A bit over a month ago I wrote a critical article about ICO Bench. Since then I have been contacted by numerous people who had experienced the same, and were happy that I brought these issues to the light.
Quite recently I was contacted by an individual who went even further. He did his own investigation had an answer why it’s so hard to become an ICO Bench Expert.
While ICO Bench still tries to maintain the false image of honest group of Experts, it demands 2 BTC (or $12'900 at today’s rate) for an expert status.
I guess no one wants to buy those overpriced Premium listing packages which are btw on bargain sale now.
You may wonder why anyone would be such high price for an Expert status?
Well the answer is pretty simple. Since Expert can rate ICOs they often ask payment for it. Typically the cost for 5 star rating starts from $500, however an experts that have more “weight” can ask for a higher fee.
Some Experts instead of giving high rating, give poor ratings on purpose and then blackmail the ICO into paying them for removal or modification of a negative review.
An ICO Bench Expert can easily earn several thousand USD per month for just rating ICOs.
Any proof of that?
While I know many ICOs that have paid either for reviews, none of them wants to expose the Expert who did that. This is because they are afraid that those ratings will be removed or edited by those same Experts and in result of that they will just lose the money they paid for the reviews. Also this will lower their average rating on ICO Bench and if the public will know about them paying for the rating they will lose the trust of investors. It surely seems that while no one particularly likes what is going on the ICO Bench they still try cope with it for their own benefit. The only people who really suffer are the the contributors and investors who end up buying tokens of a poor ICO.
Who of the Experts is taking money for rating?
I believe that many of the Experts do that, at least those who actively rate other ICOs. They are also the same people who are in the top of the list of “People of Blockchain” as they are most affiliated with the ICO Bench. Also the fact that many of them have blocked me on Linkedin (after I published my first article about ICO Bench) whenI have never even written to them only strengthens my believe.
But perhaps I will write about it soon. Meanwhile everyone is free to make their own research and contact ICO Bench Experts to find out who of them abuses their status.
Does everyone get this offer?
As advised by my informer, you need to propose to ICO Bench yourself that you are willing to pay for Expert status. ICO Bench wants to keep this in private so they will offer it only to people who in their opinion will be willing to pay for Expert privileges and will not tell about it to the others. However this time they made a mistake.
For long has this been going on?
It’s uncertain, but apparently ICO Bench has started to ask payment for Expert status recently, as some of early experts on ICO Bench indeed got their status for free. However due to high popularity of ICO Bench they decided that Expert status should no longer be free.
Disclaimer.
All evidence and claims are provided by a 3rd party informant, who’s identity shall remain in secret due to the protection of the source. It is still unclear if this is a new corporate policy of ICO Bench or just a misdeed of a single employee.