Xtrade.io scam? or just dubious?

Hey Xander, thought I'd jump on and address your points about me personally and let the team comment on the rest.

My company is called The Growth People Ltd registered in the Uk (company number Company number 10750469) and trading as Blocknauts which can be found at www.blocknauts.com.

LoveDiscounts.com was a previous venture and not in service anymore. TeachersRegister was a former project also which I moved on from at the end of 2017.

Using Ghost blog to host the blog as its a new platform which is reasonably clean and a good alternative to Wordpress. It's hosted on https://www.blocknauts.ghost.com as I'm using Instapage for my website and doesn't have a blog feature.

You can find my linkedIn profile here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomascharlesosman/

Not sure who owns www.ace.com or www.discounts.com but they're not mine, unfortunately.

Happy to answer any other questions you may have :)

A number of the Xtrade team are waiting for their steemit accounts to be approved so they can reply to the claims made in the article. I'd suggest members hang around for the answers.

Thank you! Appreciate the support, I know the team will also.

Xander,

My name is Alexander Kravets, I'm the founder and CEO of XTRADE.IO. I would like to address the points above. XTRADE.IO is certainly NOT a scam. We will be happy to do whatever necessary to reassure prospective token holders and clients of this. I’ve traveled all over the world and participated in multiple events, on stage and off, and we are very much appreciative of the openness of the community and strive to do the same.

Posting this under Tom’s account as I am waiting for my Steemit account to be approved.

We have registered the website in August, it is common to use whois privacy for registrations.

We have an office at 110 Wall Street, in WeWork - along with hundreds of other companies all over the world. We greatly value Wework's community and flexibility to work around the world. I fail to see how taking office space qualifies as a scam. I would say the opposite would be true.
Anyone is welcome to visit us at the office, and we will be hosting a meet up January 31 from 5:30pm-7:30pm located at the Il Cortile Lounge (125 Mulberry St. NY NY 10013).

Invite link - https://t.me/joinchat/Hr1uVw-zo6d1evMVwTFtfw

I do not have a "dubious history". All my quotes are on the XTRADE.IO website with links under "Press"- Reuters, CBS News, Forbes, NASDAQ, Cointelegraph, many others, as well as multiple podcasts that I've done - BadCrypto, Crypto101, Blockcast Show, and Bloomberg radio.

I am asked to comment as a trading expert (I have over 12 years experience in Direct Market Access trading) as it relates to cryptocurrency markets. I've also written multiple articles on my medium account and cointelegraph - the last two have 200k and 90k views.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-markets-are-broken
https://cointelegraph.com/news/institutional-investors-will-bet-big-on-cryptocurrencies-in-2018

I began trading crypto in 2017 and immediately saw the need to apply fintech I know and used for many years to fix the issues inherent in crypto markets.

I founded two companies after working in finance 2000-2014 - MA Real Estate to build and manage real estate (successful) and RealView Global, a company that takes live video surveillance feeds and provides daily reports to business owners about everything that happened, leveraging AI and human operators. These businesses are ongoing, and very real. We have over 30 employees for RealView Global currently.

I was registered as a Series 7, 55, 63, and 24 for 12 years and most certainly have the experience I claim to have. I was a proprietary trader, trade desk manager, risk manager, ran a retail operation for 100k investors, and we handled a huge amount of daily trading volume through our HFT infrastructure. People in the active trading space and proprietary trading space certainly know who I am.

I'll let Jon comment on his side. He coached Adelphi while employed at JP Morgan as basketball is a passion of his - he was a Division 1 NCAA player at Fordham and helped lead Adelphi to a conference NCAA championship. He operated multiple subway franchises as part of a management consulting agreement with the exclusive NY.NJ.CT Subway development agent (hundreds of locations).

Serg owns Axon Software - we are leveraging his team to build the XTRADE.IO tech. That is why same people on our team – they are our people.

Photos - https://martphoto.com.ua/foto-dlya-rezyume/ - Serge and his team at Axon did a corporate photo shoot in August on 2017. The Martphoto company used these photos as samples of their work.

