Block V. Just one example of a ico that went horribly wrong for investors

Full disclosure : I was once a block v investor. Just like the community I was mislead by the team time and time again then American exchanges delisted the project so it was time for me to go. Someone on tradingview recently did a somewhat in depth analysis of the project and compared it to a similar non blockchain company with a similar platform. Since I’ve done heavy research on this project and have been vocal about how they duped the community in the past. I was accused of writing that tradingview post. Since i’m being accused of something I didn’t do I figured I may as well write one of my own.

So how did Block V come about? Although the idea was established in 2015 by vatomic llc. In 2017 they formed block v and they decided to do a ico during the crypto craze of 2017. Ico initially raised 20 million dollars. It topped out with a market cap of 240 million dollars. Current Market cap is about 4 million dollars or 80% of the initial ico.

So Vatomic LLC was formed by Eric Pulier https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-head-socal-software-firm-and-it-executive-australian-bank-charged-bribery-scheme . Should be noted he was never found innocent or guilty, he’s a man of wealth so he got the Jussie Smollet treatment. As we know with Jussie that does not mean a crime was not committed. That boy guilty as sin. Eric is also the President of NGAGE one of Block V’s partners. To my knowledge Eric was also the person that originally came up with the idea of the Vatom. Craig Sellars, he was with Reeve and Brock when they did tether. He was once labeled a block V advisor and his linkedin currently states he is a block v employee. Know one really knows what happened to him with this project. I do have a screen shot of him saying Block V spent most of they're funding during the 2018 downturn and that no one to his knowledge made any money on the project. I cannot say if that is true or false. Just seems odd blockv removed him as advisor on the website and never mentioned what exactly his role is in Block V. Micheal Judd was apart of vatomic he also owns a company that is one of block v’s partners called varius solutions. Lukas and Gunther are apart of it too. Lukas is the president of the European division. Not sure what Gunthers role was or who the other 2 employees were. Vatomic according to Manta has a yearly revenue of $102,292.00 (my small self funded company does better than that). Vatomic has also released several apps that flopped some before and some during Block V. BlockChain Quest, Round Up and G+T@ZOA17. If you do some research you will notice allot of the demo vatoms were for these apps like the liquor bottles and stuff. Vatomic unlike Block V also has investors to answer to. They did private funding not a ico. Kortschak Investments, LP and Brad Zions are the initial investors. Only pointing out theyre names because they originally funded vatomic and both entity’s do hold vatomic convertible notes. https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/vatomic-convertible-note--4c4869e8. Vatomic has also filed patents on the Vatom. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170052676A1/en Although they have applied multiple times they backed out of the filing in the end. Take that how you want. Last patent was abandoned today 10–25–19. People should at least be aware that Block V although it’s own entity is actually controlled by a parent company and could have effects both positive and negative. Varius has VC investment as well, mainly comes from EOS VC, so like vatomic they have investors to answer too. Out of all they're companies Block V is the only one where no one has investors to answer to. Block V been a free for all for them. Couldn’t find docs on vatom labs, I don’t know if that was started with personal or vc money, same with Jon’s company.

Now lets get to Block V. We know Gunther and Lukas came from vatomic, supposedly Craig is a employee too. You had Reeve Collins who promised the world as CEO only to leave to start up another one of Block V partners Vatom Labs. You also have John Knight (the charting dumper.) He recently posted a very bullish chart to the block v community only for the price to tank in not even 24 hours) He has a company partnered with Block V as well. I don’t know the name but I believe it has to do with sports. You have several other employees and people that were around in the past. There was another guy, he left to start up a scam ico rewards program, he’s been long gone but he totally came off like a scammer for some reason medium wont let me type in the 2 letters that were his screen name.

As you can see allot of people involved with these companies have allot going on. It’s only right to question where all of they're priorities are at? If they have their own side business’s you have to imagine they have most of their heart into that, I know I do with mine. You also have to ask Is Block V just a means to a greater end for them? One thing Block V and its partners have never been clear with is when they announce a partnership, who creates the vatoms? Who’s actually earning revenue? Is it one of the “partnered companies” getting the sale of vatom creation or Does Block V? To the Best of my knowledge Block V only gets paid in Vee from vatom creation. They have no stream of fiat revenue. They get whatever profit that comes about from the $.02 cent per vatom creation. So from the outside looking in it does appear that their personal companies are the ones making the real money.

Next lets talk about ease of use and features. Block V claims all the documentation and features for developers to create vatoms is public. This is not true. No Oauth, Eos smart Contract and others. https://github.com/BLOCKvIO/documentation as you can see the documentation has not been updated since dec of 2018. So without proper docs It makes it very hard for someone outside of they're circle to work with these tools. They put in no effort to make it easy to use for other people. Most likely the sole reason you have almost 0 independent vatom creators. So what edge does this give them? Well it knocks out any competition from any other person or company not affiliated or partnered up with them. Why else would they not update the docs? They're doing trade shows and showing the tech off you’d imagine before doing that you would want it simple and easy to use for clients and community. The only assumption I can come up with is they do not want anyone outside there little circle using and profiting from the tech. I’m open to being corrected here if there’s a more logical explanation to not update the docs. It should be noted Jon Knight has said on several occasions docs are all there and complete. Research yourself and you will see that was a straight lie to the community.

