What a “digital gold” scam looks like…
Credibility Analysis: Karatbars was a scam
I list and expose Karatbars/GSB Gold Standard and a few other fraudulent “digital gold” projects here on MarketplaceGOLD for comparison’s sake.
If you search on Youtube you’ll find a number of excited characters promoting Karatbars. This is because apparently, the company had some sort of network marketing affiliate scheme. Multi-level marketing schemes requiring recruitment are a well-known and consistent red flag of crypto scams. Another red flag was their over-the-top, hypey, cinematic marketing. And, they never published third-party audits of gold reserves that might back their ERC-20 KBC token.
After making fantastic ROI claims (another red flag), the scam melted down, and litigation ensued…
As any good Ponzi scheme, Karatbars and their founders, Herald Seiz, Josip Heit, Alex Bodi, and Ovidiu Toma promised something extraordinary: to revolutionize our payment system with the power of the blockchain and ensure “safe gold” for people as an investment vehicle.
Karatbars promised an attractive 40% commission to their affiliates. On top of that, they also promised various additional commissions that would give people “residual passive income” — the dream of financial independence that we all want.
And secondly, they announced a special mega-event called the “Gold Independence Day” to be held on the 4th of July, 2019, in the Bellagio, Las Vegas — during which people would be able to exchange their KBC coins for real physical gold at a crazy-good rate of 100 KBC = 1g of gold (making a 40X return on investment, in essence).
In essence, Karatbars International and its founders, Herald Seiz, Josip Heit, Alex Bodi, and Ovidiu Toma tried to sue consultants and subcontractors for exposing the truth that the coins are worthless, demanding various information claims, accounting claims and also the transfer of KBCs.
But the court found the application to be unsubstantiated and doomed to failure, so it denied Karatbars what it was asking for (§§ 935, 940, 917f ZPO)
This clearly proves that the ‘charges’ from Karatbars were false, the claims that the litigation is ongoing are nonsense, and that Karatbars International was only trying to find scapegoats for its own failure.
Instead of being sent to jail or just going away, they’ve rebranded as GSB Gold Standard/Gold Standard Bank. So stay away from GSB and any other companies headed by the former Karatbars team.
