Category: Companies Overviews

May the IPO Be With You

3 min read

by Gorica Gligorijevic

On the eve of expected IPO, drivers of both Uber and their competitor Lyft are planning to stage a strike across the USA on May 8.

With the upcoming IPO for Uber, a ride-hailing company, 2019 season of unicorn and decacorn tech IPOs is scheduled to continue. Analysts are projecting a valuation of Uber to reach between $91B and $120B, very possibly reaching rarified air heights of valuation above $100B.

By breaking this barrier Uber would become only second hectacorn after the Ant Financial. Such valuation would bring a windfall for both the shareholders and the company which is often castigated for burning its cash reserves.

But not everything is rosy in the Uber-land.

For the May 8, Uber and Lyft drivers in the USA are planning to stage a strike against the working conditions and the company’s policies. Drivers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco are planning to log off during the morning rush, between 7 A.M. and 9 A.M. local time.

There are indications that they will be joined by their colleges across the country, but also in London. In cities which are hosts to Uber’s offices, the plan is to also stage a protest in front of them, and such events are expected both in the USA as also in other countries where Uber is operating.

Organizers and supporting organizations of this protest, such as Rideshare Drivers United – Los Angeles and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), are demanding safer and more secure work environment and that the company ensures that its drivers actually can make a living off their income.

On May 3 NYTWA has published a post on their web site has announced their plan to support the strike.

Their members, among which are not just cab but also Uber, Lyft and Juno drivers; have decided by vote to support their colleges from Uber around the world. “With the IPO, Uber's corporate owners are set to make billions, all while drivers are left in poverty and to go bankrupt”, states the post.

The organizers have listed as one of the demands that the driver’s commission is guaranteed and set in the 80-85% range.

While drivers in New York have fought and won a guaranteed equivalent of $17.22 because the drivers themselves must pay the payroll tax it accounts for $15 hourly rate, various fees imposed on them by Uber eat almost half of their incomes.

One of the biggest complaints of drivers is work insecurity.

Particularly telling are the cases of drivers who were fired with no explanation whatsoever, among them some have reasons to suspect that it was a retaliation for the participation in previous protests against Uber’s corporate policies. And with the company flooding streets with new drivers work is less and less certain as the competition for fares grows.

But many voices are concerned with the other side of this situation. With an increased number of novice drivers, who are not yet familiar with the Uber driver’s app, quality of services is sharply plummeting. And with company’s very lax background check of drivers, it is more than reasonable to presume that the safety of customers is also affected, while Uber didn’t have a glowing reputation for safety, to begin with.

As adding fuel to this flame comes the content of Uber’s S-1 filing and the immediate reaction from the Wall Street analysts.

“We have incurred significant losses since inception. We incurred operating losses of $4.0 billion and $3.0 billion in the years ended December 31, 2017, and 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $7.9 billion”, is stated in the filling.

Doom isn’t the worst scenario

Though these are not the worst of the doom and gloom Uber is placing in their documents, they are obviously hoping to emulate the Lyft, who had a decent IPO featuring the similar sentiment in their own filling. The trump card of Uber’s IPO is two numbers which show that they are both a huge company and a very small start-up. They are boasting that their drivers have completed more than 10 billion of rides in 63 countries during 2018, but they make just a measly 2% of public commutes over the same period.

But this double scale of size may prove to be irrelevant as the filing states that the company will need to generate and sustain increased revenues and decrease proportional expenses “and even if we do, we may not be able to maintain or increase profitability.”

The Uber is intending to continue, and actually increase the level of, investments into driverless cars, e-bikes, and e-scooter.

In essence Uber plans to cannibalize own business model in an effort to achieve profitability. In other words, Uber which was promising to disrupt the world of daily commutes is now disrupting its own business outlook.

Wall Street has already voiced its opinion.

Uber must decrease its expenses (read: cut down drivers’ commissions) to achieve profitability. Though the company in its early days have attracted many part-time drivers who saw it as an opportunity for extra income through a side gig, for the majority of current drivers is the only source of income. Besides that, they are also working extremely long hours in a very uncertain environment, where they literally do not know whether they will have a job the next day.

And psychological professionals cite these stressors as primary factors behind suicides of 8 Uber drivers in the USA over the past year.

Many public figures and activist investors were speaking for years against the business model of Uber. But maybe the worst condemnation of it comes from company’s own filing on the eve of their IPO: “Our workplace culture and forward-leaning approach created operational, compliance, and cultural challenges and our effort to address those challenges may not be successful… a failure to rehabilitate our brand and reputation will cause our business to suffer.”

