It’s good to know that what you do actually matters, and that people are noticing. It makes me happy that when I call out scammers, and when Cointelligence posts scam reports, it scares the scammers enough that they feel the need to undermine my reputation, and that of my business.
In apparent response to our actions calling out high-profile scams such as LATOKEN, Karatbars, and OneCoin, someone has sent out an email to many people in the industry asking for evidence against us in order to file a complaint with the SEC later this month.
In the email, which is riddled with spelling, grammar, and formatting errors (including misspelling Cointelligence at least three times), Digital Transparency claims:
“Cointellingence [sic] and On Yavin declared themselves as investment advisors and charged fees for issuing investment advices [sic] and risk ratings acting as an unregistered securities broker.”
This is a lie. We have never presented ourselves as investment advisors, and our ratings and guides have always been available for free on our website.
“Cointelligence assigned medium or low “Risk score” to approximately 276 offerings of unregistered digital securities from the U.S. and non U.S. based companies. The risk score is explained by defendants as “an indicator of the probability that the project will or will not be realized”. 251 (out of 276 projects rated medium or low risk) have their websites abandoned as of today, at least 8 were charged by SEC and 32 are facing lawsuits.”
We are not sure where they are getting these numbers, as we rated less than 150 projects (excluding changes). How could we then have approximately 276 with a low to medium risk score?
Additionally, our risk score is not presented as investment advice. It only represents our opinion on how likely a project is to be realized, not how likely it is to be a good investment.
“Cointelligence violated Section 17(b) of the Securities Act by touting ICOs that involved the offer and sale of securities, through both its own website and its social media accounts, without disclosing that it received compensation from an issuer for doing so, or the amount thereof. The defendants misled unaccredited investors that they “never accept payment to update ratings” while inviting to contact them “For sponsored listing & advertising.””
These claims are also untrue.
- No STO has paid us for a rating or for advertisements on Cointelligence.
- We have never accepted payments for rating any ICO, STO, or other token offering.
- A sponsored listing or advertisement is not a rating. A sponsored listing merely moves a project to the top of the list with a “Featured” tag. An advertisement is exactly that -- an ad displayed on Cointelligence.
“The promoted sale of unregistered securities included the U.S. based blockchain pornography platform VogoV. Cointelligence and On Yavin charged fees from VogoV to promote OGO token offering on https://www.cointelligence.com/content/ico_list/vogov/ to the U.S. unaccredited investors as a Medium risk investment oportunity with high integrity, team and product score.”
This is also untrue. Again, we have never accepted payment for a rating, and we did not accept payment for rating VogoV or any other project rated on Cointelligence. Nor was our rating of VogoV presented as investment advice.
I will be attempting to determine who has brought these false claims against Cointelligence and file suit against them. In the meantime, Cointelligence will continue to call out scams as we identify them.