If there were a Rotten Tomatoes-like aggregator for top ICOs, Ternio would probably get a “91%.” They have a top team, third party verification of technology, and the impressive first-ever milestone of 1 million transactions per second. They also have a serious problem convincing us that any of that is true. When Ternio co-founder Daniel Gouldman hired security firm Null Bash to conducted a full audit of Ternio’s team, infrastructure, and code base, it was more than a party trick. Gouldman wanted the toughest outsiders possible to verify that Ternio’s Lexicon architecture could handle one million transactions per second (txns). Ternio is in the pre-sale stages of its ICO, so…
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Venture capitalists talk about blockchain startups
Lots of “scammy, spammy crypto projects” right now
We were back on the Columbia University campus a couple of weeks ago for another panel on blockchain, this time part of the “Startup Columbia Entrepreneurship Festival” series of tech talks. While the seats in the university’s Miller Theater were more comfortable than in most of the other venues we’ve been to recently, the almost absolute darkness and prohibition on using electronics made note taking a bit more challenging. Fortunately, this was a more freewheeling discussion among the moderator, Nat Kelner, associate director of the Columbia Entrepreneurship Blockchain Studio, and three venture capitalists who focus on the blockchain ecosystem. We attended several events earlier in the year where proponents of…
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John McAfee will hype your cryptocurrency endeavor for $105,000
Tweets for sale by a libertarian technocrat
Whether you know him as founder of a world-famous software company, as an international fugitive wanted for murder, or as a 2016 Presidential candidate, 72-year-old John McAfee has reinvented himself again, this time as high-dollar crypto-pundit. His name once synonymous with antivirus software, McAfee’s latest venture is McAfee Crypto Team, a one-stop consulting shop for all your ICO needs. The site hawks something called “the McAfee effect,” or in simplest terms, “tweets for sale.” With paid tweets going for the rather publicly displayed price of $105,000, this access to McAfee’s 811,000 Twitter followers is extremely appealing to anyone seeking to publicize their ICO or blockchain startup. We finally wrote down…
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Travel startup Winding Tree raises $15 million in ICO
Looking to disrupt near duopoly with help from prominent partners
Travel startup Winding Tree has raised approximately $15 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) that was supported by many travel providers, including Lufthansa and some hotel chains. Winding Tree is seeking to build a new open data infrastructure for the online travel industry, which has been growing as people from newly wealthy countries join the ranks of those traveling for pleasure and business. Yet the booming global $1.2 trillion travel business, which has joined all others in moving online, remains stubbornly stuck in the area of mediated transactions. It’s rare (and difficult) for consumers to purchase hotel rooms and airline tickets directly from the providers of same with the…
