The OneGram Scam
Credibility Analysis: Are pump and dump schemes Sharia-compliant?
I suspect not, but that didn’t stop Ibrahim Mohammed, also the CEO of GoldGuard, from running a pretty sloppy, scammy “digital gold” ICO pump and dump. It was the subject of a (poorly-written) 2017 Forbes article, which explains who is behind OneGram…
With Sharia scholars on OneGram’s board it ensures that the company is fully compliant with Islamic finance requirements. Advisers listed include amongst others Sheikh Abdulkader Amor, CEO of Al Maali Consulting Group and an Islamic financial adviser, Adam Richard, CEO of Volt Markets, and founder of the Houston Bitcoin Meetup.
Ibrahim Mohammed, the CEO of OneGram, commenting from Dubai said: “In recent years, the Middle East has seen incredible growth in fintech innovations including digital tokens and smart contracts.”
The article goes on to explain that the ICO and the trading of the OGC token were to take place on GoldGuard itself, which at the least raises some centralization concerns. They never published 3rd party audits of their gold reserves, the reddest of several red flags that OneGram exhibits, which were supposed vaulted at Dubai’s Airport. Apparently, their CEO has attended ceremonies and received several awards for being such a snazzy CEO, what are the odds that he just paid to receive these? OneGram is associated with Vizionary, which apparently has been doing pump and dump schemes since 2015. Glancing at their social media, it would appear that OneGram is now total defunct; with the exception of a single blog post, they haven’t published anything new since 2019.
It does not appear that major scandal or legal prosecution resulted from this pump and dump, so expect the people behind OneGram to run a similar con again. Be wary of any new digital gold project associated with GoldGuard…
Should you buy OneGram’s OGC?
No, it’s a pretty obvious scam. I include it here in the Digital Gold directory for comparison sake. I could not find reviews of OGC, positive or negative, on isthiscoinascam.com TrustPilot.com. On Reddit, one user has devoted themselves to calling OGC a scam and others are complaining about not being able to sell their worthless OGC. On Twitter, OGC investors are not happy — Mike wrote…
Where are you guys? In the name of Sharia, are you looting people and enjoying in London? Please return our money.
About OneGram Coin (OGC)
About eight years ago, a pseudonymous cryptographer known as Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin as a digital analog to gold: limited in supply, but secured by modern cryptography, and made for the internet age. Following in Satoshi’s footsteps, many tried to improve his original vision and thousands of alternative cryptocurrencies were born.
Despite significant recent developments and innovation, the market for cryptocurrencies remains somewhat niche. Cryptocurrencies have shortcomings that currently discourage mainstream use, in particular, high volatility and barriers to entry and exit. OneGram aims to solve these issues by creating a business ecosystem to solve the entry and exit issues. Backing each coin/token with one gram of gold at launch to address the volatility issues and use blockchain technology to solve any outstanding problems. In short create a unique cryptocurrency.
In addition, each transaction of the OneGram coin/token (OGC) generates a small transaction fee (1%) which is reinvested to purchase more gold (net of admin costs), thus increasing the amount of gold that backs each OneGram coin/token (OGC). Therefore, each OGC increases in real value over time. This alone makes OneGram unique not only among cryptocurrencies, but all other currencies worldwide.
From the abstract of the (rather short) OneGram whitepaper