Here is the link to the photo: https://martphoto.com.ua/corporation/

Notice Serge in the photo on the left with his team.

Here he is in two separate videos - one a presentation in Kiev and another presenting our product with ALL 3 of us in 2017:

https://vimeo.com/250210144
https://vimeo.com/50976326

Irina Lebedeva's image is also being used as a sample by the company.
We will ask them to take these down ASAP to avoid confusion.
The development team is in Kiev. They are in Ukraine. The 110 Wall St office is operations in NYC and HQ - we also have distributed team members in SF, Manchester, Munich, etc.

Tom Osman already commented on his status.

The FIX API was completed in November, it works, it's an MVP - so it didn't take 9 months, it took 3! We already have this stuff built. We do this quickly and know what we are doing, leveraging existing tech we have built - while most other crypto projects drag the product out over 6-9 months. Here is the product - https://vimeo.com/250210144.

Trademark was filed a bit late, legal had to prepare the filing, we were busy working on product. Good point - but it's in.

CEX.IO is our partner, and their CEO is on our advisory board - along with the CEO of Divisa Capital, Lex Sokolin of Autonomous Next, Steven Wasserman who created the SPAC Product, Ran Neu Ner who hosts CNBC Cryptotrader, Addison Huegel who ran Ethereum PR, etc.

Our partners are well known players, CME, Marcum, CEX.IO exchange - Gimmer is a great project that is using a UI/UX for automated trading bots and is currently doing their raise.

ICO - this is the US side for accredited investors - 1m net worth and 200k/300k income. Not applicable to outside US. That is the definition of an accredited investor.

We are NOT too good to be true. We are taking a set of financial products that we have already built and know and plugging them into crypto to solve existing issues. Listen to my 3 hours of podcasts. There is no need to spread FUD.

As far as https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/16754-why-the-hot-cryptocurrency-ripple-is-going-down-in-flames/?page=2, I was asked to comment by time.com/money on why ripple dropped. I feel it is overvalued - was 70B. It did in fact drop. And I still feel it is overvalued. 10x on ripple would make it worth ALL THE GOLD EVER MINED from 70B to 7T. Logically, the ripple holders don't like that – but I can only say what I believe to be true.

So to summarize, here we are commenting on this article and we feel it’s completely wrong. You are welcome to join our telegram at https://t.me/xtradecommunity or message me directly at @Alexander_Kravets to clarify any further details.

Thank you for answering Alex..

On your Website Bio, it's stated that you founded SogoTrade.com .. why don't you mention it ? it looks like a mega successful trading platform. and a google search reveals William Yeah is the founder?

Alex - Sure!

Sogotrade - I launched it under him - hired the staff, wrote the site, ran it - he was the founder.

Dear Alexander,

Thank you for taking the time elaborately respond to our post. First of all, we by no means want to attack you or your organization and we think it is good to have an open conversation. We stumbled upon Xtrade as potential investors and of course analyze the ICO's before we invest.
There are certain factors we use to determine the credibility of an organization and we apply them equally to all ICO’s that we review. There are some questions that arise when reading Xtrade’s website, a little bit of research and your response have not answered all questions yet.

Using Wework as office space is great and using their service does not qualify as a scam, however it is one of the preset indicators that indicates the permanence of a company. Wework rents offices relatively cheaply for short term and a lot of fake ICO’s use them, this does not mean that Xtrade is fake, this just checks one of the indicators on our list.

