He was referring to a PM he sent me. He has got his reply.
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Get over it and move on with your life.
You have told blatant lies, its no wonder communication is poor, you made it like that.
You probably should have approached it all with a better attitude, that works wonders!
I believe thats slander, tread carefully!
You invested, nothing was stolen.
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Great advice. Do you always recommend that victims of scams just do nothing and get over it? Or is it just this one time?
Are you now also accusing my of lying? And is Hermen incapable of communicating on behalf of the project to other investors because of a handfull forum posts I have made over a 7 year period?
Please elaborate. I can promise you my intent is not to lie and if I have done so its an honest mistake. Im simply one of many victims of a crime. I invested 15btc in a project promoted by Hermen Klink, with a bunch of promises of what he would use our money to do and 7 years later nothing has happened.
You actually cant find a single legit project in the world that has done less over the same amount of time. Not only that the investment round itself was most likely a crime. (also a fact) and Hermens refusal to answer questions from investors or even update anyone for years of what is happening is also I believe a crime (Not entirely sure on that one, but I assume so as dutch law is very strict actually)
Do you honestly believe that? Ive been very patient and even now 7 years later I sent a cordial message to Hermen trying to resolve our dispute but in his own words he “refuses to substantively answer”. Based upon some “lies” that he doesn’t want to specify. Ive not resorted to name calling, Ive not made threats of violence or anything of that nature, Ive simply stated the facts as they are.
Not really sure what more I could have done. But now as ive realised that there actually is no hope and that I am a victim of a scam I will naturally take every possible step available to me to recoup as much of my money as possible.
So you are saying that as long as someone “invests” into something then it cannot be stolen? Ive never heard that argument before, it sounds really dumb.
The facts are, even if you dont like them that 7 years ago I invested a lot of money based upon various promises made by Hermen. 7 years later we have nothing to show for it and Hermens behaviour and attitude towards his investors has been adherent. Who takes money from people, refuses to answer the most basic questions and does practically nothing?
you can disagree all you want but you must agree that it looks horrible. There are lots of laws that protect investors from this exact type of predatory behaviour by shady and immoral people, thankfully.
I have plenty of reasons to believe this is a scam, no one can fault me for that. The evidence itself is actually overwhelming. All you have to do is look at what has been done and what has not been done.
All this will be detailed more in depth, but lets just start with the website, the crowdfunding website is still there 7 years later. Does that appear like someone who actually want to build a successful project?
How about the social presence? Take a look at the twitter account, does it have activity? Answer is no. Also strange. Usually projects who are legit want attention and people to find their projects and so forth. but not this one…
Hermens whole argument boils down to “its safenets fault”, the reason why he is doing nothing is because safenet is not complete. But thats a childish and very naive argument that is very easy to disprove. Does safenet not being complete prevent him from doing all the other things that a multi million dollar project is expected to do? Like just making a tweet once in a while, or updating investors, or even designing how “the forum” will look?
So whats more likely? We are either dealing with someone autistic who ran into the safenet roadblock and just threw his hands in the air and decided to not work and not tell anyone anything. Or we are dealing with a full on multi million scam.
The fact that Hermen has refused since. day1 to comment on finances heavily leans towards the scam outcome. Why the secrecy? If he is simply waiting on safenet for 7 years and not doing anything, why cant he post the wallets? Why cant he say what money has and is being spent on? Makes you wonder.
If you compare this to other crypto projects its very strange behaviour and the opposite from what you see. Usually projects are very active on social media, they continuously update their investors and token holders, share financial info about runway, strategy, future plans.
How many forum posts have you seen from Hermen about future plans? Do you even know what the plan really is? Nope. Because Hermens isnt really communicating. He is here once in a while when the forum flairs up with victims naturally voice their displeasure, which is a direct consequence of his behaviour.
Find my any project who takes millions from investors, barely communicates and does nothing for 7 years where people are happy. It doesn’t exist, because of course people have the right to be upset and rightly claim that they have been scammed. Because that is exactly what has happened.
We did our part, we sent Hermen millions, but Hermen never did his part, he never provided a single thing, he didn’t even take 10sec out of his day to make a tweet once in a while.
Guys the whole premise of safenet and decorum is freedom of speech so I find it very strange that my forum posts that contain nothing offensive is removed, could it please be re-instanted?
