Partnership announcements have long been a tool for pumping altcoins and shilling ICOs. In fact, promoters are now interpreting the term so broadly that if they are using Word to write a whitepaper or Gmail to handle communications they might as well claim to be partners of Google and Microsoft. The most infamous example of overstating partnerships is IOTA, but two recent examples show how the misleading practice is spreading and even evolving.
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BMW Carvertical “Partnership”
German car manufacturer BMW had to come out on Tuesday and explain that it had no cooperation with an ICO project called Carvertical. The promoters had claimed to partner with the automobile company to become “the first blockchain company integrating connected vehicles data onto vehicle reports system.” However, BMW explained that they are merely using a data tool it made available for anyone.
Instead of apologizing for over hyping the the extent of its use of BMW’s data, the company doubled down in its response, insisting that it is a partnership and claimed to be a victim: “before this FUD came to light, we were blackmailed and asked to pay 5 million cV tokens to someone…When we refused, he and his partners started a coordinated attack…spreading false information.”
BMW has not entered into a cooperation/partnership with CarVertical. The company is using our BMW CarData interface available to any third party.
— BMW USA (@BMWUSA) March 20, 2018
Verge to Make Major Collaboration, If Bagholders Pay Up
Taking this practice to the next level, the recently hacked team behind “privacy coin” Verge (XVG) isn’t even claiming to partner with any specific company. Instead, they are now promising to reveal a “massive” collaboration that will be “the largest partnership in crypto to date!” All that needs for this to happen is that investors will donate 75 million XVG by Monday.
They write that: “A global organization with a vast network of high traffic sites is looking to enter the cryptocurrency market and form a strategic business alliance with Verge as the preferred form of secure payment method, offering a quick and private means of transaction to hundreds of millions of potential consumers daily. This represents an enormous potential market with a global reach that will compete with multiple fiat currencies. Help us accelerate this crowdfunding effort and reach our target goal of 75 million XVG by Monday. If our goal is met, we will be releasing the name of the company Monday March 26th, 2018.”
The advantage of this approach is that the team is not making any falsifiable claims to check and could just blame the community for failing to send it enough funds for destroying the collaboration opportunity without ever revealing the “partner.” It also leads to some people speculating online that they are talking about anyone from Amazon to Microsoft, generating excitement without any real effort or proof.
How should cryptocurrency investors judge the real value of partnership announcements? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
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