@ Alexander Kravets

• How do we know that you actually handled 4% of daily NASDAQ trading volume? And at what company?
• Why does MA real estate have no easy to find internet presence?
• Realview global’s website has very little information on it, where is realview global implemented? How do we know this company has 30 employees?
• My Russian is not great however we believe the website on Martphotography to be about building a good resume, of course Axon can have a corporate photoshoot there, but why is your Business analyst there as well? While she is not part of the Axon team when look at the Axon website.
• Did you pay themerkle to post the article about xtrade?
• As far as https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/16754-why-the-hot-cryptocurrency-ripple-is-going-down-in-flames/?page=2 there is a user called Battered_lifer that says the following:
  This is a quote not my words:

“The article claims Alexander Kravets is an ex-wall street trader, which is non-sense, when taking 5 seconds to view his linked-in profile.
Plus, his past is dodgy to say the least.
"Founder" of realview global. An internet search reveals extremely little, other than online window-dressing, for this company. Plus, the website is rubbish.
An online search reveals, Realview global was founded by Kravets in November 2015. On linked-in it's claimed he worked at realview for two years (until November 2017). Linked-in also claims he's worked at Xtrade for 1 year (from Jan 2017).

Long story short, he founds realview global in Nov 2015, then founds xtrade a year later in Jan 2017, and works at both, two unrelated start-ups? And, then gives up on realview global after two measly years! Christ, how reassuring for xtrade investors: A quitter! With a FAILED entrepreneurial track record!!
On crunchbase it's strange, it says Realview global has between 11 and 50 employees, yet I can't find any evidence at all to suggest that Realview has any employees at all. And, considering how quickly Kravets gave up on realview global, I'm pretty sure, the reality is, it's got no employees.
Prior to that, Kravets only other entrepreneurial experience was as owner of: "MA Real Estate Holdings" for 3 years. This company appears to be all but non-existent on the internet!! Jesus Chryst.

After 5 minutes of searching, already, my impression is, his success as an entrepreneur is nothing more than a facade; internet window-dressing just sufficient to create enough of a presence to fool the unwary!!! - Sure, as hell, I wouldn't invest in xtrade.” -battered_lifer

Below that post there’s more about you personally that we will not repost because that would not be professional. This is of course a random post (just like ours) so it is not necessarily true.

@ Jon
We are sorry for posting a personal photo that was unfair and unprofessional and has since been corrected. However, the other questions still remain:

• How do Xtrade investors know that you worked at JP morgan and Goldman Sachs for 6 years doing Equity Derivatives, Structured Products, Market Liquidity, Senior Bank Debt, and executing institutional client orders?

@ Tom
Thank you for taking the time to reply your website bio says:
“Tom is a Product Growth Consultant & Marketer that has built multiple fast-growing startups such as Teachers Register and Love Discounts.com. He is the founder of blockchain & crypto growth agency Blocknauts that works with companies to tokenize and launch through initial coin offerings.”
My questions are:

• If both teachers register and Love Discounts.com are discontinued why do you claim in your bio that they are fast growing startups?
• Why do you not post links but have a space in between love and discounts and teachers and register?

We were trying to find your companies and that is how we came to ace and discounts, it’s redirected.
The blocknauts website does not seem to have much in it this might be because your company is young of course. However, these kind of websites with nothing more than a registration form are one of the indicators on our list.

To come to a conclusion, we have a list of indicators which include unverifiable previous positions, stock photo usage, inactive previous companies, age of a company, amount of time present in the crypto world, partnerships, paid media appearances and many more, unfortunately Xtrade has checked many of these boxes, the world is complicated and they might have been checked falsely by us.

If that is the case we will rectify and remove whatever is necessary and help clear Xtrade’s name by the negative effects of the “FUD” that we spread.

We have halted all the donation possibilities until these questions are clarified.

Kind regards,

Thank you for the clarification. A video explaining the project is in deed a good way to clear doubts.

Dear Xander!

Domain is registered using domains.google service and all DNS records are assigned automatically by google.

Is it a crime to rent an office in WeWork? Or it's a bit unusual to actually work? Come down to see us in person, you are always welcome.
We will host small meetup next Wednesday(Jan 31, 2018) 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM at 125 Mulberry St. NY NY 10013

Alex definitely capable provides insights about cryptocurrencies markets. He is the professional trader with more than 10+ years of experience. Taking into account "long" history of crypto, his year of experience doesn't look bad for me. And, to opposite to many other people out there, who simply talk, he is actively trading.

RealView Global is the alive business with 35 employees. We built it from scratch and it gave us great experience in people behavior management.

