne Lawyer, has hidden information on his LinkedIn profile concerning all projects linked to Hathaway – 3 organisations and 5 years of his life, don’t you know. Indeed, Wayne only mentions IBM, HP and Dell. Kind of weird.

Here’s the development team. Straight out of old TV series: Dallas, Santa Barbara and Twin Peaks. The one on the left is definitely a maniac who dismembers his victims in a bath of acid.

Today we got the job done pretty quickly, so Cognida doesn’t deserve any more from us. The boys paid for some high ratings from bloggers ( Balina , your greed knows no bounds) and a few positive posts . But at the same time, they forgot about the foundations. Come on, make a decent community, show us a semblance of a product, prove that the idea and token are valuable. Don’t blow your deadlines, for God’s sake!

Moral of the story:

Friends, don’t believe in rankings: the example of Cognida shows they’re not worth a single coin from your wallet. So analyse ICOs yourself and send us your findings. We’ll post them all, because blockchain is the future and we won’t let these arseholes ruin it.

To be continued.

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