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

7th May 2019
Does Intel Have Blues?

2 min read

The Big Blue’s quarterly earnings report is out, first after the appointment of new CEO, Bob Swan. Quarterly earnings for Q1 are slightly above the analysts’ expectations.

But the Intel is expecting 2019 yearly earnings to reach $69B, $2B below analysts’ projections. Also, Intel has announced the exit from the market for fifth-generation mobile phones modems, thus ceding that market to other competitors.

But not all is bad for Big Blue, as they have announced that the Sunny Cove 10-nanometer microarchitecture of processors will be launched by the end of this year, just three years later than it was originally planned.

With the news of the lower projected annual revenues came to the response from the markets and the Intel’s shares fell for around 9% from $57.61 on Thursday 25th April to $52.56. In following days that trend slowed down but continued and at the moment of this writing, Big Blues stocks are traded at $51.26.

With these price movements, Intel is certainly falling behind the rest of the S&P 500 tech companies, which have seen stock prices growing 24% on average over the previous year.

With that being said, the question is whether the Intel is in trouble and why?

The answer to that question is both yes and no, and the earnings report gives some clues. Intel’s main market is for the individual buyers of PC central processing units, and this is a market where the Big Blue dominates with 77% of all sales.

Many market analysts were warning for years now that this market is struggling and the sales numbers from Intel do agree.

Sales of the desktop and notebook CPUs are down 8% and 7% compared to Q1 2018 respectively.

But the average selling price (ASP) is up by 7% for desktop and 13% for notebook processors. Thus the Intel’s Client Computing Group has reported 4% growth of revenue compared to Q1 2018, and its $8.6B makes more than half of the Q1 2019 revenue.

Will this trend of growing ASP continue it is too early to say. But what is certain is that Intel will in coming months launch a new generation of CPUs. Manufactured on the much-maligned 10nm node, announced more than four years ago when the current 14nm node was launched, and just six months ago being dismissed as vaporware by some industry analytics, the code-named Sunny Cove is not promising sunny days for Intel.

Is the change of production node solution for Intel

The change of production node and decrease of the size of printed circuits of the CPU is supposed to bring much higher energy efficiency of the CPUs. But this decrease in size creates some serious production issues.

Namely, the smaller the printed circuits and gaps between various elements of them are the higher are chances for errors during manufacturing. And for the past three years, Intel was working on fixing these issues and increasing the yield of usable chips they produce.

According to some sources, Big Blue can be anything but happy with the yields at the moment. So, as it stands at the moment, Sunny Cove will be too little too late. And to add insult to injury even in this troubling PC market Intel is having problems to satisfy the demand from consumers for their CPUs as the yields of current 14nm generation are nothing to write home about.

Datacenter revenue is down 6%, compared to Q1 2018, to $4.9B, but this is to be expected as the data center and client computing are competitors to each other, especially in the sector of the enterprise and government buyers.

Big institutional buyers usually have to make a choice of either procuring large numbers of desktops or upgrading their data center capacities, and no one has expected that those two sectors continue growing together forever. Cloud computing revenue is up by 5% compared to Q1 2018, but that is too little to offset the decline of the enterprise revenues.

Though the Intel is absolute market share leader in their most important segment, desktop and notebook CPUs, 2019 is not looking rosy for the Big Blue.

Intel’s main competitor AMD has made huge strides

Their main competitor AMD has made huge strides in regaining the ground they have lost in the previous decade. At the moment they are offering products which have comparable performances but carry considerably lower price tag than Intel’s offering, especially in the high-end niche which has the highest profit margins.

Also, the recent announcements state that AMD is aiming for the launch of their 7nm Zen 2 architecture in mid-2019. AMD’s jump from 14nm to the 7nm production process, while skipping the 10nm step, promises 15% increase of performance and a 30% decrease of energy consumption. And this blow from AMD is going to shake the Intel much worse than the scandal surrounding fake demo CPUs at Computex 2018.

The accountants and suits at the Big Blue know that AMD’s Zen 2 is more than competitive to anything they have in offer, and thus they are projecting lower annual revenues for 2019 than the analysts.

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

30th April 2019
Twitter is implementing the new tool

1 min read

Twitter will launch a new tool for users. The aim of this new tool is to protect users from deceiving by fake news. By using this new tool users will be able to flag inappropriate political content. The reason behind this is the new European Parliament elections that will be held next month.