And now the juiciest part - photos:) It's really sad that you can't read Russian or Chrome's built-in translator is something new for you:)
Martphoto is a company that performing photo sessions and what you see on their site - its portfolio.
And who is this guy on video: https://vimeo.com/50976326

Oh gosh, he is looking exactly as Serg Gulko from Axon Software. So maybe Martphoto simply published their portfolio?

XTRADE.IO product is based on Axon Software proprietary engine that we are adjusting for cryptomarkets right now.
In opposite to 90% of JS/Ruby hipsters that populate ICO space with yet-another useless nonsense, we actually aim to solve existing problems.

Dear Sergii

Thank you for your response, and your adjustments in the way you’ve chosen to address us. Using Wework as office space is great and using their service does not qualify as a crime however it may indicate the age and permanence of a company. This does not mean that Xtrade is fake, this just checks one of the many indicators on our list.

Working is certainly not unusual, and we are sure Alexander actively trades and has good knowledge about cryptocurrency.

However, none of the team members have answered any of our questions. Which are in our opinion not unreasonable questions to ask. The matter of fact is all questions are evaded or unanswered.
When a question is asked like how do we know this company actually exists? And your answer is basically “because I am telling you that it is” it does not seem very credible.

Apparently, you and/or Axon has build Realview global as well, why are you not mentioned on their website? And why is it not in your bio? developing software for company that grew to 35 employees is certainly something to be proud of and mention on Axon’s website and in your Xtrade bio.

To allow investors insights in the workings of the company behind any ICO is crucial and for now there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding Xtrade.

Here is my list of questions again: (these can also be read in my first response that remains unanswered)

• If both teachers register and Love Discounts.com are discontinued why do you claim in your bio that they are fast growing startups?
• How do Xtrade investors know that Jon worked at JP morgan and Goldman Sachs for 6 years doing Equity Derivatives, Structured Products, Market Liquidity, Senior Bank Debt, and executing institutional client orders?
• How do investors know that Alexander Kravets actually handled 4% of daily NASDAQ trading volume? And at what company?
• Why does MA real estate have no easy to find internet presence?
• Realview global’s website has very little information on it, where is realview global implemented? How do we know this company has 30 employees?
• My Russian is not great however we believe the website on Martphotography to be about building a good resume, of course Axon can have a corporate photoshoot there, but why is your Business analyst there as well? While she is not part of the Axon team when look at the Axon website.
• What is the relevance of the video in which you give a lecture at what is probably the annual Open Source and Linux Community Conference in Kiev in 2012? (we might be wrong as we said our Russian is not great, but we are working on it. Also, what is Chrome?)
• Did you pay themerkle to post the article about xtrade?
• What does the team think of Battered_lifer’s message and the other allegations that are made in the XRP chat? Why does somebody else ask exactly the same questions that we do?
• Apparently, you and/or Axon has build Realview global as well, why are you not mentioned on their website? And why is it not in your bio? developing software for company that grew to 35 employees is certainly something to be proud of and mention on Axon’s website and in your Xtrade bio.

We do not think any of these questions are unreasonable, we do think it is valuable to ask these questions when investing in Xtrade. Can you shed some light on the dim spots of our investment?

Kind regards,

If using WeWork as an office is indicating our age and performance, how about 90% "companies" running ICO that do not have offices at all? WeWork has some positive and negative sides but it's a way better than "run" a company/blog/newsfeed from mom and dad porch.
XTRADE.IO was self-funded at the beginning and we did not find any advantages to rent an office in e.g. WTC.
Our main goal was to get normal workspace to bootstrap so we did it. Yes, we can't post nice looking photos from our office but we are not Instragram persons, we here to work.

RealView Global provides business analytics and security services to companies that don't want us to publish this information anywhere. I completely realize that it sounds really bad. So here what we can do - please, contact me directly, I will provide you an NDA to fill and then will walk you through what RVG is doing. This will help you completely understand nature of it business and reasons why we are not advertising on internet(first of all, services are expensive and relationships are build of full trust). Of course, you will not have rights to publish information here, but at least you can say - "yes, its real, I saw it". Will it work for you?
Why my RVG work did not mention on LinkedIn profile? I 99% sure that it was here, probably I removed it somehow. Thanks for pointing on it, will update my profile shortly.
RVG was renting an office for a year in WTC - does it sounds good enough compared with WeWork?