So how big is the Block V developer community? out side of these partnered companies I would have to say 0. It’s a community of speculating token holders. One thing I always complained about is when you read older block v updates is they always claimed they were creating a “Thriving Dev Community” look at past updates and see for yourself. Reality is 0 effort was put into this. At one point you had several independent developers trying to or wanting to work with vatoms, due to lacking documentation they are all gone. You even had a community members create a vatom auction channel, some members even set up chats in different languages. Block v did set up a joke support channel. Just to make it clear Block V gave Jon Knight that Role. All honesty he was clueless, never had a answer, he doesn't have a tech background, you would ask him, he would relay the message, wait for response then relay it it to you. Now I give him credit not knocking him. It does however show what the higher ups thought of the dev community. They give you a non tech savvy person to handle support. It’s almost like they wanted the community to fail.

Lets talk about partnerships. Yes some of the campaigns they been doing have been by bigger names but no one knows the details. Block V is just a platform they are not Vatom Creators. That’s what they’re other business’s are for. So regardless what big name they're partnering with on these campaigns if the partnership involves another company creating the vatoms. It’s basically saying one of our partnered ad agencies did a vatom campaign for so and so. It’s not Block V doing the Vatom campaigns 100% themselves. If they are they should state that, they never have so you can only assume. I want to talk about older partnerships they announced that never came about but created allot of FOMO for people and allot of hype for this project. https://medium.com/blockv/blockv-science-blockchain-151dc0b804cd First partnership announced after ICO what happened? You announce something for hype but never follow through? Lukas claims nothing came about because science hasn't asked them for anything yet. The real question is why even announce a partnership until something comes of it? All they did with that article was create allot of speculating during a bubble market. https://almond.org/ this was another company rumors started buzzing with right after ICO that block v was working with. https://www.reddit.com/r/blockv/comments/8plp31/epics_one_of_the_first_companys_to_utilize_blockv/ this never happened either. Epics built their own system never a partnership. I do know they did make demo vatoms for them though, i have a set. Doing a demo for someone is a long stretch from a partnership. It’s more like a flat out lie. I can keep going but still have other points to make. History tends to repeat is the best way to put this, talk is cheap to if you can’t cough up any proof. We’ve never seen anything massive come about these partnerships. Lets Look at the Fjall Raven for this example. Block V is not partnered with them Vatoms labs is. Vatom Labs creates the vatoms using Block V platform. All this partnership did for token holders was get some vatoms created while making vatom labs money with a platform the community funded. Every Partnership Block V has is with their other companies and those companies use the platform to create vatoms for their clients. This is bigger news for them then a block v holder. If Block V was creating vatoms themselves I think these partnerships would be more impressive and a much better look for them.Also good to note does Adobe call every single person or company that uses their software a partner? How about potential clients they do demos for? Do they claim them as partners? Basically they are a software platform, and the only partners they have are the vatom agencies.

Delays. Block V has been nothing but delay after delay. You still have features like the cycling frame work and btc compatibility promised in the white paper. It appears they've completely given up on btc vatom contract. Cycling who even knows anymore as they don’t even do monthly updates anymore for the people that made this project possible to attempt. I don’t think they have yet to reach one promised milestone by the date they set. Its not like they were off by a week or 2. You're talking months and months and months. People and business’s are only as good as they're word. When a company is not capable of living up to they’re own words that no one forced them to say. How can you just assume in the end that they deliver?

Price action….The one thing every investor in this project cares about. Been 2 years since ICO and the project is down 90% in ico price. Once ico was over they're announcing partnerships when they don’t even have a product yet that partners can use. There was allot of hype, Novagratz talking it up and block v doesn't even a product yet. How can you talk something up when you're not even able to see what it can do? That’s one reason project went down the tubes it was hype with absolutely 0 substance at the time. Other reasons include community feeling crapped on and lied to, lacking documentation, no effort in building a real community and so forth. Then 2019 came and the Vee Pump and dumps started. https://www.tradingview.com/x/J1N676hd/ if you look at this chart there are 3 circles where vee pumped 3 times this year, first one Novagratz sent out a tweet (rumors floating around Block V hired a MM for this. I cannot prove they did or saying they did. Just a rumor). I call it a pump and dump because afterwards vee caught a new low. The second circle the price randomly Pumps and at the very top of the pump Block V CMO Micheal Dobak hops into Block V telegram for the first time ever to make fun of someone. He gets a nut off then the price tanks to a new low a hour later. He felt very accomplished that day, hes since deleted those comments, people did give him crap for it, you can go back in the comments and look for yourself. IMO we should call that Circle the Dobak pump and dump. 3rd circle the Jon Knight Dump https://www.tradingview.com/chart/VEEBTC/0KkHCrbS-BLOCKv-VEE-Ascending-Triangle-Forming-UP-coinselor/ he posted this at almost the dead top. hours later price reversed. Now i’m not accusing him of doing a dump but it is very unethical and sleazy for a company employee to post bullish charts of they’re companies own assets, that’s what you call market manipulation . At least in America that is illegal so at the least you can argue he blatantly decided to break the law. It’s also illegal to do that in the UK where he is located. Someone should actually contact proper authorities. Ethical and trust worthy companies tend not to do that stuff. If they do they keep it private and within they're circle. They took your money the least they can do is be honest and ethical. Pump and dumps generally scare investors away and attracts speculators and eventually leads to a huge decline in value like it happened this year. When I first said Vee would fall below ten sats eventually about 8 months ago I was laughed at and made fun of. I said that at over 100 sats. At under 20 now. We are getting very close. Charts don’t lie it will happen.

