The ANS/NEO scam - why I don't recommend buying it

in #neo7 years ago (edited)

You might have come across the heavily hyped ans/neo coin touted to be the "ethereum of China". If you look at the behaviour of the proponents you should already be asking yourself if something fishy is going on. Constantly making things up and blowing things out of proportion watching the channels I sometimes felt as if it was some kind of cult.

I ask you to check the facts yourself. I'll lay out all the evidence for you and you can check and verify everything I am posting here. Let's first start with some rationality here though. One of their main things is the "ethereum of China" (Henceforth referred to as eoC). Why does China need its own ethereum? Did you care which country BTC was developed in? The basic principle most people in the crypto world follow when investing is greed/the hope to get rich quick. Why would the Chinese massively invest into something that is Chinese if they don't see any good opportunity to make profit? If you believe the eoC slogan it's just another ethereum. The original already has big business behind it whereas NEO is just a university project.
A Chinese university for that matter. Not too many foreigners are able to read or even speak Chinese. It's convenient for would be scammers as it's hard to verify and the impulsive buyer doesn't have time to verify anything, because he doesn't want to miss out on the profit.

I started to look into ants around Jun 20th. The massive pump and hype machine was starting, check this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1571738.6360
This is what made me look at things a bit closer. I looked at source code for a moment but it had a bit of a shabby feeling to it and so many people at the time recognized the pump that I quickly lost interest.
Until a few days later the heavily hyped conference was about to begin. I witnessed people who didn't understand a single word of Chinese watch a conference completely in Chinese. All because of falsified conference schedules being circulated and supposed big names appearing at the conference.(Just keep reading on bitcointalk if you want to get a picture). I thought that was the end of the scheme and things would go quiet again.

It's still alive today though. Maybe it was the incubator of the new "HODL" scam technique, maybe it's just fake it till you make it? Only the scammers will dump one day and you will be scamming others in turn, partaking in this.

Then there's the China thing. It's big in China. They are craving it and will push their coin "to the moon". Only do they really care? Check Google trends China: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=CN&q=%E5%B0%8F%E8%9A%81%E5%8C%BA%E5%9D%97%E9%93%BE . Ooops not enough data. (小蚁区块链 is the original chinese name). Now of course it's China, so we care more about the mainland China. So we should focus on baidu. Unfortunately it's a bit more unwieldy than Google trends. First you may want to check: http://top.baidu.com/ (I trust you know how google translate works) Last time I checked there was nothing crypto currency related. When you search for bitcoin, you get some suggestions for related topics (LTC, no ans or neo in sight). See google translated screenshot for your convenience.search_results.png

Then if you search for cryptocurrency, no ANS or NEO in sight:
search_crypto.png

Now to conclude this check who really cares about antshares(worldwide): https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=antshares

Edit:
If that's not enough evidence, simply have a look at the actual market volumes on coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/neo/#markets
At the time of this writing 50.23% of the actual market volume in NEO is on Bittrex in just the single NEO/BTC trading pair. All of Bittrex makes for about 56% of the total NEO market. That's dumb money.

Sort:  

LOL. Troll trap made by trolls. You're attempt to "confirm" anything based on search engines and search trends is amateurish. You're a freshman at best.

Your first flaw is assuming a trends search is indicative of a projects popularity with whom, exactly? The entire internet? When Cryptocurrency is only in the hands of a few vs the world. Nice try. Global market cap is somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh 65 trillion. Crypto is 130 billion. Neo is a drop in the bucket, of another bucket, of another massive bucket. You need to go back to the drawing board on that one...

When you do a standard search on Biadu, you find plenty regarding the project. Did you assume no one would cross check that? I'm starting to chuckle.

Your second flaw, well that one is kinda funny... You've choked a little too hard while sucking down the "ethereum of china" phallus. Here's a tissue, wipe what's left off your chin. It's an all Chinese team and guess what, they live in China. Imagine that.

Your third flaw is assuming a coin must be, somehow, equally divided up amongst other exchanges, smells of mad dog 20/20 and lucky strikes. Now I'm laughing again...

I trade on two exchanges. Why? Because the rest suck a$$, have no volume, riddle with controversy, crawling with slim and a hiccup away from closing their doors.

Your fourth flaw. It's a scam... HAHA. If you truly believe NEO is a scam, and you're not here click baiting for pennies on Steem, then you should leave Crypto for good. Either that or continue selling me your cheap coins when you buy high and sell low.

Let me guess, your response is "I'm a NEO troll?"

Happy trading.

Are you trying to say that you are a troll? Your attempts as misstating what I have said based on your post is amateurish. You're a freshman at best.

Do you see how you sound ?

Your first flaw is that you apparently completely ignore facts and reality and make up things which I didn't discuss in the post at all. You are just supporting my post. It's the NEO crowd that suggested that NEO is BIG. As such it would have been noticeable in some way. You've never been in China right? I have and the Internet crowd is very big, but that's beside the fact that you have disqualified yourself with this post to take part in an actual discussion. You DO realize that every crypto user has Internet?

Your second flaw is that you don't understand anything again. That's exactly what I was pointing out. A bunch of Americans having no clue about what was going on getting excited about having no clue of what is going on. Of course you put every effort into your strawman. Go trolling someone else.

Your third flaw is your smelly old strawman again. I never said anything like that and never assumed that. More the opposite the point was that American exchanges are preferred by Americans they have the most trading. You are laughing together with many people. That's what life in the Asylum does for you. At least you are happy, better don't come visit the real world.

Your fourth flaw is that you can't read. I didn't write NEO is a scam. I wrote about the ANS/NEO scam. That's semantics that you ought to understand.

