Cointelligence Maps Out Chainstarter’s ICO Story: The $21 Million Initial Coin Offering Question Mark

An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) was launched some years ago by David Lofts and Nick Ayton, to finance a TV show.

They later went on to start ‘Chainstarter’ which assists ICO based projects to kick off.

21 Million ICO Money

A much darker image of Coinstarter was painted by Yavin a researcher at Coinintelligence, who told the full story.

It was stated that the partners; David loft and Nick Ayton eventually separated on a bad note, with each of them accusing the other of making bad decisions for the company and also funds mismanagement.

Although Two of them are still pursuing two different versions of the 21million TV project.

The boom of the ICO in 2007, was the beginning of the story, when millions of dollars could be attracted by just a “whitepaper”. A large number of projects financed during this period have crumbled, because most of their investors never got returns on their investments, although some still have working projects, based on a promise to deliver.

The main purpose of Chainstarter is to assist and advise the launch of startups that are ICO based. Chainstarter is not a regular consulting company, the most interesting part of story was when a loan was taken by the firm from the 21 Million ICO funds.

Children Of Satoshi

Probably doomed from the start, the idea of 21 million was simple, a TV show called “Children of Satoshi”, which in June of 2017 raised 3.75 million USD and no episode is yet to be released.

There is no assurance of the project's kick-off but according to Yavin, it's unlikely.

Yavin stated :

“Founder of several projects and CEO of one, author at two different sites, advisor on one fund, and board advisor on NINE projects. That’s a lot of plates to keep spinning at once. It seems pretty clear that while he was establishing Chainstarter (again, partially funded by a loan from 21 Million) and perhaps advising some of these projects, he mistakenly thought he could trust David Lofts to handle all of the 21 Million business, and didn’t keep an eye on him. This is assuming, of course, that David actually did the things Nick is accusing him of. It would seem to rectify the contents of both letters.”

Investment Scare

Chainstarter, through provision of some tech, had ties with Munchee ICO.

Munchee ICO is well known for being one of the first ICOs to be shut down by the SEC (the agreement reached by the SEC was used recently to set a standard for an ICO token to be qualified as securities).

Yavin stated that even if Loft’s accusation that Chainstarter had two running projects, which later turned out to be fraudulent are not true, the issue of Chainstarter mismanagement is still a cause for worry.

In essence, after all, debates, it is concluded, based on past incidents, that Chainstarter or anything tied to it can not be trusted.

Ico Predictions

With speculations of another ICO hike through the next bullish run, Chainstarter and its likes should be watched with caution.

Points To Note

• Nick Ayton and David Lofts have accused each other of several allegations
• ‘21 million’ project’s future is uncertain
• It is still unclear if any product will ever come of 21 million
• Nick and David currently maintain two different versions of the 21 million TV project.

The essential take back from all this is a lesson on the ‘people’ part of ICO based projects and businesses.

Investors will most likely aim at higher criteria when deciding whether millions of dollars can be entrusted to people, during the next ICO boom.