With this new tool, Twitter plans to protect voters.

Twitter is one of three social networks that are under public pressure to take a bigger role in protecting this democratic process. Also, they are asked to help in lowering social and political tensions.

According to Reuters, the European Commission in its March report on the three tech giants on Tuesday said the companies still fell short of their pledge to curb the spread of fake news.

“Today, we are further expanding our enforcement capabilities in this area by creating a dedicated reporting feature within the product to allow users to more easily report this content to us,” Twitter said in a blog.

Twitter users who see a tweet with deceptive news will be able to report them.

It will be possible by clicking on a drop-down menu. All you have to do is to select “It’s misleading about voting”. After that, you have to pick the option that describes how the tweet is misleading or deceiving. Submit the report to Twitter and voila…

What is misleading or deceiving information?

For example, telling voters to vote via a text message, email or phone call, identification requirements, the announced date or time of an election.

The new Twitter tool will be accessible from April 29 to a week after the May 23-26 European parliament elections.

But the EU isn’t the lonely place where this tool will be available.

Twitter will run it in India too.

The general elections will be held in India on Thursday.

Previously, Facebook revealed tools designed to clamp down on political involvement ahead of the European Parliament vote scheduled for May.

From the end of March, political ads have a “paid for by” disclaimer. That tools provide users access to a public database that shows who paid for the ad.

So, everyone can see who paid, how much and the structure of the visitors according to gender, age or area.
All information will be cached for seven years.

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

24th April 2019
Pinterest is Pinning for IPO

2 min read

Pinterest wants to go public

Pinterest could be going public in early 2019 probably to the end of April.

According to an article from the Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, the social media for image discovery and sharing, is almost ready for an IPO.

It has a very extensive service but still, it is a profitless company. The question arises here, can such a company provoke the investors to invest in it. Is there, in the market, the demand for companies like this?

Anyway, Pinterest is approaching to the stock market with big strides. It has set a price span for the opening public offering below private-market peg of $12 billion. That is less than any current private estimates of the company. That means Pinterest shares could be priced at between $15 and $17 when it goes public. The Pinterest stock ticker on the NYSE should be, according to their expectation, PINS.

Pinterest, in late March, published an offering to latent investors. The document showed very interesting data. This company had about $756 million in income from online advertisements in 2018. Their income growth rate in 2018 was increased, which raised for 60% year on year. The main trump card in their hands is the fact that over 256 million people and 1.5 million companies use the Pinterest platform at least once per month.

Pinterest’s price range discourages some investors because of the overflow of tech IPOs this year.

All of us can witness about Lyft struggle on the market and sharks they met there. Well, the Lyft is an unprofitable company, that’s, true. But their shares fell below the offering price after only two days trading in the market.

“People are looking at Lyft and realizing that even if the roadshow goes extremely well and there is a lot of demand, you can’t overprice the offering,” said Elliot Lutzker, corporate and securities partner at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron for the NYT.

And the main game will come soon as the Uber, the largest of these contemporaries of tech start-ups, also has plans to run public in the next few months.

Their estimated value is about $120 billion. Uber can easily be the biggest IPO by some US company.
So, it can be very tricky for both Pinterest and Lyft to manage their public appearance with Uber included as competition.

It is obvious that Pinterest is trying its show on the road. Their plan is to make the institutional investors more interested before the first day of trading and final IPO pricing.

If investors respond with high demand in the following days, Pinterest’s shares price could increase in value.
The other important fact when valuing Pinterest is that it has $628 million in cash on its balance sheet.

But there is also another count behind. The private investors

In total, private investors have put almost $1.5 billion behind Pinterest. If Pinterest’s shares go between $15 an $17 (Pinterest plans to sell 86.3 million shares at an initial offering, which is $12 billion valuations).

The company’s initial investors will still have huge earnings.

The Pinterest biggest shareholders are Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital. According to NYT, they don’t have to be worried about IPO price range: Bessemer will be good at $952 million, FirstMark Capital would deserve $710, and Andreessen Horowitz will be good at $696.

Pinterest’s IPO really may be an examination of how much it can interest investors who are seeking fast-growing companies. Would they want to buy shares of the company with just 60% of growth in one year?

Well, anyway we will see very soon if murmur can beat the quality. There is a big hype surrounding Pinterest, and other tech unicorns and decacorns this year.

