Sucks to read about what happened. If he left immediately after getting the funds, I don't think he had any intention of using it for the business. It was pretty much a con job. Not to say he didn't have some intention of running a legitimate business at the very beginning and was frustrated, but if he asked for money for gold inventory and immediately left he must have fully known what he was doing. Hopefully he may want to salvage his reputation. That's why it's much better to limit the risk to a much lower amount for any one person. I've been ripped off a couple times before because I was too trusting, but you learn from it.
From a business standpoint, gold inventory shouldn't have been a problem. You can drop-ship gold if you have the right suppliers. It's more about getting orders and customers and proving out your concept. If he never got an order the business didn't show enough validation for funding or a loan in the first place.
The internet is fucking creepy.
Yeah I don't care for the personal stuff about his family etc., but for him as a business I think you have to expect some level of transparency. As a business I prefer more openness compared to anonymity. That's why I don't trust Darkcoin or NXT or any businesses that are run by anonymous entities. (I'm not commenting on the technology.)
Anyways I have some good contacts in the gold space and if I see the right business and the right team I would try to make the connection and help. It's a low margin business as @donkeypong stated and you really have to validate the business model with a lot of customers and orders so I wouldn't be interested unless someone brought that to the table. It takes a lot of experience too. Gold has been in a bear market so some companies that have gold assets and dollar liabilities have gotten into trouble so you just have to be careful. I know reputable companies (Tulving in SoCal) that went down during the current gold bear market. I'm still a gold bug so I eventually would like to help put something together in the future.
As riverhead commented, Cryptosmith was not a flash in the pan con man effort. I too talked with Ryan on skype daily and he was quite transparent with me about the business. I see major parallels between the evolution of the BitShares ecosystem and how Cryptosmith evolved. Neither popped into existence quickly or in a vacuum. Many people were involved. I see several posts in this thread that assume a great deal about the business and Ryan's motives. I will never defend what gentso did but I will at least try to set the record straight and clear up the misinformation surrounding this unfortunate event in BItShares history.
You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over.
That's the key. In a low margin business, you must have high volume. That's the only way to make money. And with the price spikes of precious metals, if you're not turning them over quickly, then you are stuck with inventory that can lose a lot of value (or gain it) within days. And then you have the cost of storage, shipping, insurance, etc., which you damn well better figure into your costs. Plus, if you aren't doing enough volume, then your costs have to be higher than other sellers and people will shop around. So the only way for BitShares to engage with this, I think, would be to partner with an established business that already has that cost structure and wouldn't mind adding a bit more volume from us.
What could be more safe than gold inventory in the hands of a trusted, identifiable, long time community member? Granted, not a very liquid inventory, but quite safe as a reserve of value. The plan was that this inventory was to be seed money to jump start the operation.
As I recall it took some time to convince Stan to allow BitUSD to be used for purchasing the PM as opposed to only BItGold and BitSilver. Gentso was highly engaged in talks with Metaexchange and Jonathon at bunkershares to mine crypto into real PM, and in finding various sources for the PM including those that drop ship to many countries around the world. Plus he had to create the cryptosmith portal and managed to secure and manage very capable talent (jsidhu) to pull that off. He hired me to run his delegate. All of that real work does not paint a picture of a con man trying to turn a quick buck. He never demanded controlling interest (i.e. private keys, tho I was willing to provide them and suggested this to him several times) in the delegate.
The major flaw was a mistaken demand for the PM value cryptosmith could provide, plus it was limited to BitShares assets for purchase. It truly
seemed to many it was a great victory for crypto and would really benefit the ecosystem. Why do you think this topic has popped up again? There must be some demand for a service like cryptosmith. Clearly there is, but apparently it takes much more effort to put together a solid business plan and ability to market than was done here. It was never seen as a risk free operation. What entrepreneural efforts are? Anyone thinking about taking on a similar challenge to cryptosmith would do well to study it before assuming it will be successful.
Topic: Gold gateway (Read 17391 times)
