Hey there. Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate that some effort was put into writing this. You mentioned that you would love for someone from the team to respond to these questions in detail and correct them where they are wrong, so here I am. I will refer to "the author" generically in my response.

First, the author did a great job of acknowledging that they may have not done their diligence before initially investing. This is nice to see as many act like something has fundamentally changed between when they "researched" initially and now (because the price has dropped) when this is simply not the case.

The author describes the token distribution as presented recently by the team. This is mostly correct but I have a few comments:

• The "community" wallet is not just for the community in the context most of us think. An "ecosystem" wallet is probably a better way to describe it, and this may have been a language barrier from the original translation. While some of those tokens have/will be used for the community specifically (e.g. bounties), payments for things like exchange listings and third party advertising also come from this wallet. It is essentially a second funding pool to develop and promote the project, alongside the original ETH raised during the private sale, which really is not a lot when you look at it. At a rate of 1000:1 ITC to ETH, 50k ETH would have been raised in November back when ETH was around $330 USD. A rough calculation shows that a floor for their initial funding is around $16M USD which really is not a ton considering the size of the team (15 full-time members) plus other associated start up costs. This initial seed funding needs to keep the lights on and the team employed to work on the project for quite some time. It makes perfect sense that they have a second pool of funding available for things like exchange listings, community building, marketing, etc. Having that second pool in ITC rather than sold into ETH also gives further incentive to be careful with how it is spent. The team obviously anticipates the value of ITC rising dramatically over time. Spending 100 ITC now might seem like nothing but in the future, that could be a lot. These tokens are not just going to be "dumped" rapidly on to the market but spent carefully over time as they really do have a limit on funds available to sustain the project long term.
  
  
• The founding team wallet does enter circulation slowly over time, but the team has confirmed that they have not actually sold off any of these tokens. We have to take this at face value as it would be very difficult to prove otherwise but given this project is their pride and joy and they anticipate success in the future, I have no reason to not believe them. Investing in any project requires a certain degree of faith.
  
  
• The token distribution graphic the author provides was created by a community member, not the official team. That said, it does summarize the release over time very well.

Up to this point, the article does a great job of giving some background. The questions and concerns area is where things start to fall apart for me and I feel the author's emotions are getting the best of him/her.

• Why should we trust ITC team that the private sale even happened? The private sale was executed with large and reputable venture capital groups like FBG and #Hashed. If the author does not believe the private sale even happened, then they are also accusing these big VCs for being in on a scam as well. #Hashed has IoT Chain listed directly on their website. This is public information that anyone can look up.
  
  
• Why is the portion of tokens from the private sale locked? This is a popular method used to help control the rate that tokens enter circulation and provide incentive for VCs to hold their tokens long-term. Keeping the circulating supply low initially helps drive interest and price appreciation as demand catches up with supply. I am not sure why the author thinks releasing tokens over time indicates the private sale never happened.
  
  
• 30 million tokens are reserved for the "Community fund", Shouldn't they be controlled by the community? If not, How will ITC team control those funds in the future? The author is quick to make a statement here that cryptocurrency startups need to be "decentralized" themselves which I totally disagree with. The author needs to wrap their head around that while blockchain technology can help decentralize control of data, blockchain companies themselves can still exist in the traditional sense. As I mentioned earlier, community is probably the wrong word to describe that wallet. Those funds belong in control of the founding team where they can decide how to best spend them to support the ITC project and ecosystem. I would much prefer they remain in control of those funds rather than give control to a community who's motives are largely focused on how to inflate the price of the token as quickly as possible.
  
  
• ITC team says that 3.1 million out of 30 million of "Community fund" tokens already entered the circulation, which sounds to me like they sold 3.1 million of those community fund tokens without any consultation with the community. Once again, community is the wrong word for this wallet. And it is also wrong to assume that tokens entering circulation means they were automatically sold. Some of the results of that 3.1M spent are the exchange listings and bounty campaigns which are measurable outcomes. My previous bullet sums up my argument against this point as well. As a community we have the right to ask how funds are spent, but as a private company they also have the right to keep some of that information to themselves. Transparency is important but just because this is a DLT project doesn't mean we automatically get full access to all of their inner workings and financial decisions. You will find few projects in this space that explain in detail how every token is spent.
  
  
• Who will be entitled to get tokens from the "Early supporters fund"? How can we, early supporters apply to get those tokens? Again, do we need to trust the team to handle this fund properly? The author is missing the meaning of early supporters. Us community members are not early supporters in the sense of this wallet. This is for consultants and advisors (as listed on the website). It is perfectly reasonable for them to have a locked fund for people who helped them get the project off the ground. Of course we need to place some trust in them to handle this properly, and so far, those tokens in that wallet have remained untouched as promised. This is the same level of trust required for any crypto project where the team has control of large wallets.
  
  
• ITC team should have got 50 000 ETH from the private sale, Why the hell did they need to sell 3.1 million tokens from the community fund and 3.75 million tokens from the founders fund and therefore crash the price of ITC tokens when they have 50 000 ETH to use for the development? Again, these tokens were not "sold" but entered circulation for various initiatives including exchange listings and bounties. This is where the author really lost me, as I can tell the motive of this article was purely based on recent price action. Ask yourself, would this article have been published at all if the price had not dropped recently? Or are these concerns really founded on the basis of genuine curiosity?
  
  
• Can we please get transparency report on how are the funds from dumping 3.75 million tokens from the founders funds used? As a community, we're entitled to ask that question but the team is also not obligated to tell us exactly how they spend what is essentially their own personal funds. The word "dump" is a little dramatic. Those tokens entered circulation but as mentioned earlier, the team has not sold them off. They anticipate a significant rise in value at which point in the future, they are perfectly allowed to sell some of these to profit from their efforts in starting this business. This is their full time job, their passion. Shouldn't they be allowed to reap the benefits from this at some point in the future?
  
  
• Can we please get transparency report on how are the 50 thousand Ethereum tokens used so far and how will they be used in the future? The author goes on to say that we are entitled to this because it is a decentralized project. No. The company itself is a private entity but they are working to build a decentralized network for IoT. The ITC is and always will be the owner of the project. Yes, they are using the funds of others to build it, as with most start-ups in this space. We can ask for more transparency but they are under no obligation to provide us all of their financial data. We are not shareholders, we are speculators of a utility token for a potentially revolutionary ecosystem. This is a very important distinction. I will certainly reach out to the founding team to see if we can get some financial reports, but do not assume we are entitled to this information as speculators.

The last bit again calls the project itself centralized (which it is of course, it is a private company). Further claims are made about tokens being sold by the team (which I mentioned earlier, is not the case). The biggest takeaways from the article are: A) can we have some more transparency into the use of the "community" wallet and B) can they explain how the 50,000 ETH raised is being spent? I will talk to Xinhao (the co-founder) about these points and see if we can get some additional details to please the author. For the time being, my suggestion to the author is this: we all need to be willing to place a minimum level of faith in the team to deliver on their promises. If you cannot do that, then I suggest exiting your position until such a time that you can.