I've been quiet of late. The main reason for this has been another "project" I have been working on. It's not a new project as such as I have been promising myself I'd do this for a good long while now but, until recently, I had been in the habit of starting it off, working on it for weeks only to scrap it again.
I still haven't finished it and now I am also just waiting for the right time to get it out there and with all the current crap going on in the world (VIRUS, financial Crisis fears etc), I need to wait until the time is right. I am too much the Virgoan perfectionist sometimes...
Anyway, let's talk Karatbars. I could easily have left this alone and not bothered putting this message out but I think the time has come to make my position on where I am with this very clear and to try to help, if I can, by hopefully filling in a few of the blanks.
This is going to be on the long side because it isn't something that can easily be skimmed over and so I am going to break it down into 4 parts and deal with one part at a time in 4 messages. And the intention here is not to start a debate so, whether you agree with me or not is frankly unimportant. I'm not doing this to attract comment. I am doing it to provide insight.
If you don't want to know what's going on (in my opinion) then feel free to leave it right here but it might help you some to read this.
Having been watching, waiting, listening and studying the immense FUD (if you don't know that stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) circulating out there, I simply want to address some of the major issues and give my perspective a little airing on these matters.
I am going to break them down into 4 parts as I said and this message deals with item 1) from the list below:
1) KBC - the big promises and the underperformance.
2) The new technology and the total misunderstanding of what it does.
3) The viability of the Karatbars plan moving forward.
4) The big thing being missed about what Karatbars are in business for in the first place.
So, let me try to explain why I think KBC is suffering in the market and what I think will happen in time.
Firstly, communication coming out of the company is limited right now. This is, I believe, deliberate. A good part of why we are now suffering with a massive lack of faith is that they were like a roller-coaster ride through late 2018 and pretty much the entirety of 2019, making announcements every 30 seconds (or so it seemed) about the latest thing they were doing.
Many people hated this (myself included) and their big team leaders told them so. Now, it seems, they are determined not to announce anything else until or unless it is ready to go. And that suits me fine.
They are also suffering and have been for some time, on the support side directly because as fast as they train new support staff and get them in place, they lose them because they are worked so hard and they are getting hounded by everyone out there with any kind of issue whether it can be solved by a support query or not.
And, of course, because people get irate and frustrated, they don't just ask for support on an issue once, they send it over and over and, sometimes, to multiple places. Often, they are matters of lack of belief (and that can never be resolved by a support call) rather than real, resolvable, issues.
Because of this, where I was once able to help with support queries myself, I no longer have any way to shorten the process for my contacts. In the past I could get to influential head office people directly but those days have gone.
Don't get me wrong, I fully get why there is a belief issue now. After all, on the face of it, it seems like promises were made that have simply not been delivered and in some cases even completely dropped from the agenda. But having met the people that run Karatbars, I have never doubted their intentions in the long run. Like all good business people, they have to change and adapt to meet new challenges they did not anticipate.
But what was the alternative to blindly continuing down a road that was turning harmful to the business? I doubt many realise how damning and damaging the whole Marvin Steinberg situation was to them and how close, if they had not put on the brakes and stopped the rot, they were to being entirely brought down.
Briefly, the Steinberg thing can be summarised like this for those who are unaware:
Marvin Steinberg was brought in to develop the KBC and KCB ICO's. After setting it all up very poorly in the end and creating much confusion with the delivery of coins and the whole process of onboarding people it became clear that him and his firm were not the experts they claimed to be. Even though they somehow managed to come highly recommended.
In the end it was much worse than simple incompetence as 2 or 3 billion coins were actually stolen by Steinberg (and Interpol are still into this case).
Steinberg was kicked out, of course, and rather than just accept that he'd been found out, he spent a good chunk of his stolen coins to wage a campaign to have Karatbars drawn through the mud and, eventually, destroyed. The effects of that are still being felt. As you know, if a big enough rumour mill is built it eventually feeds itself.
However, such is the commitment of Harald Seiz and co. to this company, that no matter what has been thrown at them they have been fighting tooth and nail to overcome it. And they doggedly pursue the legal channels open to them to contain the damage this is doing.
Because of my "unusual" interest in crypto I can draw comparisons here. I have a greater understanding than most of how the cryptocurrency space works and I have seen close mirrors of the KBC situation before with other coins and projects.
To give an example, in July 2017 a project and coin called TEZOS was launched into the market. It was, at the time, the biggest ICO ever launched and for good reason (it still remains in the top ten today based on the money taken in).