I also find it very difficult and unfair that Hermen has chosen this forum as the only place where we can get a reply from him, considering the conflict of interest. It makes it very hard to communicate when any arguments against can simply be removed by a very few amount of supporters wants to.
If you disagree please make a factual argument against. If you want a hivemind type environment where all opposing views are removed go somewhere else maybe. I believe most people here agree with that sentiment.
In any regard, please have a little understanding that even though some clearly believe Hermen is not a scammer it has been 7years since he raised millions and we still have no product or even a website really. Is it that unbelievable that some of us are upset? Add to this the fact that Hermen barely is here and rarely answers a single question.
Remember you bought PDC and did you get them? That was your investment.
Now has there been a failure to attempt to build the Decorum protocol as promised?
It is impossible to do it currently. And if he tried to complete it for the last 3 years then it would have been wasted funds. It cannot be developed past a point till the apis are closer to finalised otherwise its wasted effort to develop beyond a certain point.
Now you might have an argument when Safe has been launched for over say 6 months and there has been no further development.
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I’s not been seven years since he raised millions though. He raised a bunch of btc and a bunch of maid, and the reason people were so light-headed with that was not only their belief the Safe Network would launch soon (likely long before now), but also btc and maid price at the time being a far cry from where it’s now.
It wasn’t you who made Seneca a multi-millionaire. It was the fact bullruns and adoption happened in the meantime, while the money is still sitting there (at least last time I checked, little had been spent). The mere fact the money is virtually untouched suggests that he would have prefered not to become a millionaire like this. It’s really weird to throw it against him when it is a combination of two factors none which he controls.
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Just think of all the great things that could be done with those funds.
We should end up with an amazing platform.
Much better use of time
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This is absurd. The buyback was generous, and was a positive ROI for crowdsale participants. How is that ‘horrible and extortionate’? Scams don’t offer a positive ROI refund for anyone who wants it! If you wanted a way out, you had your opportunity, but you continue to speak nonsense and slander against Harmen (‘scam’, ‘theft’ etc).
You also lie about how much money was raised. It was never millions, but from memory about $500k (yes, it grew in value later, but the USD amount at the time is what to consider here, not opportunity cost from you selling an asset that later appreciated).
As I understand it, one Project Decorum team member is actively working on Safe Network development and Project Decorum loaned some funds to MaidSafe to support network development. Given a working network is a prerequisite for Project Decorum to be built, what else could they productively do?
Quitting and returning funds would not have been a good move unless development on the Safe Network halted or looked hopeless, which it never has. Doing what they can to support Safe network development, and hold funds until the project can be delivered on the Safe Network is exactly what Project Decorum should be doing, and is exactly what they are doing.
As Neo said, if work on Project Decorum development doesn’t start once the network is up and running, there would be grounds for complaint, but until then your whingeing and accusations are unjustified.
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There are some factors here that should be considered. Hermen was vocal before and during the crowdfunding that he would not convert the funds to fiat. Myself and others obviously invested with this in mind. I can only speak for myself but this was critically important. So to measure the investment in fiat now because its extremely favourable to Hermen is simply wrong. If for arguments sake should the Bitcoin be nearly valueless would we receive a fiat buyback or the bitcoin? The answer is the of course the bitcoin. Had hermen actually converted the Bitcoin to fiat, then the situation would be different.
I guess if Hermen has done nothing wrong then myself or anyone can create an online campaign, solicit crypto currency from uncredited investors from all around the world, then do basically nothing for years and if the crypto appreciated in value give a small portion of it to investors (that are still alive and hold their keys) and then walk away with millions. Literarily exactly what appears to have happened.
Also obviously, giving some investors the option to buyback does not mean that those who do not accept the buyback are left in a legal limbo. Im still an investor and Hermen has responsibilities which he is currently not upholding. Its not really that complicated, thankfully.
I take some self criticism there by how I worded myself, sure the value at the end of the crowdfunding was somewhere north of $500k, but he solicited crypto he was stating would not be sold, as mentioned above. Any gains attributed to that crypto is then not Hermens to keep especially when he fails to meet the absolute lowest measure of what is to be expected.
I invested Bitcoin not usd.
Who is this “team member”? And is he paid by project decorum?
This is another very questionable issue. Had I known that my Bitcoin would be sold to pay for safenet development I can confidently say I would never have invested.