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

9th April 2019
Shell walks away from the U.S. refining lobby

2 min read

Shell or Royal Dutch Shell Plc is the first important oil and gas company to announce the plans to leave a U.S. refining lobby, AFPM.

This move comes due to the difference in policies on climate change. The point is that Shell supports the goals set by the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Their aim is to demonstrate to investors that they are familiar and want to accept to meet carbon emission goals set in Paris.

“AFPM has not stated support for the goal of the Paris Agreement. Shell supports the goal of the Paris Agreement,” the Shell said in its statement.

Actually, as our unofficial sources say, this decision is caused by the pressure of the investors.

It isn’t a secret that this oil and gas company has some very important institutional and private investors in the EU and UK who were clamoring about company’s ambiguous stance on the Paris Agreement in recent time.

Shell stated “material misalignment” over climate policy

We found that Shell, in their first review, announced it had discovered “material misalignment” over climate policy with the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers. That was the reason to announce that it will quit this organization in 2020.

It is obvious that Shell wants to show investors it is on the same page with them concerning the 2015 Paris climate agreement’s goals.

The point of the Paris agreement is to reign in global warming. With that in their minds, supporters aim to do that by lowering carbon emissions to zero by the end of this century.

Maybe this is a showcase of how investors influence on oil companies. Especially, when it comes to the climate.

It looks like no one will fool around with European investors.

Shell’s chief executive officer, Ben van Beurden, took out a more radical position than the boards of other influential oil companies.

“The need for urgent action in response to climate change has become ever more obvious since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. As a result, society’s expectations in this area have changed, and Shell’s views have also evolved,” van Beurden said.

Royal Dutch Shell plc with its headquarter in Hague, Netherlands, has differed from AFPM on a number of issues. Shell said it also opposed AFPM’s opposition to pricing on carbon and low-carbon technologies.

Shell and AFPM have also been at odds about the regulation of renewable fuels.

Shell and some other big refiners in recent years have heavily invested in new, the cleaner, fuel technology.

Shell and AFPM are also in disagreement over regulating the use of renewable fuels. AFPM lobbied against standards requiring refineries to blend and government subsidy for the blending of biofuels into the petrol pool.

AFPM claimed – it hurts independent refineries.

To be clear, it is a conservative political group.

AFPM Chief Executive Chet Thompson thanked Shell for its long-standing collaboration. “We will also continue working on behalf of the refining and petrochemical industries to advance policies that ensure reliable and affordable access to fuels and petrochemicals while being responsible stewards of the environment,” Thompson said in a comment.

Shell’s review was greeted by Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, which invests in Shell.

“This is an industry first,” Matthews said. “With this review Shell have set the benchmark for best practice on corporate climate lobbying not just within oil and gas but across all industries. The challenge now is for others to follow suit.”

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

3rd April 2019
WazirX Cryptocurrency Exchange Review

2 min read

WazirX is an Indian cryptocurrency exchange. It is run by Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre, and Siddharth Menon.
This India’s largest crypto exchange is now open to all countries. They are giving away free WRX Coins for signing up.

As we wrote before, the Reserve Bank of India on 5 April 2018 directed all banks to end their existing banking relationships with cryptocurrency exchanges and traders. The ban became active on 6 July 2018. The ban was, however, appealed. The final hearing before the Supreme Court in such appeal was on 11 September 2018.

And now there is in India the largest crypto exchange opened to the traders all over the world.

In its blog, the company pointed out that fiat to crypto conversion is a global issue and a lot of cryptocurrency enthusiasts across the globe struggle to convert fiat to crypto and vice versa. They have to rely on local platforms that charge high fees and high spreads. WazirX wants to take its tried-and-tested P2P platform to solve this problem across the globe.

WazirX offers real-time open order books, charting, trade history, deposit, and withdrawals. So you can trade and invest in some of the world’s best performing digital assets.

The user interface UI is friendly and easy to use.

WazirX Exchange Offers:

– Peer 2 Peer Transaction
– Cryptocurrency Exchange
– WRX Mining

There are a large number of cryptocurrency exchanges based in India. In addition to this exchange, there are Koinex, EthexIndia, BITSSA, Unocoin, and ZebPay, to name a few.

But most of them only offer to trade in BTC however. The only Indian cryptocurrency exchanges with more than a dozen different cryptocurrencies traded are WazirX, Koinex, and ZebPay.

Different exchanges have different trading looks. You have to determine which trading look that suits you the best.

What their designs usually have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the cryptocurrency and order history.

What makes WazirX different?