TEZOS looked to be a fabulous project and I absolutely believed it would go on to be one of the best cryptos of all. Shortly after the ICO ended though, a dispute started between the Brietmans' (the coin creators) and the head of the trust that had independently been set up to manage the funds. Accusations of coin theft and mismanagement were rife and the guy accused by the Breitmans of all the skulduggery took the TEZOS creators to court and started a very public feud.
This led to many TEZOS holders attempting to take the Breitman's to court citing that they had been scammed. They bought the FUD and added to it just like many are doing with KBC and Karatbars.
Long story short, TEZOS crashed and burned almost being wiped out completely amid much FUD in the market which went on and on seemingly (at the time) forever. But, and this is why I mention them. This year, finally, they have emerged and started to break out of the mire and deliver the project they promised. This project would have been delivered in full two years back had the self-destruct attitude of many TEZOS buyers not been allowed to almost kill it stone dead.
TEZOS was sold in their ICO at around 50 cents (US) per coin. It slumped to around 03 cents during the raging storm of FUD and now is up above $3 per coin and gaining in strength. The point here is (and why this is a useful comparison) that the "project" underlying TEZOS was a great project, always was, and that won out in the end.
No-one in their right mind would look at the full facts behind Karatbars, see where they are attempting to go and not see it as a great project. They have, with their partnership with crpyodata, already launched the world's first blockchain phone. Many people who now have the K1 do not understand what it is (I will deal with this some in part 2), but it is as revolutionary as the original smartphone was.
It is brand new technology. It isn't just another smartphone, leave those to the likes of Apple and Samsung etc.
Right now KBC is suffering if we look at the price. But it wasn't ever sold at 50 cents like Tezos or anything like it. In the main it was sold at around half a cent. It only needs to get up into the realms of 10 cents or more and most people will be ecstatic.
If you have written it off as a dead duck then you need to hold fire and understand what can happen with Crypto. If you are one of the people actively contributing to the very thing that is bringing KBC down by adding your voice to the FUD then you are engaged in a self-fulfilling prophecy spiral that will bring about the very thing you fear.
Ethereum started life at around the price level KBC is now. It is currently valued at $238 and has been as high as $1,200 and could easily get back there again. Bitcoin itself had a zero value day one and is now worth over $9,000.
Most cryptocurrencies fail because they do not have the support and backing of a healthy company behind them. KBC has a strong company behind it. That alone gives it an edge.
The promise of KBC for GOLD in exchange at a fixed and known rate was a promise made in an environment of massive growth and huge potential. To be clear, my opinion has always been that it was a stupid and unnecessary promise to make (and by the way, I did make that known very clearly to those in charge at the time it was made). But the motives behind it were honourable and understandable. Had they not been hit by a rogue outfit we would all be lapping it all up now and laughing about how lucky we'd been to acquire some KBC.
That gold exchange promise has been suspended (as far as I know, not dropped) and will, I believe, come back in time once KBC has overcome the current market malaise and the gold mining interests that Karatbars hold have started to produce. And let us not forget that they have built their own bank and that is yet to open for business.
The only losers here will be those who cannot believe and who sell their KBC at the ridiculously low current values.
Would you hold KBC for 10 years if you knew beyond doubt that, at that time, you could get a dollar for each coin? I think you probably would. The reality however is that it could, genuinely grow to much higher values than that.
Concluding this first part, I reiterate that Karatbars were foolish to make such a promise on the coin in the first place but are at least holding firm and doing what they need to do to move us toward that place again.
We should support what we believed in at the beginning by seeing KBC at its current level as an opportunity to simply acquire more and understanding that it still has a potentially great future. I am not making any recommendation here, merely stating a point that is obvious to me.
You either believe or you do not. Once upon a time I faced the same quandary with something called Bitcoin, and then again with something called Ethereum and even with a near disaster called Tezos. Along with those I backed some coins that went nowhere but, of course, some of those still might.
If you ever purchased any cryptocurrency thinking that it was a sure thing then you need to ask yourself if you really do understand the nature of a totally new concept. That is what crypto is. It is a new system of money that has to fight against the establishment to gain any ground because the establishment are going to fight it every step of the way. Why?
Because Crypto in the end doesn't need the middle man (the banks) and they have a lot to lose. Also, where does power in Government come from? It comes from having control of the money. So even without the additional problems created by Steinberg and co, KBC like all crypto has a mountain to climb before it finds its real place in the world.
I will come back to item 2) soon.
John
| 