No, you are incorrect. My response is above, however my judgement about you based on your drivel is that: YOU are a NEO troll.

I have position in NEO; also, have begun building position in #QTUM. Currently evaluating whether to add to my #QTUM position. Seems NEO marketed more toward the West, compared to #QTUM. Also, the angel investor list for #QTUM is very impressive. A negative, history of 1 of leaders as alleged "scam" man. Changed his name. I'm NOT a techy guru nor developer, but from my reading, #QTUM has as much if not more potential than NEO. Look forward to perusing more info. Thanks Jason Davis and Devages for this content.

I don't understand why this type of content always sparks hatred, it could just have been a discussion.

So, why does China need it's very own Ethereum?
I'm guessing the same exact reason it needs it's own Amazon (Alibaba) and Google (Baidu).

On your conclusion, use this to check if China cares about Ethereum: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=ethereum

Nope.

The exchanges thing, I dunno man, OmiseGO is 40% on Bittrex. IOTA 90% on Bitfinex. Don't really see how those numbers prove something is a scam.

Personally though, I like NEO because it allows us to create smart contracts in two languages that I love writing code in, Java & Python - for me it's the easiest way to get into writing Smart Contracts, I don't need to learn a new language that will only be used for one thing (like with Ethereum), I also really don't want to write contracts in C++ for EOS.

I've also found that transactions are super fast and I love the idea that my wallet generates GAS, just for HODLing.

I don't know man, maybe you care - in that case, thanks for sharing your opinion, but I'm still a HODLer.

On the other hand, maybe you're just spreading FUD to hopefully drop the price, so you can get in cheaper and wait for launch.

You can't use Google trends for China. Google is blocked in China.
You can't generalize exchanges like that and your numbers are way off. IOTA is way more balanced on various exchanges and you can't use OMG as it was quite new around that time. The thing was that the majority of Chinese used their exchanges and there was pretty much no trade of ANS/NEO.

What you like is however a weakness. It makes smart contract review difficult. You can't afford bugs in smart contracts either. Thus a formal functional language would make a lot more sense and the fact that you can't be bothered to learn a new language has no bearing on that, because losing millions or billions of dollars from smart contracts is not an option.

324 views and no replies or like? Rough life man...

Better than death threats :D

Nicely written, gonna piss off a lot of people though. Well done.

Thanks. I have received my fair share of threats already in direct conversation with the ans crowd. Which Is why I posted here. If they comment here everything will be nicely documented. ;)

You should educate yourself about NEO and how it differs from Etherium! There are many significant differences not to mention them here.. Sorry but your article (even that i stopped reading it after like 10 lines) is more likely a scam than NEO! ;)

This is the typical example of the "neo cult". Obviously I am a scam lol.

Your points deserve a response. Even if they were exaggerating for hype and not a scam it's still important to know. Things is some people won't want that coming out because even if it is a scam they miss out on the coin going higher in value if it's been even a little discredited.

Well I definitely consider misleading people to get at their money to be a scam. I mean if they had stopped at just hyping things it would still be in the grey area. When they started to rewrite wiki pages, they crossed a line though. I think many of the things going on in the crypto community at the moment are fraud/scams and just because the market is not regulated doesn't mean that fraud can't bring people to prison.

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Why did you remove the other post with same content in Reddit I think? There were some really good replies there answering your questions one by one

I can't even delete posts.. Is this supposed to be funny?

In response to your search on google trends for antshares or neo, I'm not sure if you're up to date with general knowledge because China has banned the use of google and many of it's products many years ago. If nobody in China uses google to search for anything, how are you getting any data from China through google?
#commonsense

.... obviously didn't read the article, did you? I talked about baidu. But you are just another neo troll, are you?

Trade it short if it is dumb money, as long there is profit, people will trade

¿What is IOTA & why should we invest on it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXjCqT-oK9M

Good points in this post. Interesting to see I'm not the only one that is thinking about this. It surprises me how many people don't have any idea what they put their money in. Please people, do your research. Besides coinmarketcap.com there is: https://www.coincheckup.com This site did all the research for you. It's truly amazing. Check: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/NEO#analysis For a complete NEO Detailed analysis

@devages, I signed up in Steemit to reply your post.

(It's 2018-01-09, NEO is trading around 100 USD per coin.)

Indeed, if one replaces 'Ethereum of China' by 'iPhone of China', how would the world take it?

The Antshare/NEO project reminds many another Chinese 'patriotic Linux project' two decades ago: The Redflag Linux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux), which failed in silence. The idea of open and free operating system is in direct conflict with the totalitarian application of the 'Redflag Linux': information surveillance of the general public.

History repeats itself. Now another open source project hits the world in wake of the 2008 financial crisis caused by the over-centralised financial institutions and the oversupply of fiat currencies backed by overpowered central governments, yet Antshare/NEO came along selling itself as a 'well-connected' (to the most over powered government at all time) company that will apply the blockchain tech to help a totalitarian regime to even further its control over its people's MIND.

The irony is not that NEO had the audacity to propose such an intention, but the fact that the world's investors have bought it at 100 USD a piece, while many of them condemn Ripple's betrayal of the blockchain principle.

I have watched this video (by Da Hongfei) carefully. He very briefly mentioned the 'first' real project by Onchain was for the Guiyang government, while omitting the project purpose: a citizen 'credibility' evaluation system supported by the blockchain and machine learning. In other word, Onchain was part of the infamous '7 minutes reaction time' video of the mass surveillance system widely reported by the Western media: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your-face-china-s-all-seeing-state. The city name is exactly Guiyang, which incidentally is also Apple's chosen site for its Chinese data centre.

Just how mad can our species become for a quick buck?

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