2018-11-15 16:38 |
Stox, was recently in the news because of allegations of an exit scam carried out by SIRIN Labs’ founder Moshe Hogeg. The company has actively refuted this accusation, claiming that it’s work of disgruntled elements looking to spread some fear, uncertainty and doubt.
The claims of an exit scam were initially published in a Reddit thread and spread to Telegram channels, then picked up by major outlets, including IOTA’s founder, Dominik Schiener’s tweet about how he’s always thought that SIRIN’s founder, Moshe Hogeg was a shady person and scammer.
According to the tweet, Dominik says,
I always suspected @moshehogeg from @SIRINLABS to be a shameless scammer. Now we finally have proof: https://t.co/JWJRqISry8. Wonder how much money he stole from Sirin and other projects he was involved in. He and his companies give the entire ecosystem a bad reputation.
— Dominik Schiener (@DomSchiener) November 11, 2018
While many might have taken this as a comment from an expert in the industry, it is important to note that SIRIN Labs had a previous arrangement to use IOTA’s blockchain for its soon to be released phone, but pulled out of the arrangement and chose the ethereum blockchain.
How The Accusations StartedThe text used as “evidence” on the Reddit thread had a list of wallet addresses that indicated purported irregularities in the transfer of STX tokens.
These tokens which were vested were seemingly withdrawn from the receiving wallets that they were initially in through the use of the revoke function and transferred to a “strategic partnership address”, after which it was then traded on an exchange.
The subtext being that Hogeg sold these tokens –more specifically, his tokens.
In response to this, Stox released a statement saying,
“This anonymous source re-published a message that was published and already answered more than a year ago (26.9.2017). This source copied the message and shouted “Exit scam” without having any cause whatsoever… the created tokens were actually tokens purchased by private investors before the public sale. Money taken was converted to Ethereum. This was purchased by Hogeg. Hogeg used this money to purchase additional STX following the company’s public sale.”
The company continued,
“Additional Stox tokens were purchased by Moshe as he is a huge fan of Stox who strongly believes in what we are doing as he has said many times. There has been no unethical behavior, nor any dumping of Stox token.”
An independent investigation of the aforementioned statements actually confirmed this statement to be true.
And in response to the latest allegations the company stated,
“These are private transactions conducted by Moshe Hogeg on the secondary markets. These transactions are not related to his involvement in the company at all and were concluded independently.”
As for the issue of revoked tokens, Stox clearly stated that admins were the only ones who could do that and only used in certain instances:
“[it]…was used right after the ICO in order to fix vested amounts in invest.com’s and Stox’s team wallets. The revoked tokens were transferred back to the vesting contract, and then reallocated according to both the terms mentioned in the white paper, and also in accordance with agreements with our strategic partners and advisers… From time to time the revoke function is used to adjust vesting terms according to new or ended partnerships. For example, when an employee leaves our employ, Stox revokes his vested tokens and return them to the vesting contract.”
The Second Rumor Sparking FUDThat same text shared on reddit stated that the company’s CEO, Yossi Peretz has moved on from the company, partners like Commologic and Amazix have pulled out of earlier arrangements and partnerships, and that the company has let go of all staff, closing their office in the process.
It’s true that the first and second rumors are true as seen in Peretz’s post on Medium,
“My Journey with Commologic & Stox has been one of the best working experiences. As the CEO of Commologic … we have assisted building the Stox platform…Due to the decision of STX Technologies to terminate the service contract with Commologic, Commologic will no longer continue its business activities and I have decided that it is now time for me to pursue a new venture and take my career in a different direction.”
Shortly after Peretz’s statement, the company released a statement saying that it will now be managed by Gibraltar based STX Technologies Ltd. The company also confirmed that it had ended the partnership between it and Amazix:
“Stox terminated the contract with AmaZix in October because the parties could not reach agreement on the commercial terms. Stox is currently in talks with AmaZix with the aim of re-establishing the relationship and renewing the contract.”
The third claim of the company downsizing is because of the conclusion of the partnership deal between it and Chromologic. Their statement reads:
“In this regard we have moved development an operation to Europe…We say goodbye to the Israeli team that has been with us from the start, as part of the company’s decision to move finally towards a more decentralized platform.”
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