You yourself are running a project that is not complete, how come you guys are able to communicate with investors, tweet, write blog posts, maintain a website, give weekly development updates, talk to the press, do marketing, have meet-ups, engage the community, build community?
The argument falls completely flat considering what the goal actually is, decorum is now supposed to be a “social platform”, actually completing in a space where some of the most advanced and feature rich platforms on the web are, like for example Facebook.
Once the “underlaying tech” is ready, for decorum Its day one 7years later, due to how the decorum project has been managed. But for Hermen this is no problem because he has become “rich”. The only people sadly this is a problem for is the investors like myself who are told to not complain, that we have basically no rights (almost direct quote) and we should just hang around here for years until Hermen feels like doing something.
This a very concerning statement in my opinion. I understand from your pow that having another entity around, financed by unknown investors which can assist with development of your project is fantastic.
But I can tell you that from my pow, as the investor who I assume pays for it, it sounds horrible and not now even remotely what I signed up for.
Safenet doesn’t have a monopoly on decentralised tech, Decorum isn’t reliant at all for safenet to create a decentralised forum. It just happens that you are all a bunch of friends who want to work togheter. You have helped Hermen and been supportive of him, and he is here helping and being supportive of you. Meanwhile im paying for it lol.
By your statement alone, it appears that after 7 years more funds from project decorum investors have been spent developing safenet than actually project decorum. This is another true but almost unbelievable statement. imagine investing into a project and 7 years later the majority of effort has gone into developing a third party project.
I understand the argument, but if it only was that simple. Thus far there are thousands of action that could be taken, but each day are not while competing projects and platforms of project decorum march ahead.
Also I guess if your statement is correct then best case scenario for Hermen is safenet to never complete, because then there will never be grounds for calling it a fraud and he can do whatever he wants for ever. Is there a date in which you would consider it a fraud, like 20 years of nothing? We are 7 years in right now and feels enough.
With that said, this is most likely the last you will see of me within this forum. I will attempt to solve this with dialog with Hermen and his lawyers starting next week and hopefully we come to some sort of agreement. I think we all just want to move forward and do good.
To quickly clarify, I’m not David Irvine, and have never been on the MaidSafe team. I participated in the MAID and PDC token sales.
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I was also wondering what your project was and why I didn’t buy from it…
Privacy. Security. Freedom
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I thought we are all David Irvine. 
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It would seem their facts are not needed to be accurate. Shame because they might actually get somewhere much faster without all the pushback if facts were used with a touch of wisdom.
First question to answer is what would be expected at this stage? And that would answer what legally can be expected.
Second question then is how can this be privately mediated? And it seems the last response is what should have been done at the start without the all the misinformation being posted. “I will attempt to solve this with dialog with Hermen and his lawyers starting next week and hopefully we come to some sort of agreement. I think we all just want to move forward and do good.”
When people come in guns ablaze the question arises as to what the purpose is? Especially when the facts take second place.
In any case I hope Panda gets some resolution over this and accepts the legal advise given to him by his lawyers and/or Herman’s lawyers. Otherwise I expect they will be back again feeling entitled to more than lawyers advise.
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As you alluded to before we can expect this will happen the next time BTC price jumps significantly.
Many many of us spent amounts of BTC (and other coins) some years back that we now regret. Get over it.
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Exactly.
Imagine spending BTC to buy goods off someone and finding out they still had the BTC years later and expecting them to refund the increase in value, because you know we are entitled to their good fortune too.
Then imagine doing that to someone wanting to build infrastructure off fusion power. The BTC given and shares (not quite same as tokens but this is an analogy) received. Now 10 years pass and the BTC given worth dollars is now worth millions, but the project has been on hold all these 10 years. Could one demand a refund of the actual BTC or current cash equivalent, nope not a chance. The courts would see that the project team has kept their side of the transaction by giving the shares and working as fast as they could (not work at all since they need the working fusion reactor first)
Same for Decorum, need a working Safe network first.
And what have they done to progress? They lent a programmer to speed up the release of the Safe network.
So rather than that lending of the programmer being a negative it is rather a major positive since it speeds up future decorum development by speeding up the release of Safe.
I honestly think the world does not work they want it to. And dealing lawyer to lawyer is going to give them the best result he could hope for since intimation/bullying has been over done already.
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