Tough questions, but simple answers
During the ILO and the following days, we have received thousands of messages. Some of them were from concerned investors, who asked us to comment on the below-mentioned topics. As we are committed to transparency and open communication, please find our explanations below.
1. Moving ILO funds to Kraken exchange
As we communicated on our Twitter and Telegram News channel, 40% of the funds were locked up on Uniswap as liquidity, ca. 10% paid for marketing and fees for the facilitation. The remaining were moved from Metamask to Kraken exchange. Some investors feared that this transfer was made to convert the funds to fiat and withdraw them instantly. Absolutely not!
We are a development company that is building a whole new ecosystem around NEXT. The massive success of our ILO has provided us with sufficient funds to do so. Therefore it would be utterly irresponsible for us to speculate with ETH, hoping for a marginal gain but risking losing the money needed for NEXT development in case of a market downturn.
Therefore, to protect the investment from volatility in crypto markets, we transferred the funds to company wallets on Kraken exchange to partially convert them to stablecoins and safeguard them with stop-loss orders. Of course, parts of these funds will be consecutively converted to fiat and withdrawn to pay for hiring new staff and consultants, acquiring crypto & fiat licenses, and other services, including legal.
As we have employed a CFO who starts today, we are also verifying with her our budget allocations, and provide the estimates during this week.
2. NEXT tokens owned by the team
Out of total 9.000.000 NEXT tokens, 8.000.000 tokens were used for the ILO. From the remaining 1.000.000 tokens in team fund, 250.000 tokens were distributed among private sale participants (50 ETH x 5.000 NEXT tokens per ETH), 250.000 tokens are held in marketing reserve and the remaining 500.000 tokens are locked for 180 days as confirmed by https://team.finance/view-coin/0x377d552914E7A104bC22B4F3B6268dDC69615Be7?name=NEXT&symbol=NEXT.
NEXT team is strongly dedicated to the project and is holding their assets with no intention to sell them anytime soon. To our best knowledge, the supply of NEXT tokens on Uniswap comes from private and public sales participants.
3. Partnership with Angellist
We have noticed that one of our partners, Angellist — a blockchain startup from the Netherlands — is often confused with Angellist (www.angel.co). As it is a very exciting and promising partnership that aims to launch a token pad and crowdfunding platform on top of NEXT.chain already in April 2021, we have suggested doing a rebranding to avoid any confusion in the future.
4. Dispute between PayAccept and Bitmarketing
In a thread on BitcoinTalkForum, a bounty administration from Bitmarketing has blamed NEXT CEO for not paying their total remuneration while acting as PayAccept CEO.
It is true that PayAccept has ordered various services from Bitmarketing and even paid 60% of their remuneration upfront. Unfortunately, the agreed services have never been rendered in full so the CEO had a legal duty (and a fiduciary duty to the investors) not to pay the remaining fees. Bitmarketing, understanding that they are in no position to win a legal case, started blackmailing us with defamatory posts in order to force us to pay the balance. As this is a criminal offense in the Netherlands, our legal team is preparing an official request to rectify these unsubstantiated claims and an apology from Bitmarketing. If it remains unanswered, an official criminal complaint will follow.
We have notified all bounty campaign participants that rewards will be distributed and asked them to join the official PayAccept Bounty Telegram chat at https://t.me/PAYOfficialBounty.
Further details can be found here:
5. NEXT CEO’s former business partner convicted of a crime
During the last 20 years, I have been active in the startup and later in the crypto sector with several businesses. I have been a CTO of a national telecom operator and an investment manager at a venture capital fund that invested in many companies in various sectors. One of the deals I was trying to close happened to be with a fraudster who tried to obtain money with false information. Fortunately, I canceled the deal on time and withdrew from this business. The prosecution confirmed that I was not at fault as the official investigation ended up convicting the fraudster with a six-month jail sentence, while I was not charged with any offense.
As a consequence of this situation, my next business-focused much more on accountability and transparency of my partners, employees, and the whole environment. This experience, however unpleasant, is one of the main reasons behind the decision to step up with NEXT in comparison with other crypto projects — submit KYC checks on the team (by Chainsulting and Pinpoint Capital), employ external auditors to verify our products (Chainsulting rated NEXT.chain with AAA score) or hire well known, external consultants (Enigma Consulting and Hiddenbrains) to advise us on hiring critical personnel, e.g. CFO or key developers.
If you have any further questions, you can leave them in the comments. We will answer as soon as possible.