WazirX trading fees

WazirX charges 0.25% if you’re a taker.

It also takes the silver medal with respect to its maker fees, only BITSSA charges lower fees.

The exchange charges 0.10% if you’re a maker. This means a 0.15% discount compared to the exchange’s taker fees.

They are giving away free WRX coins

WRX is a digital asset just like Bitcoin. We found on their official web site that there will be a maximum of 1 Billion WRX coins ever created. Over a period of time, creators expect the value, utility, and liquidity of WRX to increase substantially.

By owning WRX coins through the WazirX signup and referral reward program, you become one of the early holders of the coin.

Why they are doing this?

As we could see, they want to gain customers trust and involve you in helping them build WazirX.

That’s why they want to reward new customers for joining in early.

Also, they intend to build a strong user community.

”This also helps us stay true to the ethos of crypto and blockchain – to share the wealth instead of hoarding it,” they stated on the official web site.

They planned to launch WRX. Instead of launching an ICO first, they plan to include community members as the first holders of WRX.

If you join directly from a there website you will get 100 WRX.

WazirX withdrawal fees

WazirX charges a withdrawal fee amounting to 0.0005 BTC when you withdraw BTC. This fee is below the global industry average. We can say that is a rival advantage upon the majority of other top crypto exchanges in the market.

Deposit methods

WazirX allows wire transfer deposits but not credit card deposits. As far as we know, only one Indian cryptocurrency exchange allows credit card deposits at all (BITSSA).

Security

This is actually the only place where this particular cryptocurrency exchange takes the first place among Indian cryptocurrency exchanges. No other Indian cryptocurrency exchange has a higher security score.

WazirX is the most secure exchange in India.

On their web site, we found a detailed explanation about some important practices you should follow to keep your WazirX account secure.

One point more for them.

It is safe to trade, but it is a still new platform in the Indian market. So it will take time to build trust in Indian crypto trading community.

And now, all over the world.

The bottom line

WazirX is a good platform. If everything goes right, this Indian exchange has the potential to become the best Indias exchange in future years. WazirX, the largest Indian crypto exchange is opened to traders all over the world now.

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

27th March 2019
Initiative Q – Is It a Scam

3 min read

Initiative Q invitations for the new currency have been circling since October last year. According to its own data, this cryptocurrency (?) wants to turn around international payments entirely. Makers of Initiative Q are not revealing how this is supposed to work.

So, why we need a currency like Q?

Does anyone know the answer?

There is no direct registration.

Moreover, there is no product!

Did anyone see a demo of Q?

Everything thus far is based on a vision, and even this is extremely problematic.

What we have for now?

Total garbage!

An email database and list of friendship groups! C’mon!

Initiative Q will sell 50,000,000 emails for $1,000,000 or more.

Easy money for them, indeed! But for them, not for you!

Initiative Q’s only announced great plan is to replace the central banking system with their own.

So, why we would be interested in that? What’s the difference?

Initiative Q offers a centralized, mysterious, barely known firm to be your prime banker. Innovative. Bravo, artists!

Compare it with the independent, incorruptible and trust-based products such as Bitcoin.

The Initiative Q homepage promotes in bold letters that signing up today is worth an estimated future value of over $17,500. Remember this bold statement.

The first invites for Initiative Q went out to a select group of people six months ago. But in recent months, the invites have reached the masses. Their goal is that as many people join the network that the currency, known as Qs, will someday have financial value.

Really?

So, how do they do that? How do they, geather people?

Over social networks! You don’t believe? Take a look!

According to their plan, real progress is not set to start before the middle of 2019. The start of the payment network is planned for late 2021 or later. Yes, that’s right, guys! It’s ridiculous.

What makes it laughable is that everyone apparently knows that this is a scam.

Why?

All you have to do is give them your email. And it isn’t a game.

Do you remember what happened with the customers of Facebook and sale of their personal data to Cambridge Analytica?

Or what happened when Google’s loophole, that made G-plus customers data public, was revealed?

It asks for your personal information

The legit airdrops don’t ask for your information, because they don’t care. They aren’t requiring security because it doesn’t matter who’s receiving the tokens. Therefore presenting personal information is unnecessary.

Initiative Q, on the other hand, asks for your name and verified email address. We must ask WHY?

That data is important. Advertising companies will cheerfully pay lots of money for access to good lists.

The data required is something incredible.

When you sign up you give your name and your verified email address.

These emails could easily be used to get-rich-quick schemes. Or, as we can safely presume, for other scams.

