Fake Porn Coin Vol. 2. Why you shouldn’t invest in adult startups
Whores from Cologne, burned-out startups, anonymous but unprotected and inactive blockchain services for escorts, the sad ghost of Matchpool and much more in the second part of our story about the adult industry scams that can really fuck you.
…Audrey Sin is bored of porn. It doesn’t pay that much, she gets banged all day and then threatened with court cases for shooting anything with a rival studio. So she gladly agreed when Johnny in his red Lambo invited her to his party. There were a lot of young and successful men who Audrey almost fell in love with, and they assured her it was mutual. After the party, they gave her 3 grand and she realised that fucking off camera is nicer, more profitable and better in every way…
In the first part of the tale, we told you about the shitty ICOs that are promising to go To The Moon thanks to the revolution in the porn world. But even minimal analysis shows that it’s all a ridiculous swindle. Now it’s the turn of another popular and lucrative topic – escort services. As can be predicted, crooks have set their traps here too.
Mission: create a high-quality and safe escort service. The client chooses a hooker, peruses her skills and schedule, and sends LOVR tokens (ERC-20) tokens to her account. Then they go to have fun. The whore and the client are anonymous and protected. The platform gets its income from the girls’ listings. They pay to be shown at the top of the app. Everyone is happy.
How much money and for what: they want 10 million Euros. Half will go to developing the app, wallet and exchange. 30% to marketing. 10% each to legal approvals and operating expenses.
What’s wrong: in the case of hookers and clients, anonymity and security are not always one and the same thing. The absence of ID, a bank account and so on won’t protect a call girl from dismemberment, nor a man from theft or mugging. The track record of the cofounder and CEO hardly inspires confidence either – his previous startups either quickly burned out or now look pretty crap. Obviously not worth 10 million. Their social media is trash: inflated numbers of likes, no visible user activity and poor content. The only exception is the photos of whores from Cologne in branded t-shirts (although judging by their shapely arms, it’s more likely they were picked up at Oktoberfest). Nope.
Expectation/Reality: a revolution in the sex trade will definitely come sooner or later. But not thanks to these guys. Even if they manage to raise anything at all, they’ll shrug their shoulders and say they’re suddenly having legalisation problems. But they’ll be worked out at some point. Yeah right.
Mission: make a sort of Uber for sexual services: no spam, no danger and clearly specified details and rates.
How much money and for what: 30 million ELT tokens (ERC-20) will be issued, which they want to bring in $10,320,000. The distribution of funds is as follows:
The guys explain that a new token is required because they will arrange an airdrop and it will be the only payment method for hookers on the platform. Clients, on the other hand, will have the right to pay in any cryptocurrency. But ELT will be the only one to not charge commission.
What’s wrong: the plans really are like Uber. That service operates in 80 countries. But they all allow people transport services. Unlike prostitution, hehe.
Here, by the way, is a world map with the legal status of the sex trade. Not too promising.
The whitepaper says that only adults will be able to use the service. A photo of their passports will be in the blockchain and blah-blah-blah. Any schoolkid can photoshop a passport these days. A swing and a miss.
Lunch breaks for hookers! Fucking amazing. No, seriously. But how will you keep track of their diet without locking them up in a brothel? By temporarily banning them from using the app? It’s easy to get around that by making another account and building up your own base of clients.
This is how much the company is going to earn in the coming years.
There’s not much to say about the team. The cofounders are geeks from Lithuania with no background in the adult industry. The web developer, on the flipside, is a serial ICO hound. He’s bashing out projects about blockchain blood diamonds and something about traps for traders at the same time. You never know, maybe something will blow up.
There’s no point in discussing their social media yet. They’re almost unmaintained and don’t look nearly as bombastic as the creators describe their project.
Expectation/Reality: they promise a lot, but anyone can do that. In fact, they have no specialists (for fuck’s sake, they could have brought at least one professional pimp into the team), product or community. Almost half the funds raised during the ICO will be invested in marketing and sales (selling what?). Learn from Uber, slowpokes – its only advertising was the 50% discount for your first journey.
Mission: The same as the two previous projects. Safe orders for hookers, payment in cryptocurrency, their own token (ERC-20), a rating system and yet more analogies to Uber.
How much money and for what: they planned to raise $16.5m and got 10 million less.
Here is the distribution of funds:
What’s wrong:
The boys boast about their finished platform, talk about payment integration, bolting on tokens and other blah-blah-blah. But look at it. Yeah, they paid for some articles in reputable sources like the Daily Mail, but that didn’t have much effect on their traffic. And the whole thing looks shitty.
The team members studied in Sydney and worked on projects in London, the website is registered either in the USA or the Cayman Islands, while now they work in Portugal and go to sex forums in Australia. Where will investors’ money end up? One co-founder alternately worked as Versace and Brick Top the bookie. The other founded companies that don’t exist anymore. Where are the whores, cash and guns?
To prove their startup power, the would-be pimps quote Liam Robertson, CEO of cryptofund Alphabit, who is kind of sketchy himself. Here, for example, is the old story of his association with Matchpool.
Add to this the piss-poor social media profiles, which haven’t been given much attention since the end of the ICO, and we get another shitty project with big slogans. To hell with them!
Expectation/Reality: they tell us about a finished project that just needs blockchain and a wallet added on. Then you look at this product and it’s such garbage that you’d need a ton of time and money to do it again properly. Even though they only raised a third of the planned funds from their ICO, they think that everything’s alright and plan to spend a quarter of the budget on marketing. They also use dodgy characters to promote themselves. It’s all bad. Nothing to see here.
…It’s early autumn in New York and yellow leaves are falling from the trees. Audrey is sitting on a bench in Central Park and reading the Bible. She realised that porn and prostitution are not for her. Now her life is all about faith. Which, incidentally, can also be used to make money. To be continued!
List of reviewed porn scam projects:
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In blockchain we trust!
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