And, by the way, I was CTO in several others companies as well:)

The reason I added several videos to my post is simple - it used to illustrate that your comment regarding photos is not logical. If people from our team comes from photo stocks market, what the heck I'm doing with them? Or I'm a photo as well? But guy, very similar to me is on Axon video at 2012, XTRADE.IO video at 2017, and will be at XTRADE.IO video at 2018. Co-incident:)? I have another great theory - I'm part-time video actor;)

I asked photo agency to remove photos from public and looks like they did it.
Hard to say, what you see suspicious in our BA photo but we are living in hard times. I received an email saying that based on ways we use punctuation in the XTRADE.IO whitepaper, Alex Kravets is not an American at all:)

Hey no problem.

Teachers Register is still going, site is http://www.teachersregister.co/ and continues to grow fast. LoveDiscounts.com was fast growing at the time but the online discount voucher sector got crowded real fast so became uneconomical quite quickly.

Your question on spacing is irrelevant as was merely talking about the projects.

Yup Blocknauts is a young company and we launched with clients already so a full website and sales etc hasn't been a priority yet. But that said it does clearly show more legitimacy so we'll get one built out.

Hope this answers your questions, let me know if you need anything else.

Alex here.

Xander,

As I’ve stated earlier, we have no issues being open and transparent with all things. You are more than welcome to come and visit us at our offices to see for yourself.

First: we are very real.

What I find disturbing is that these are very personal attacks, and there is not one iota of attention paid to the product and what we are doing in the space. There is no attention paid to our high calibre advisors, our MVP which we have put out a video of with us, numerous credible information sources that mention us, etc. You reference message boards full of negative comments from people that are holding Ripple which I commented on was overvalued market - cap wise (and have been right so far).

There is no attempt to contact us personally. Email me – [email protected] – or telegram @Alexander_Kravets. There has also been no clarification of who you are publicly.

Here is CEX.IO announcing our partnership yesterday – I doubt that would happen if we do not exist or are a fraud: https://blog.cex.io/news/cex-io-xtrade-partnership-17024

Serge on TV yesterday, filmed in NYC for a National Russian media audience, 7-minute mark: https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/a/vremya-dengi-jan-31-2018/4234130.html

Photo we took with our advisor Mushegh Tovmasyan, CEO of Divisa Capital, who runs multiple FX companies and raised 100m earlier in 2017, in our office this week:

Here are some of the articles and podcasts and videos of me:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-12-22/bloomberg-markets-bitcoin-growing-pains
http://badcryptopodcast.com/2017/12/04/bad-crypto-meets-alexander-kravets-58/
https://blockcastshow.com/podcast/ep-4-alexander-kravets-of-xtrade-on-modernizing-cryptocurrency-exchanges/
https://soundcloud.com/matthew-aaron-690749808/alexander-kravets-xtradeio
http://www.iii.co.uk/articles/473258/ethereum-outperforms-bitcoin
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-markets-are-broken
https://cryptocoin.news/news/bitcoin/wall-street-comes-to-crypto-street-bringing-financial-technologies-to-cryptocurrency-markets-alexander-kravets-4616/
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10480-cryptocurrency-businesses-real-value.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/bitcoin-price-predictions-2018-what-experts-forecast-cryptocurrency-2633772
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-market-psychology-rules/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex/dollar-index-hits-one-month-low-bitcoin-slides-again-idUSKBN1EM046

The photos you mention were a corporate shoot with Sergey’s team and we have since asked the https://martphoto.com.ua/ site to remove them to avoid confusion – and they have done so – feel free to check.