Yes, they say in their privacy policy that they don’t sell your data.

Absolutely, so does Facebook. That didn’t stop Cambridge Analytica from using data to advertise during the 2016 US election.

A privacy policy will never stop other company from using your data.

For example, what will happen if owners of Initiative Q decide to sell their company to some other? That company will have every right to change the privacy policy. In front of your eyes.

You have no guarantee that your data is private.

So that raises the first red flag for us.

Is this an MLM?

One common accusation leveled at the Initiative Q is of being an MLM scheme. But while they do appear to have some multi-level characteristics, their denial of this accusation has merits. They currently do not appear as being and MLM as they lack the requirement for that second letter M. They are not “marketing”. At the moment they are still not marketing any product.

They are not selling it, nor collecting investments. They do not offer any type of product on the market, because they still do not have one. This in its own right is an issue.

So what they do?

They are trying to participate in the market without doing what that participation actually is, offering a product.

Obviously, none of this is going to work. Initiative Q will simply disappear if it attacks national currencies in any way.

But, Initiative Q must be praised for its marketing department.

As viral operations, it has been effective. You can see people you would expect to have zero interest in obstructing national money sharing the links.

We can’t conclude yet whether this is a marketing joke or even a fraud. But it certainly already constitutes a prime example of a mass hack.

Initiative Q is offering a Free Money

If a stranger asks you to give him your name, email address, and a password and he will give you free money, would you do it? You would be rather suspicious. Right?

So why are people doing contrary on the internet?

The main rule in the crypto world is: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

But, Initiative Q doesn’t even have a white paper about its technology will work. We think it is better to stay on the side of caution.

Collecting personal data is the perfect way to build a mailing list for marketing projects. The list of a user interested in crypto means the database is full of users that can all be verified through social media.

Who will stop Initiative Q to sell this database for a very nice sum of money?

Be careful!

Moreover, so many people use the same email and password combination on many sites, so that could be a dangerous game.

To be more specific, Initiative Q is offering free money to you today, but tomorrow they could gain a lot of coins using your personal data without your permission.

Initiative Q and Cryptocurrency

Initiative Q claims that it’s Qs is better than cryptocurrency.

They claim that cryptocurrency is just “digital money that is hard to counterfeit.”

Other lies that Initiative Q presents include that Bitcoin supports just two transactions per second. Truth is that Bitcoin averages seven transactions per second.

They claim that cryptocurrencies have either no monetary policy.

This is completely lying.

Truth is that many cryptocurrencies have complex monetary systems. Their fiscal policies are set through programming.

Without human mistakes.

One lie more comes from the side of Initiative Q: Cryptocurrency users are expected to undertake complicated security procedures such as:
– generating cryptographic keys using dice,
– entering them into an unused laptop that is later destroyed,
– storing the keys using special hardware from multiple manufacturers,
– and keeping paper backups in bank safes.

We just have to say this is an unnecessary stupidity and generalization.

In one thing they have right.

That one leads them to the status of keeper the environment.

For mining cryptocurrency, it is the energy needed.

The Initiative Q tries to distance their currency far from cryptocurrency. So we cannot find where the value-add is over conventional currencies.

This brings us to our final point.

Initiative Q isn’t different from the traditional monetary systems.

They have this on their site:

Big IF!

The bottom line

Based on our research, we don’t believe Initiative Q is a scheme or serious project at all.

Yes, you do get Qs when you sign up or invite friends.

But Qs are currently worthless, it’s not really worth any money yet. Hence, there’s a lot of possibilities that Qs will be worth nothing in the future.

Yes, it’s possible that Initiative Q is not a scam.

Our problem with Initiative Q is that it shows how stupid they are.

They are wasting time and energy.

Instead of promoting this possible scam, they could be focused to do something really profitable for themselves.

This isn’t the way to get rich.

True money is produced by building businesses.

And in the end, one day they will be caught.

Don’t waste your money!

risk disclosure

Images Initiative Q source: screenshots from the official website

19th March 2019
Tilray Make More Cheerful The Manitoba Harvest

1 min read

Tilray makes the richest deal in an effort to jump into U.S. CBD market. Tilray buys hemp-food maker Manitoba Harvest for $419M.

Tilray is acquiring the parent company of hemp-food maker Manitoba Harvest for up to $419 million in a cash-and-stock agreement. Cannabis producer from the Nanaimo quickens its entry into the North American CBD market. This deal will give Tilray ownership of a high-profile brand and one of the biggest hemp-food makers in the world. It also gives Tilray access to Manitoba Harvest’s retail network of 16,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada that includes Costco, Amazon, and Wal-Mart.

