Tezos scandal:
Tezos, backed by VC Tim Draper, raised over $232 million in July backed by promises of a revolutionary new blockchain technology and an ever more bullish ICO market. However the promise of a November unveil as well as the release of Tezzies, the Tezos coin, to inital investors has been pushed back to February, amid potential scandals between the founders and the president of the Tezos foundation,Swiss banker Johann Gevers. This has halted new development, Kathleen and Authur Brietman claim. Gevers is accused of “self-dealing” from the company’s fund. The Tezos future markets has been on a downward spiral ever since, dropping some 70%. Yikes!
My take:
Tezos is Theranos 2.0
It was inevitable that one of these larger blockchain tech companies, that sprung out of the ICO frenzy this summer, would take a serious tumble. This opens the flood gates for potential regulation, class action lawsuits, and more. But let's take a closer look at Theranos which is a privately-held biotech company that was once valued at over $9Billion and its founder, Stanford graudate Elizabeth Holmes, was Silicon's biotech darling who could do no wrong. She was seen as an innovator and a revolutionary that was going to take the healthcare industry by storm. With a simple pinprick of blood she promised that Theranos could test for numerous ailments, essentially solving the problem of lengthy blood testing, large-scale testing centers and more. And guess who she was backed by? Well none other than Tezos' own VC, Tim Draper. It turned out the company was built a lot more on savvy marketing and fluff and a lot less on actual innovation. The machines were faulty, often leaving Theranos to send the blood samples to actual testing centers and the more investigators looked into the company the more Theranos materialized as a Silicon Valley pipe dream than a revolutionary biotech company. I followed this story closely, mostly out of the curiosity. I noticed from the beginning the big questions weren't being answered, substituted instead for more fluff to appease the masses. Theranos is also a privately held company so it wasn't nearly as scrutinized as others in the field. And when Theranos was scrutinized Holmes often blamed internal feuding and regulation as stalling the innovation and new technology (does that ring any bells?). This, in my eyes, is a tell-tale sign that something is wrong. When I first heard about Tezos I wanted to see their technology. I wanted to get a feel for what my investment would mean but their "self-amending cryptographic ledger" left me with more questions than answers so I quietly backed away. Now with the news of an internal feud, I feel even more confident in my decision to back away from Theranos 2.0.
I truly think Theranos is to microscopic blood testing as Tezos is to self-amending ledgers in the blockchain.
What are your thoughts on Tezos?
Much love,
Blockchain Bella