The story of over €35 million unregulated fundraising by DomRaider ICO

ICO or Initial Coin Offering is the new craze for the startups / companies to raise funds. This involves creating your own Token in the form of crypto currencies and selling them to general public. The advantage that the buyers get from buying these tokens is that they can sell it at an higher price once it is listed at exchange. The idea of ICO is itself very dangerous because money is being created out of nowhere and people are forced to accept the value of currency, which the creators set.

The potential risks of ICO are endless with the worst being loosing all the money that is invested. Hence creators should be highly trusted. But the stakes involved here are so enormous that it would take a very brave heart to stay away from greed. Anyone who has the access of funds can run away leaving no clue what so ever.

Moving onto the business end of the post, I would like to share with you an Interview with the CEO of DomRaider , Tristan Colombet who is currently running  ICO campaign and “Claim” to have sold more than 350 Million tokens. Following is the exact transcript of the questions asked by me and responses I received from Tristan on the Telegram Group of DomRaider ICO.

Me : I don’t want to take this over the same old things which people have already asked and most of which is also mentioned in DomRaider Whitepaper.

I would want to get straight into it.

Q1) What mechanism of Blockchain is DomRaider using and on which network is it running?

This Blockchain I am referring to one used for DRT token Sales.

Tristan: DRT are ERC20 standard tokens, running on Ethereum Network. You can check our smart contract on our github https://github.com/Domraider/dr-token/blob/develop/contracts/DRTCoin.sol

Me : Q2) Okay. Please can you share the exact name of your token because I am unable to find it on Etherscan.io

Also all the tokens on sale at Ethereum Blockchain are listed there.

Tristan : Due to KYC requirements following french law, we weren’t able to launch the sale phase using smart contract to collect funds. Only individual unique accounts were allowed. The smart contract will be launched (and visible on etherscan) on october 18th, during the final token emitting process. The token ticker is DRT

Me: Well that sounds a bit strange because essentially to use Ethereum Blockchain , you need to have smart Contract listed on Etherscan.io .
Basically what smart Contract is that it controls interaction of Accounts of Users & Tokens sales which in turn creates blocks on Ethereum Blockchain.

Q3) Can you share with us address of transactions where DomRaider token were transferred to any account using Ethereum Blockchain ? Note : Every transaction on Ethereum Blockchain has a transaction ID

Tristan :There are different ways to manage a crowd sale on blockchain. Using a smart contract is only one of it. As I previously mentioned, KYC rules didn’t allow us to do it this way, that’s why we are using direct addressing instead. It also allow us to accept Bitcoin and bank transfer payment.
The token emission will only occur on October 18th, as explained in the whitepaper. As soon as it’s done, you will be able to publicly check all addresses of all token owners and all transactions with etherscan or any other tool.

Me : Thank you for clarifying.
Q4) Correct me if I am wrong to say that you are not using Ethereum Blockchain (untill now) for transaction validation ?
Q5) Is there any way in which general public can know how many Tokens are sold (other than your website) ?

Tristan: You are welcome. You are right about Q4. About Q5, not during the sale

I have to leave now but do not hesitate to ask other questions, I’ll answer it tomorrow. Thank you all !

Me: Thank you for your time.

It would have been better if I could just end this conversation one last question. This is the last question and I won’t bother you again.

Q6) Can you provide a proof to general public of the balance of equivalent money collected in the ICO from the token sale.

I mean to say if you “Claim” to have sold 370,919,886 tokens at a price of €0.1 per token
Then can you show the general public proof of €37,091,988 in Account balances be it in ETH /BTC/Bank ?

Edit: Taking into consideration the bonuses and discounts the final amount of the ICO maybe around €25 Million . Let us know how much has been actually collected.

I am yet to receive answer to this last question !

The reason for me taking the interview was that I already smelled something fishy. I knew that DomRaider was clearly hiding some details.

Before this I anonymously joined the Telegram group and asked questions which went unanswered. After that I posted an article on Medium.com to get an answer from them which also went unheard.

Here is the link of article: “DomRaider ICO , where is the €30+ Million?” https://medium.com/@jeromy_bernard/domraider-ico-where-is-the-35million-75389c0ce892

I urge everyone reading this to wake up and please be more cautious about ICOs. Look at the obvious details of token sale model as well as project to make your investments safe. Greed in ICOs is what is bringing everyone onboard but do we really need greed to build products or do we need Passion & Talent. You Decide.

Special thanks to my friends at the IndiaBits community to help me.

I have not received any kind of financial benefit from doing all this. Still if you feel that I should be rewarded for this act then you can send your donations here.

BTC Address: 3AtSQPZYDERXY5g4objCNobnNjELK3qbzR