Investors like this Tilray’s arrangement, with shares of the marijuana producer jumping close to 5% in intraday trading. But Tilray’s acquisition of Manitoba Harvest should encourage more than a temporary gain.

With its new deal, Tilray appears to beat its biggest rivals, Aurora Cannabis (NYSE: ACB) and Canopy Growth (NYSE: CGC). It looks Tilray manage to stake its claim in a potentially huge market.

Tilray Overtakes Aurora Cannabis and Canopy Growth in the U.S. Hemp Market

The biggest Canadian marijuana producers, all three, weren’t modest about showing their tends to enter the United States’ market. The problem is, marijuana is illegal at the federal level. So, they can’t operate in the U.S. and hold their listings on major stock exchanges in such a situation.

Hemp is a different story. By definition, hemp is cannabis that contains low levels of the psychoactive ingredient THC. The U.S. legalized hemp in December 2018. That opened the way for the major Canadian marijuana producers to jump into the U.S. hemp market.

Canopy Growth was the first. The company published in January that it had ensured a license to produce and prepare hemp in New York state. Canopy also plans to spend between $100 million and $150 million to build a large-scale hemp production facility in New York.

Meantime, Aurora Cannabis has been much more careful. CEO Terry Booth said that Aurora would “enter when it’s proper to enter, and when it’s legal to enter into the United States market.”

Tilray’s smart move

But Tilray’s acquisition of Manitoba Harvest sets it winning of both of the bigger rivals.

Tilray’s acquisition of Manitoba Harvest seems to be a smart activity. The deal gives Tilray an immediate position in the North American hemp CBD market. Tilray is financing the acquisition through both cash and stock. More than 1/5 of the buying price isn’t expected until six months after the transaction closes.

This acquisition is just the latest exemplar of Tilray’s business courage. The company’s acquisition of Natura Naturals last month boosted its production capacity. That deal was part in cash and part in stock with much of the purchase price associated with reaching predefined quarterly production milestones over a 12-month period.

Tilray showed an intention to win the total cannabis market. Its entrance into the potentially lucrative U.S. hemp market is the sign of that. The company’s chances of taking a leading role appear to be greater than ever.

risk disclosure

21st February 2019
Facebook Accused of Behaving Like ‘digital gangsters’
2 min read

UK parliamentary commission has accused Facebook to act as a ”digital gangsters”.

After 18 months, 73 witnesses, 4,350 questions, and innumerable hours of testimony, British lawmakers presented a finding on Facebook’s year. Direct from hell.

A report from this UK body has taken direct aim at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing him of “contempt.”

A UK parliamentary committee published a report on Monday, 02/18/2019, accusing Facebook of putting profit over privacy, misleading lawmakers, and being a “digital gangster” that considers itself above the law.

British politicians also said democracy was “at risk” from foreign countries trying to influence UK elections through social media ads.

The new report by British lawmakers is brutal to Facebook and it’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. They said that Facebook “intentionally and knowingly” obstructed U.K. data privacy and anti-competition laws. And that’s why it urgently needs to be regulated and investigated.

Facebook has shown the arrogant and dishonest face.

Mark Zuckerberg refused to present himself to the committee.

To cite the report:

“Facebook seems willing neither to be regulated nor scrutinized…

Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws …

We consider that data transfer for value is Facebook’s business model and that Mark Zuckerberg’s statement that ‘we’ve never sold anyone’s data’ is simply untrue.”

In the 108-page document, lawmakers called for the making of an independent regulator for social media sites and a mandatory code of conduct that. If someone breaches it, their suggestion is – “large fines.”

Mark Zuckerberg continually refuses to show the leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone who sits at the top of one of the world’s biggest companies, says the committee.

Damian Collins, chair of the committee, said on the committee’s website: “Mark Zuckerberg continually fails to show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone who sits at the top of one of the world’s biggest companies.”

This was, however, not the only reason why British politicians accused Facebook of behaving like “digital gangsters” in the online world.

“Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law,” the report said.

“We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee’s recommendation for electoral law reform,” Karim Palant, Facebook UK public policy manager, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

But, something has to be noted, the problem is bigger than just one company. Google and YouTube, which are barely mentioned in the report, play almost as important a role in the dissemination of misinformation online. And they are happy to profit from it. As the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham has warned, we are now being sold political ideas online with the same techniques that are used to sell shoes and holidays.