So how is Block V going to make money? According to they’re Veeconmics model - BLOCKv will derive revenue from the following sources:

50% of Vatom emission fees

Direct cycling revenues

Profits/margin from cycling fund

15% SaaS fees for supporting cyclers

Margins on advanced services, on-chain transactions and USD:VEE conversion services

Basically they only making money off the Vatom Creation Process. They are not creating the vatoms for these partners. All that revenue goes to the other companies that use the platform that ICO investors paid for. That’s allot of vatoms they need to have for stable revenue that puts them at a net profit. We don’t know how many vatoms are being created daily or what cyclers earn so we don’t know in terms of USD or even vee how much they earn from this. Just like advanced features, it has no pricing. Even if you assume 50% emission, 15% SaaS and 35% margin from cycling you still need to emit 25,000,000 vatoms to make million dollars. You have companies that do almost the same thing that only need to sell 362 pieces of software to get the same return. Yes I’m using the tradingview example as it is a good one to use. Their economic model is pure speculation. They're speculating they will get enough vatoms created to earn a profit and also enough created to drive the price up. Crapping on the community devs and going strictly for a big business play is a good way to knock out a big chunk of potential earnings. To me this comes off as a fake it till you make it thing. 2.6 billion is allot of tokens too. They never stated how much vee has to be staked to cycle so you have no idea how many tokens will be locked up and taken off the market. I find it very hard to believe this model will drive the price. I think adoption will take too long and model is based on allot of assumptions……Time will tell but until then I’m a big bear.

The project is a cool idea but every step of the way was piss poor execution on they're end. I don’t think it will die necessarily. Vee is a ERC-20 token so as long as eth lives the vee token lives with or without Block V. Essentially the token can go to 0 and they can still use it. They're not speculating on it like ICO holders to make money where token needs to go up in value. They're using it as a utility to create vatoms and they make money off that. Sure they would like to see the price rise I would also say that it’s not a priority for them.

I really do not see the need to compare block v to wikitude. Just by things stated above both companies clearly have a different vision, moral and ethical character. One company profitable the other is not. One would be a sure shot play if you were able to invest in it the other one is pure speculation where allot can and did go wrong. One company still has same ceo, one company has ceo that left to start a vatom business. That was a good look for Reeve as he left before Vee was down 75% from ICO. Really it’s that simple. The other person did a great job explaining that. Whats better tech isn't a valid argument either because .1 better does not always win and 2. better is in the eye of the beholder. If something is easier for me to use and gives same results, it’s better. At the end of the day you have one platform that is very easy to use where people and companies can create their own digital objects in house vs a company who’s platform is very hard to use and you either need to partner with them or be in the inner circle to use it to its true potential.

The main thing you need to ask yourself if you are invested in this or considering is does history tend to repeat? Do corporations tend to change and improve they're behavior or are they going to do what works for them regardless what they originally tell investors. Crypto is a shit show. Majority of projects in this space a real VC would not touch with a ten foot pole that’s why they sought retail for funding.

Also ask yourself has there ever been a asset in history that has had a 21 month downward trend that led to 90% loss ever recover and become successful? Do you really have that much hope block v will be the first?

What a outstanding and ethical person you are MR. Knight Shame on you!

Thanks for accusing me Thomas! The one sole defender of Block V. the paid consultant. Also a red flag with this project. Everyone who talks it up is tied to them some how. You have no independent minds saying good things about this project only speculators listening to people on the inside. It’s like they have to convince you its all good. Any contrarian view is instant fud. Thomas use to complain about Vee until he sat down with Lukas and got that consulting job. Out of majority of Block V investors he is probably the only one who got they're money back. through the route of consulting fee’s. My bet still stands dude. By this time next year Vee will be trading at close to zero. Why not back up your words and take it?. Oh and DEE feel free to say a lawyer would have a field day with this. I've only posted facts. If Block V wasn't so scared of breaking security laws why move to Puerto Rico and Zug? They were originally located in Santa Monica CA. Maybe report to the proper authorities block v employees are involved with market manipulation? We all know Jon did that. Maybe that’s something lawyers would have a field day with if investors ever smartened up and decided to sue. Keep making false threats to defend because that is all you have. You and I both know you do not have the brain power to counter this with any facts that counter what I’m saying.

Signing off,

Mr Shitamoto

Part 2 of this story very soon!