Tag: Initiative Q

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
Initiative Q – What is It?
3 min read
- Initiative Q has adopted some of the worst elements of scammy altcoins
If you google Initiative Q and head to its website, you will find a giant page posture “tomorrow’s payment network”.

Social media’s got itself a new trend, it asks you to sign up to a new financial network called Initiative Q.

To attract signups, Initiative Q is using pyramid-style recruiting, aggressive social marketing. And it’s working: The project has been public since early summer, Google searches for “Initiative Q” have exploded since October 14.

You may have already been addressed by friends on Facebook or Twitter. And they told you there are only a limited amount of invites to join in on the next crypto, future bitcoin, that will potentially get you rich quickly. Despite that great interest, there is a concern that the operation might be a scam.

Initiative Q is a project led by veteran payments entrepreneur Saar Wilf, who contributed technology to Paypal, and George Mason University economics professor Lawrence H. White. They want to launch a digital currency but they’re very noisy about the fact that it’s not a cryptocurrency.

Initiative Q says it will be “tomorrow’s payment network.”

Wilf has started a viral social media campaign with this:

“Interested in a free $130,000 lottery ticket, which I estimate has a better than 1% chance to win?”

And below

It is evident they need to encourage mass adoption if they want success.

But, let’s put aside absurd and arrogant claims of their made-up “currency” being worth $2 trillion USD in the future. For now, they have a nice landing page. Anything can go in the world of marketing. But there are some reasonable questions we have to ask.

How could free units of a new digital currency end up being worth thousands or billions of dollars?

This is where things get interesting.

If you read through Initiative Q’s website and try to find how they got to their absurd $40,000 airdrop value you will find a long description, but here’s the summary of how they got there:

As you can see Initiative Q is different as it doesn’t ask you to invest any money. The free offering promises to collect a better financial reward if you secure one of the free slots. That means there should be no financial risk to you to join.

They are offering to set up a new payment network utilizing the very newest technology and then run a private currency ‘Q’ on that network, with a base of 2 trillion Q, which will be worth $1 per Q. This may make you think of a pyramid or Ponzi scheme, whereby a scammer will trick new investors, but no money has changed hands. Yet.

That, however, doesn’t change the fact that Initiative Q is in our opinion, a really bad idea. Initiative Q has adopted some of the worst elements of scammy altcoins, without even small simulations of technological innovation. It’s connected in general with risks.

Why does it look like a scam?

It’s premised on the hype

Initiative Q most resembles a crypto scam while active promoting of FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. Its own marketing materials compare it to “getting free bitcoin seven years ago.”

Promoters spin estimates of the currency’s future value and they’ve built their marketing on “the earlier you join, the higher your reward.”

This rhetoric is created to attract the naive audience, and get them caught up in the excitement of easy money earning. Take a look at their Facebook profile. It also doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Initiative Q sounds like QAnon. It is a dangerous viral conspiracy theory that has taken over certain corners of social media in the past few years.

Let’s say, prop up scammers.

It’s not anonymous

Initiative Q is pointing out that they’re not selling anything. They’re just asking for your name and email address. They just want to keep you in the loop when the currency is launched. But, this trove of names and emails is a giant tank for hackers at the same time. A list of people interested in get-rich-quick schemes that could be extremely lucrative for more opened scammers. Where is the anonymity? The essence of crypto, P2P and blockchain!

Initiative Q seems to have missed the core source of the cryptocurrency enthusiasm they’re trying to use to leverage their really weird non-crypto. Data is valuable, and advertising companies will gladly pay heaps of money for access to good lists. Yes, they say in their privacy policy that they don’t sell our data! So does Facebook. That didn’t stop Cambridge Analytica from scraping illicit data and using it to advertise during the US 2016 election. If Initiative Q is sold to another company, they have every right to change the privacy policy. There’s no guarantee that your data is private. If there is no possibility of anonymous digital transactions what they are looking for in the world of crypto? Without the possibility of anonymous digital transactions, nobody would give a damn about cryptocurrency.

It has no technology

Initiative Q doesn’t have anything as yet, except the notion of ‘build a payment network and it’ll be awesome. Frankly, many of the things Q is promising to build already exist in the form of Apple Pay, Google Pay, AI fraud prevention, and smart card systems. What’s new? It looks like another payment app, just another payment processor. It’s utterly unclear what unsolved problem Q is meant to address. Keyword ‘unclear’! Fog! They have no idea but they want you to sign up. Smart! The most interesting thing about Initiative Q is its creators’ decision to pitch it as “sort of like a cryptocurrency, but definitely not a cryptocurrency.” So, what it is?

They have no product. Most ICOs or cryptocurrencies will explain how they plan to build their network. They ’ll draw up a whitepaper, going deep into the technical details.

What about Initiative Q? Nothing! No product, no details, no descriptions. There are some indications, signs but all unclear and obscured.

There’s an endless well of frustrated greed in the world. For a while, cryptocurrency was the vehicle and object for that greed. What Initiative Q’s creators seem to have missed is that there’s a lot more to it than that. Greed isn’t the main subject.

Its marketing is scary

Initiative Q’s authors have presented their plans to the world with all the aspects of a scam. Where’s the evidence for this?

Here! You can only join Initiative Q if you’re recruited, and each new joiner gets five invites to send out to friends. Recruiting others rewards you with more Q currency in the future. OK, there is no buy-in price, but that’s literally a pyramid scheme.

Initiative Q has been aggressive in using barrel-scraping content marketing tactics like MLM. But, unlike the MLM businesses, Initiative Q isn’t asking you to buy anything. They’re just making incredible promises about the value of the free coins they’re handing out.

Our concern is that when “get rich quick” schemes like this go viral on social media, they rust the image of cryptocurrency. They can cause confusion among the general audience. Even if Initiative Q does work out as a new system of payment, their marketing has been misleading. That “by invite, only” system for early adoption makes a false sense of exclusivity. At the same time, it can encourage people to spam their social media feeds with the Initiative Q saga.

Initiative Q is centralized

Initiative Q is a digital currency that’s not blockchain-based. According to creators, it is a payment network with a smartphone app, instant payments, and better fraud prevention than credit card companies. In fact, it links its fraud prevention specifically to the idea that it’s centralized.

They are establishing “patterns of appropriate and inappropriate behavior,” and Initiative Q will build “more reliable fraud assessment.”

What does it mean?

It is just an enhanced version of what banks and credit cards do. And that’s exactly the problem: Q isn’t an actual innovation. Initiative Q creators really just want to build a centralized payment network. And they want to take their piece of cake.

Q will be a private currency and you won’t control the money you receive. The network could shut down, the admins could move your money into someone else’s account. There is no guarantee the Q would avoid legal intervention that destroyed earlier centralized digital currencies.

Should you sign up to Initiative Q?

We won’t tell you what to do with your money. But be very cautious when it comes to Initiative Q and online promises of quick wealth.

It’s possible that Initiative Q is not a scam. It’s possible that they’re just a company orchestrating a brilliant viral marketing campaign. Nothing is wrong with that. PayPal, CashApp, Payoneer, offer referral programs to attract new users.

So, where the problem lies? There are so many ways to make money, especially in the crypto area. People are wasting their time on gambles like this.

Initiative Q’s affiliates promote this possible scam instead to do something that’s actually profitable. True wealth never comes by waiting for random internet companies to hand deliver you $40,000.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)
7th November 2018