We did execution for multiple brokers under service bureau arrangements where we went out to the street using their MPID, in addition to our own HFT and trading group clients. Disclosing client information is not legal. I would also not be able to provide this data as it is obviously proprietary. Feel free to check my LinkedIn on what/where I worked. I have almost 4k connections on LinkedIn.

MA Real Estate is a private investment vehicle to develop real estate projects and rental producing property using private capital. It does not advertise as it is internal to myself and my partners. It has nothing to do with XTRADE.IO.

RealView Global is a company that leverages AI and human operators to generate daily activity reports for multiple businesses all over the world ranging from entertainment venues and retail to apartment buildings and public facilities, employs 30+ staff now with security and intelligence backgrounds. The reports are obviously confidential, and we do not run around and advertise what we do as it has to do with security, money movements, and very sensitive personal information.

If you like, we can provide you with an NDA to sign, and show you sample reports. We will not put our security specialists on the site.

Feel free to use Google Translate on Chrome browser on Martphoto.com, they do photo shoots for people – like Axon. Photo studio in Kiev where the dev team is. https://martphoto.com.ua/about/. Sergei asked them to remove the photos. There is also an English version, top right of site. Also, Sergei is in all the photos – see above for proof he is a real person.

In any marketing campaign, a small percentage of articles are sponsored to distribute info. 90% of our press has not been paid. If an article is sponsored, it is always disclosed. Feel free to go through our press and review. You’ll see this if sponsored:

The Merkle article was sponsored.

NO MEDIA APPEARANCES WERE PAID. Bloomberg and Reuters would not pay me to appear.

As far the Ripple article, the guy was obviously upset that I said Ripple was overvalued – it was a Ripple board. Ripple, by the way, is down 50% since I stated that opinion. I addressed these points above.

Re Jon, he did work at JP Morgan and Goldman. You could search for him on the JP Morgan Alumni network, but it’s not public. Screenshot below. I’m sure you have friends that have worked there – have them look him up. It’s public on his LinkedIn.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmdiqFa4VMPfHPf7MtnmFspDUUVkwYjibtfen6oBtk6mWB/image.png

Best,
Alex

Xander, first off, thanks for taking the time to write this. Scrutiny in this space is important. Unfortunately, the many rotten eggs in this emerging class make it extremely easy to subconsciously bias certain indicators as scams and inherently writing off the initiative or entity due to said indicators.

After listening to various podcasts, watching numerous videos, reading news, social media, white papers, and speaking with other investors, enthusiasts, and developers in this space, I feel that XTrade.io is filling a legitimate gap of institutional proportion that we as a community need to take that next step towards acceptance and legitimacy. While XTrade.io intentions may be complex to comprehend for a retail investor and the indicators you have rightfully questioned above appear concerning at face value, I can rest easy knowing that the research I have done was conclusive. The indicators of risk mentioned in your article do hold weight but there are various other positive elements to their platform that for me, outweighed the perceived negative components written herein. The XTrade.io team is undoubtedly busting their ass and I will continue to keep up with the news related to their progress.

I do believe that if this was a scam, the time, effort, and expenditures are not worth targeting institutional investors in an ICO who are familiar with XTrade.io intentions. Lastly, I do appreciate the XTrade.io team undertaking active efforts to rectify any potential perception issues.

As for anyone else stumbling across this article, read it, in addition to the various responses. As with all investments, you must do your own research and asses potential risk exposure tolerance accordingly for each project.

The XTrade.io project caught my eye a while back and am still undoubtedly excited about their ambitions to fill this much needed facet in this space.

Thank you for taking the time to do your research and writing this post :)

Glad to. This is a space that has quickly become guilty until proven innocent. Call it what we want, but parabolic growth coupled with a new asset class and valuation paradigm, what else should we have expected? Keep up the work; those of us who are legit, are all working with similar principles in mind. Thanks for everything!

Congratulations @xanderxietjes! You received a personal award!

_{Click here to view your Board of Honor}

Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:

Saint Nicholas challenge for good boys and girls

Support SteemitBoard's project! Vote for its witness and get one more award!

Congratulations @xanderxietjes! You received a personal award!

_{You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking}

Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!