Buying the wrong ideas is less obvious than the pain of old-fashioned shoes. The political sale is much more easily made.

There is a paradox of the amazing effectiveness of Facebook and YouTube when it comes to the distribution of ideas.

Some people trust what they find there.

The online channels, seem to offer intimacy to their users. But this fake intimacy is, in reality, a place where people can be more manipulated than ever before. Well, the advertisers know much more about us than they could before we entered it.
But, Facebook wants you to know that it is turning. Its ads tell you so. Its PR hires tell you so.

“While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago,” Karim Palant, U.K. public policy manager at Facebook, said.

But the report requests for significant changes to the way the UK regulates its elections and technology, including:
- Stricter rules that will force tech firms to take down illegal content on their site
- A code of ethics that defines “harmful content”
- An independent regulator to oversee enforcement of that code
- New laws around political advertising online
The UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright will head to the US this week to meet with the heads of major tech firms, including Zuckerberg. Wright wants to talk about dangerous content online.

risk disclosure
19th February 2019
QuadrigaCX CEO died – no one has access to cold storage

Founder of QuadrigaCX, 30-year-old Gerald Cotten, unexpectedly had died in December while in India, from Crohn’s disease. He reportedly had sole access to the cold wallet. QuadrigaCX owes its customers $190 million and cannot access most of the funds.

According to a Jan. 31 affidavits filed by his widow Jennifer Robertson and dug up by Coindesk, Cotten had sole access to most of the exchange’s $190 million worth of crypto held in cold storage.

No one appears to be able to access QuadrigaCX

Because when he died, Cotten took the keys with him.

His death is a very sad moment for the family, big loss, of course. But customers are in sorrow, too.

In a sworn affidavit filed Jan. 31 with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Jennifer Robertson, identified as the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten, said the exchange owes its customers roughly $250 million CAD ($190 million) in both cryptocurrency and fiat.

The customers of QuadrigaCX seem to be really worried as the Canadian crypto exchange can no longer access its cold storage and it owes its customers nearly $190 million, according to a report by CoinDesk.

QuadrigaCX went offline a few days ago.

Initially, it was thought that routine maintenance was the cause of the sudden malfunction. But now it seems that there is something bigger behind. Bigger than what was initially thought. Reddit users are saying it is just another ‘Exit Scam’.

However, Quadriga users, are now concerned that the unannounced downtime for the QuadrigaCX website, is a sign that something might be very wrong with the crypto exchange.

Users correspond

Some Reddit users asked if QuadrigaCX shouldn’t have let their customers know before taking its site down. Another Reddit user speculated as to whether the exchange had gone bankrupt due to an inability to find a suitable bank to host an account and facilitate transfers.

Reddit users are asking for proof of death, while one user claimed that the exchange, most likely, couldn’t access assets in cold storage, as the keys were only known to Cotten.

According to the affidavit, the cryptocurrency exchange holds nearly 26,500 Bitcoin ($92.3 million USD), 11,000 Bitcoin Cash ($1.3 million), 11,000 Bitcoin Cash SV ($707,000), 35,000 Bitcoin Gold ($352,000), nearly 200,000 Litecoin ($6.5 million) and about 430,000 Ether ($46 million), amounting to nearly $147 million.

Speaking about the current difficult situation, Jennifer Robertson said, “The normal procedure was that QuadrigaCX founder and CEO Gerald Cotten would move the majority of the coins to cold storage as a way to protect the coins from hacking or other virtual theft.”

She also added that the sole responsibility of handling the funds remained with Gerald Cotten and no one else has access to the exchange’s cold wallet.

The board of the company encouraged its customers.

They stated that the issue is being handled in the best possible way and an affidavit has been filed in the Nova Scotia Court requesting the authority to appoint a third party to help the exchange in finding a solution for the problem.

If the application for creditor protection is accepted by the Courts, then the court might give QuadrigaCX at least 30 days of protection from its creditors.

There is also a possibility that some of Quadriga funds are being stored on other exchanges, though this has not been confirmed.

The Courts will rule on the request for creditor protection on February 5.

Seems a bit suspicious that Gerald Cotten was the only one that had access to these coins. It is really hard to believe.

But the whole enigma about crypto exchange QuadrigaCX become weirder because they claimed they used multi-sign wallets.

It looks entirely as the result of poor governance and processes and that’s why we need regulated exchanges.

2nd February 2019